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.
Zoom, zoom, zoom,
We’re going to the moon,
Zoom, zoom, zoom,
We’ll be there very soon,
Five, four, three, two, one,
BLAST OFF.
These were the words our EY3 children were singing way back in January as we prepared them for a term of exploring space. Before we left though we thought it would be a good idea to look around us and see what we would be leaving behind. We looked closely at the trees and plants that surround us, which led us to get a bit green fingered and plant seeds ourselves.
We then started looking upwards towards the moon and the stars and talking about what life would be like if we weren’t on Earth. Using our knowledge of what we knew about Earth, we compared that with what we knew about the Moon and the Sun. It was very agreed amongst all the children that living on the Earth is the most preferable, and that it would be very likely that you would go “Pooof” if you landed on the Sun, but that it would be awesome and rather funny if we could go and visit, if only for a little while.
One morning as the children were exploring the Wellington sound garden, they found that an alien, who they later lovingly named “Lassie”, had crashed landed. Lassie the alien shared his knowledge of space and his home world, and the children created pictures of our Earth and Sun to help him better understand where we lived. At the end of the day the children had decided that it would be wonderful to visit outer space, which led us onto the story “Whatever Next” Jill Murphy. The story is about a bear who dreams to go to the moon, and by the power of imagination his dreams come true. Inspired by the story the children set about packing their bags full of toys and food and building their rockets. These activities culminated in our blast off day just before Chinese New Year, when we listened to space music and pretended to walk like we were on the moon.
As a wonderful consequence of these planned activities with the children, teachers started seeing them putting their imagination to work and building rockets in all different areas of the setting.
As the children travelled further and further into space we as adults discovered just how much our little space companions knew about what was beyond our atmosphere. During one discussion about the planets the children talked about why Pluto was no longer classed as a planet, and it was decided that the reason this happened was because the other planets had asked him to leave. One child got very angry about this and decided that he would go and have a serious talk with Jupiter and ask him why Pluto had to go. In the end the situation was resolved and Pluto could return to the rest of the planets with just a telling off.
As the children returned to Earth from their long adventure, it was wonderful to reflect on the learning and growth that we witnessed taking place. We only must look at the age of our solar system compared to the wonderful EY3 children to realise just how much growing up has taken place in such a short space of time. Even since Christmas the children’s outlook on the world has changed as they see, hear and learn more about the world in which they live.
So, as we come back to Earth we would just like to say...
Zoom, zoom, zap,
We are coming back,
Zoom, zoom, zap,
We are coming back
Five, four, three, two, one,
We have landed.
