This half term we will be thinking about all things “out of this world!” 
 

We will be starting off by reading Whatever Next by Jill Murphy, and thinking more closely about rockets and the moon. 
 

We asked children before we started our topic what they wanted to find out, and they came up with lots of questions! We are going to try and answer as many of these as we can over the coming weeks, and we cannot wait to get started! 

Before starting our topic, we thought about what we wanted to find out about space.

Sparrows had some really fantastic questions and we are hoping to answer as many as we can over the next 5 weeks!

We are al really excited and enthusiastic about our new topic, and have dove into our learning with full force! 
Here are some of the things we have explored.

Every child has designed, labelled and then made a rocket, which are now in the solar system above our heads! 

We thought about what we know about rockets to be able to design one, and then what we wanted it to look like and why. 

We used our designs to create our rockets, following them as closely as possible through junk modelling - Thank you parents for your kind junk modelling donations! 

We will be sharing these and another exciting design project with parents at our 'out of this world' parents event at the end of term :)

Although we now know the moon isn't in fact made out of cheese (it's made of rock!) we still had some moon mice visit our class, and they were hungry for carrots! 

We set up a maze and children had to think carefully about how to give the mouse instructions to be able to get there. It took us a while, and sometimes they didn't go where we wanted them too! But we kept on having a go and soon worked out how to get the mice to the yummy carrots using the arrows, thinking carefully about the directions and how far they might need to go. 

Some children managed to programme the mice in just one go! While others broke it down into small steps to ensure the mice got there safely. 

There were some really wonderful conversations, and lots of helping hands to ensure we all got a mouse to it's carrot!

Our second design project was to create an alien! We again designed them thinking about what we wanted them to look like and why, and wrote labels to show this so we remembered when it came to making them! 

We then created them out of salt dough and other materials to get the effect we wanted! 

All of us took lots of care to create our aliens and we are very proud of them! 

We had such a good time at our 'out of this world' parent event! 

Children took part in lots of space themed activities with their grown ups to show off their skills and all the things we have been learning about. 

We also had out 'showcase' in the classroom, with our rocket and alien deigns and products, as well as a valentines surprise! 

Thank you so much to all of the grown ups who could make it to share the afternoon with us!