Growing to like science week.

12th March 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery have been Scientists whilst investigating how humans grow and change, driven by our key text “When I Was a Baby” by Deborah Niland. We have been introduced to our new science characters, who will help us to navigate investigations. We have focused on “Predicting Pip”, helping the children to understand how to make predictions or reasonable guesses about what may happen before experimenting.

To activate our learning and hook the children into the week we played a game of “Guess the Baby?” Looking at photos of the children as babies and guessing which baby was each child. We then sorted activities or tasks that babies Can or Can’t do, explaining why – thinking about how undeveloped new babies are.

Our first practical experiment this week was “Growing Gummy Bears”. This linked to what humans need to grow. We investigated which of four different liquids; salt water, sugar water, white vinegar or plain water were the best conditions to grow the bear. The children made predictions of what they thought may happen to the bears as we dropped them into the ramekins.

We then observed how the bears changed and grew in the different solutions over 24 hours. The results revealed that the bear in the salt water turned white from absorbing the salt particles and stayed very small, the bear in the vinegar began to melt and fall to pieces (one of the children explained this process as “dissolved”), the bear in the sugar water grew bigger but was very sticky and slimy because of all of the sugar in the water. Finally the bear in the regular water grew the most and was perfectly in one piece, showing that clean water was essential to growing.

Salt water
Sugar water
Vinegar

Our second experiment linked to what we need to help us grow. The children had previously looked at what we needed to grow during our Tranquil Tuesday Crew, using picture prompts to help scaffold their understanding.

Then today Nursery observed how humans need oxygen to breathe, grow and survive. The children made predictions about the experiment from a diagram shown during our Wise Wednesday Crew. They thought about what would happen to the candle if a jar was placed over the top? Some of our answers included; “The glass will break”, “It will burn”, “It will go off fire”, “It will make a big light” and “It will run out of breath”.

They then observed as I modelled the experiment, fixing a candle into play dough, placing three sets of coins around a bowl and filling the base of the bowl with coloured water. Then I lit the candle and placed a jar over the top of the flame, resting on the coins. The children observed as the oxygen was used up in the jar and the flame was suffocated, causing the water to rise up the glass – taking the place of the oxygen. They watched in awe as the flame went out and listened carefully to the sound of the vacuum made by the water. One of the children likened the experiment to “When to go to bed and pull the covers over your head, if you stay like that, you could suffocate because there’s no air.”

We have had lots of fun and excitement in Nursery this week experimenting and are looking forward to the rest of the week. Great learning Nursery!

Science Week Community Meeting

12th March 2025Laura Parsons

This week in our Wise Wednesday community meeting we reminded ourselves of our new Science characters that are going to help us to think scientifically.

Next, we had some Science riddles to try and solve – look at how many scientific superstars we had this morning!

I wonder if you can solve the riddles? Have a go …

1 – With my powerful lens you can look at the stars, and spot the planets like Venus and Mars.

2 – I’m a type of energy. You use me every day … for light, cooking, computers and the music that you play.

3 – I am a gas that is found in the air. Without me, there would be no life anywhere!

4 – I am a precious metal mined from deep underground. I’m yellow in colour. In jewellery, I’m found.

5 – I am part of your body, with a very important role. Your voice, sight and memory are some things I control.

6 – I can be sunshine, snow, wind or rain. I change every day … people often complain!

7 – Plant and animal cells too tiny to see are magnified when you look through me.

8 – I am a liquid. In rivers I flow When I freeze I am ice. I’m called H2O!

Good Luck

Mrs Parsons xx

Year 1 Dance

11th March 2025Claire Goodyer

Year One have loved the start of our dance unit this half term. So far we have been learning about some of the principles of dance and practising key skills such as balancing and travelling. We’ve had fun linking these actions together to create sequences and have worked with our partners using our 8 counts to hold our balances.

Science Week in Year One

11th March 2025Claire Goodyer

Science is about understanding and making sense of the world around us. It allows us to be creative and curious, as well as being able to answer questions that we may have. To celebrate science week Year One have been planning and carrying out an investigation to help us answer the question ‘How do flowers and other plants drink?’ We’ve made predictions and considered how we can make our tests fair. Today with the help of our grown ups we’ve worked together to set up our experiment.

We are excited to see what happens to our flowers over the next few days and to answer some of the questions we have been asking.

Which colour will we see first in our flowers?

Will the colours mix and make new colours in the flowers?

How long will it take for the flowers to change colour?

Down the rabbit hole for World Book Day!

10th March 2025Sarah Winkley

On Friday Nursery took part in the World Book Day celebrations happening across campus. We had a visit from the Mad Hatter and Alice who came to tell us an exciting story, “Alice in Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll. They also gave us a special invitation to a tea party, with strict instructions not to be late! The children looked amazing in their host of costumes, dressed as their favourite storybook characters and had lots of fun partying and sharing their stories with their friends.

