We started term 5 by looking at a new non-fiction book called From Tadpole to Frog. The children learned all about the lifecycle of a frog and wrote facts about tree frogs, goliath frogs and poison dart frogs in their writing books. The children have loved learning about life cycles and we were lucky enough to have some children bring in some caterpillar chrysalis’ which we watched turn into butterflies! We had a tank of tadpoles in the class, which the children have observed over the course of four weeks. The children were excited to check each day and note any developments as they changed from tadpoles to froglets. They are now growing into frogs and we are hoping to release them after the half term.

We had many special days to acknowledge in the past few weeks, including Earth day, and Autism Awareness Day. For Earth day, we focused on the theme Planet vs. Plastic. We talked about the importance of looking after our planet and the different ways in which we can repurpose plastic. The children collected lots of plastic recycling, painted it red and green, cut it into small pieces and made a large mosaic cherry which now hangs up in Cherry class. To celebrate Autism Awareness Day, we talked about how wonderful difference is in each other and how people process the world differently. We looked at Iris Grace, an autistic girl who makes beautiful artwork inspired by her surroundings. We even had a go at making some artwork inspired by her ourselves!

Towards the end of the term, the children had a very exciting WOW Day to introduce the Talk for Writing book. The day began with a giant beanstalk erupting out of the ground in our forest area! We then followed giant footprints into the forest area where we found golden eggs, gold coins and giant boots and discovered that the new Talk for Writing book was Jack and the Beanstalk. Later the children planted bean seeds in a jar, wrote a bean diary over 3 weeks, noted any changes, and drew illustrations.

We had a very busy final week in Cherry class! We took part in another exciting Tinkering Tuesday as well as performing our class assembly. For Tinkering Tuesday, we had to make a frog habitat diorama, making sure that each phase of the frog life cycle would survive in it. We then performed the Cherry class assembly, sharing all that the children had learnt this term as well as performing a few of their favourite songs. Each child in Cherry class had at least one line to learn and perform, they all did such an amazing job!