Summer Term 1
What Discoveries Were Made With The Endeavour?
This term we are learning about Captain Cook, Joseph Banks and The Endeavour. All of the children thought that The Endeavour was just our local pub so we have been spending some time learning about what happened in 1768.
Starting With a Painting
We launched our new topic by following a map (as James Cook was a cartographer) that had a star marked on it. At this point in the grounds we found an envelope that contained a chopped up painting by Thomas Luny showing The Endeavour leaving Whitby harbour. The children found this painting fascinating and spent an hour asking questions and discussing why everything looked so different to how the world looks today. Later in the week we compared The Endeavour to the research ship The Sir David Attenborough. The children were brilliant at spotting how the materials used and the tools available on the two ships were very different.
Making our own Captain Cook Style explorer hats!
George and The Dragon PE
To help the children to remember the story of George and the Dragon, on St. George's Day, we built our own dragon and practiced our javelin skills trying to slay it to save our village from also being eaten!
Investigating which materials are best for building boats.
Nest Box Excitement!
When we returned to school this term we were super excited to see that 2 blue tits had taken up residence in our nest box! We have watched them as they have built up their nesting material and laid an egg each day until they have 11 eggs! The mummy bird is now sitting on the eggs to incubate them. We used the RSPB's website to find out that they will take 15 days to hatch so every day we are counting down to the day the chicks might hatch!
Plant Studies
As part of our Endeavour studies we learned that Joseph Banks discovered lots of new plants during the voyage and took some artists with him to paint them. He also preserved some of the plants by pressing them. We have had a go at both of these techniques.
Pressing plants to preserve them
Drawing Willow
Upcycled T-Shirt Bag Project
Over the past couple of weeks we have been transforming an old T-shirt into a shopping bag!
We have been learning a lot about ocean pollution and how plastic shopping bags can seriously endanger sea creatures so the children have worked to create their own shopping bag by painting a jellyfish onto a T-shirt that has been stitched up to turn it into a shopping bag. The children practiced and refined their designed on paper first - looking closely at various videos of jellyfish on our big screen. They then used poster paints to paint their final design onto the bag.
After this the children were set a homework challenge of taking their bags on a shopping trip. They were encouraged to use the money skills, that we have been developing in our maths sessions, to help them to pay for the items they wanted.
Some children even chose to share some messages about plastic pollution with the shop keepers who asked about their bags!
well done my little eco-warrior Hedgehogs!
Mini Wyberton Wombles
This week the school received a wonderfully kind donation of some litter pickers and rubbish bag holders. The person who donated them wishes to remain anonymous but they were given to us via the local community group The Wyberton Wombles. Reception are planning to go out into our local area next week to do some litter picking using this equipment and the school would like to say a huge thankyou for this kind donation.
If you would like further information about what the Wyberton Wombles of Boston Common and what they do then try visiting their FaceBook page.