As part of Nurseries on going investigations into our current expedition, ”Would you travel by wheels, wings or other things?” This week we are exploring boats. We began by reading the text “The Boy Who Sailed the World” by Julia Green. We have learned about lots of different types of vehicles that move on water including; sail boats, cruise ships, ferries, hovercrafts, submarines and canoes.

We have began to create our own boats from recycled pop bottles, with sails made from recycled paper, just like the boy in our story. The children have independently constructed their boats and secured the sails using play dough. They have then predicted whether their boat would float or sink?

Nursery then tested them in the water tray. Some of the boats floated, whilst others sank as they “tipped”. Some of the words the children used to describe why, they thought the boats had tipped were ; ”Sail is wonky”, ”it’s (sail) too big”, ”it’s not a right shape (sail)” and ”the play dough was too heavy and tipped it”. Great investigations, I’m looking forward to seeing more throughout the week!

P.s. Check out our flashing Torpedo’s too! They are great fun, they light up and glide through the water, lets hope they don’t blow up our boats!

Nursery were visited on Wednesday 24th May by an expert visitor, Holly, from the Yorkshire Air Ambulance charity. Holly talked to the children about the role of the Air Ambulance and it’s Crew, whilst telling us interesting facts such as; it travels at 160mph, the helicopter costs £19,000 per day to run, there are two of them across the region and patients are treated on board just like a regular ambulance.

Nursery created their own air ambulance land art today, (after modelling and the use of a photo as a stimulus) using large loose parts in the outdoor area. They worked as a team to decide which materials to choose and which materials were most suitable in terms of shape, colour and size.

I think you’ll all agree the children have created some amazing land art in the shape and tones of the Air Ambulance. Such beautiful work! They have also learned key words such as Landing Skids, Propellers, Rotors and Ambulance body.

As part of our expedition on Transport this term we have been looking at maps. Today during a maths related activity, Nursery were exploring a familiar route. First they learned about what a route is and then they used a map to guide them and thought hard about positional language including; forward, left and right. They walked the route and then explained how they got back to Nursery talking about familiar landmarks and beginning to use key words above. Well Done to our little Orienteers!

This week Nursery have been enjoying two days of exploring and being immersed in our own micro expedition “What’s a Coronation all about?” based upon our text ”The Kings Pants” by Nicholas Allan. We learnt that King Charles, will be King Charles the third, as there were two other Charles that were Kings before him many years ago. We have listened to royal military marching music, looked at Royal Guards and observed what musical instruments are played during ceremonies. Then we practised and acted out our own parades.

Our thoughtful Thursday Crew was based around if we were a King or Queen for the day, what rule would we make? Some of the responses included ”Have chocolate for breakfast”, ”Only eat healthy food”, ”Clean all of the house everyday”, ”Be kind and gentle”, ”Don’t drive the bikes too fast”, ”Try our best”, ”Help our friends” and ”make everyone laugh”.

We thought about how we would like to celebrate and talked about parties that may be happening this weekend. Nursery made cupcakes and decorated them for a special surprise!

Our cupcakes were decorated with Red, White and Blue sprinkles – Just like the Union Jack.

Outdoors we took part in a Coronation Hunt, looking for key items and symbols of royalty… we enjoyed dashing around to find them and learnt lots of new words linked to the coronation, such as Septre, Red Arrows, Carriage, Bearskin Solider, Union Jack, Parade and Coronation.

Finally our Big Surprise was a ”Right Royal Tea Party” with a special visitor…see if you can spot him? We had juice in china tea cups and had special treats including our own cupcakes that we created. It’s been a very fun week and we have certainly worked hard, to get smart. Nursery would like to wish King Charles lll a very happy coronation! Long live the King!