Morning Nursery.

Afternoon Nursery

Happy World Book Day

10th March 2025Lauren Gate

On Friday we celebrated World Book Day! Class 6 looked absolutely awesome in their book themed costumes.

We started the day by creating crew book murals where we all thought about our favourite books and how we can represent them.

We had a fabulous Alice In Wonderland themed day where we took a trip to the mad hatters tea party and spent the morning using our imaginations to create our very own wonderlands!

Celebrating World Book Day – A book is a dream you can hold in your hands…

10th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

What an amazing World Book Day we had at Norton Infant School this year! It started off with an exciting visit from the Mad Hatter and Alice in Wonderland. They read us a story and invited us to a very special World Book Day Tea Party.

We were getting very excited waiting to enter the Tea Party…

We couldn’t believe our eyes when we entered! We were in Wonderland! The buns and drinks went down a treat. A huge thank you to FONCA for making this magical moment happen! It really was a highlight of our day.

Back in the classroom the children looked at the work of Eric Carle, in particular we looked at the butterfly drawing from ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. We spoke about how we can show accuracy when drawing and practiced looking carefully. We investigated the different lines Eric Carle used to create his butterfly. We then used watercolour pencils to add colour. The children produced some beautiful artwork…

Here are some inspirational messages that we discovered on Eric Carle’s website…

I think you will all agree that the children looked wonderful. Thank you for making such an effort with your costumes 🙂 It was a great day…

We are Artists.

6th March 2025Sarah Winkley

This week Nursery have been Artists as they have continued to explore case study two of our expedition; “How do plants grow and change?” The stimulus has been the life cycle of a sunflower. We have been looking at artists who paint flowers, in particular Vincent Van Gogh’s famous sunflower paintings. However Nursery have compared these during a gallery walk to the works of Georgia O’Keefe (Green and White Lilly close up) , Claude Monet (Water lilies) and Maria Van Oosterwijck (Wilting flowers with black background). As the children began the week by looking at the colours used in paintings, for the purpose of light and dark and how this made them feel?

We practised painting using light and dark shades and talked about what kind of colours make us think of different feelings. The children likened the lighter colours to “sunshine”, “the sky” and happy events. Whilst they thought of darker colours as “dirt”, “shadows” or “night-time”. When they looked closely at the wilting flowers they realised that the flowers in the painting were dying and that the artist had captured them as they had started to “Wilt”, “droop” and “flop”. This made the children feel sad that the flowers had passed their best and they then associated the darker colours with sadness.

The children were challenged to think about; “If the artist was listening to music whilst they were painting – do you think it would make a difference to how they painted? Would it cheer them up or make them feel sad? Make them angry or excited? The only way to find out was to test the idea. Nursery closed their eyes and carefully listened to four specifically chosen music tracks to see if they could hear a difference in the tunes and move in a way that responded to the music? The tracks were; “Happy” by Pharrell Williams, “Proud Mary” (a slowed version) by Tina Turner, “Fire Starter” by Prodigy and “Axel F” by Crazy Frog.

They then captured there response to the music in drawing…..

Finally Nursery have used all of their new knowledge and experience to paint their own Van Gogh Sunflowers from a choice of two designs, using either a palette of either angry or sad colours whilst listening to their choice of “Fire Starter” or “Proud Mary”. The efforts made by the children for these paintings and the results have been outstandingly beautiful and such a relevant and purposeful experience. They have had lots of fun and have been exposed and challenged into thinking further about their feelings and responses to music and art.

Clay Animals and The Songbird Cafe

5th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

Crew Chadwick has enjoyed taking part in some great ‘outdoor crew’ sessions this week, led by Mrs Jackson. In our first session, the children enjoyed sculpting clay into different animals. Take a look at some of our creations…

Our number one rule in Class 1 is to be kind, therefore we loved our next crew activity. We got to make bird feeders for all of the local birds and hung them in our Norton Songbird Cafe. Within minutes of them being hung on the tree, a beautiful robin was already feasting away! Looking after nature is something we spoke about in our last expedition, ‘How do we show we care’. It felt great, carrying out this act of kindness.

Crew Chadwick would like to give a BIG shout out to Mrs Jackson for planning and resourcing such great activities. We loved it! Thank you 🙂 xx

Art makes us happy…

5th March 2025Elouise Chadwick

In case study two the children have been answering the question ‘What happens to plants as they grow?’ Not only have the children been scientists in this case study, but we have also been inspired by Vincent Van Gogh and his series of ‘Sunflower’ paintings.

Each child did a great job mixing powder paints to create a large petal that we later turned into a bigger piece of artwork. We are looking forward to sharing the finished product with families at our celebration of learning event.

This week we have been working on our own versions of Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Sunflower’ painting. The children have mixed different colours and shades to create a desired effect. I think we may have some budding artists of our very own in class 1!