This term we will look at the text 'Poles Apart' and explore lots of different countries around the world, both today, and in the past! As we have lots of children who love dinosaurs this year, we will also journey back to the prehistoric era, and look at the world when dinosaurs roamed.  

After the Christmas holidays - we thought about how we celebrated the New Year and talked about what this looked like for us, as a revisit to our Autumn 'Celebrations' topic! 

We made firework pictures, 2026 party crowns and wrote our own new years resolution/wishes! We also listened to and joined in with "Auld Lang Syne", which we loved! 

We then dived into our topic learning! 
We read the story poles apart, looking for clues on the front cover first to think of what the story might be about, or what characters might be inside! We then thought about both polar bears and penguins and where they lived, and whether we could keep them as a pet or not and why. 
We also explored maps, globes and what the different parts/ colours represented. 
All of us can talk about the north and South Pole, and where you can find them on a map or globe! 
 

After looking at the North and South Pole, we looked at another country the penguins visited...India! 
 

We learnt about the climate, what was similar and different to here in England, as well as animals that might live here, particularly Tigers! We painted them and thought about our painting skills as well as writing facts about them after doing some fact finding! 
We tasted food that is associated with India, using all 5 of our senses whilst we did so, saying which was our favourite and finding out which most and least children liked! 
 

We then turned our attention to the world in the past, back to the time of dinosaurs. We started with a dino themed Drawing Cub! 
Our drawing club book was "Dinosaurs Don't Draw".

 

Our 8 WOW words for our adventure are : 

We LOVED this story - and got super creative with our drawings and secret codes! We especially loved the fearsome dino that picosaur drew to scare the T-Rex away, and had great fun creating our own! 
We made dinosaur feet, got involved in lots of dinosaur play, and had so much fun! 
 

We then learnt about people who study dinosaurs, called Palaeontologists. We talked and wrote about what they did, explored fossils, and then made our own trace fossils using salt dough! 
 

To round up our learning about dinosaurs, we embarked on a school trip to Danum Gallery. We had a great time meeting Triceratops Tracey, and being dinosaur detectives for the morning!  We got to touch and experience real fossils and enjoyed lots of different activities!
 

 

After thinking lots about the world in the past, we returned to the present day, looking at the country of China and talking about the celebration of Lunar New Year! 

We looked at the story 'The Great Race' to learn the origins of the animal years, and then who might celebrate Lunar New Year and how! 

We practised writing numbers in Cantonese, wrote words for the 12 animals, and learnt that Sparrows were born in either the year of the Rat or the year of the Ox! 2026 is the year of the horse - which Mrs Mills was born in too, so we had lots of horse crafts to take part in too. 

On Friday we were lucky enough to have one of out parents come and talk to us and show us different things that they have/use to celebrate with their family, which was super special! We even practised saying different things in Cantonese, such as good luck, happiness, health and wealth.