The Spring term has come to an end. Our children and teaching staff have had great fun when busy exploring themed curriculum. Let’s have a quick review of what pupils at each year group have learned in the last a few months.
Throughout the last theme, we read the story, ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’. As this book focuses on animals, we began the theme by focusing on habitats. The children learned about the places where animals live, the texture and feeling of objects in differing habitats (e.g. grass is soft whereas tree bark is rough). They also discovered objects that we can use to explore habitats such as binoculars. The children also engaged in activities related to searching for their favorite animals (e.g. bird hunt, bear hunt, tiger hunt) around the setting.
Through the children’s own initiated learning they had access to different textures to represent the different areas of the story, such as water for the river, bark for the forest, snow for the snowstorm and mud. They were also able to use small world figures to retell/role play the story and were able to make caves using boxes and sheets along with different materials to decorate them.
During the teacher led activities the children were able to sequence the story using materials of their own choosing for each stage of the story, which have since been on show in their EY2 classrooms. We looked at the different habitats of animals such as which animals live on the land, in the sea and in the air before comparing and matching different animal footprints. The children also had an opportunity to discuss the different types of bears such as pandas, polar and grizzly bears and they then created their own bear masks. We used the bear theme in our mathematics work where the children ordered different size bears from smallest to largest and used counting bears to count objects to 10 and match them to the correct number.
To finish off the theme the children watched a short version of the ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ story and then they had a teddy bears picnic. The children enjoyed the variety of activities available to them during this theme and showed great enthusiasm in all areas of their learning.
