Our Spring quest began when our 'Santa-Cam' picked up strange goings on during the Christmas holidays.  Footage shows a group of Gingerbread men scampering through our classroom! We want to know where they came from? and what is their story?

The children recognised them as Gingerbreadmen and immediately began making traps to catch them.  

After reading his story in Drawing Club, children drew their predictions of what might have happened to him, IF he did try and swim across the river?  To test out their predictions, we made gingerbreadmen biscuits and put them in our water tray (saving some to eat, obviously).  As expected, he went 'soggy', 'smudgy' 'floppy' 'dissolved', all 'mushy', 'yucky' and 'sank to the bottom'.  This was a great opportunity to make observations and use rich vocabulary.

Along our traditional tale journey, we talked about lots of characters and debated are they goodies or baddies and why?  We have read a lot of traditional tales, and versions of.  We have planted root vegetable seeds (turnips are out of season, so we planted parsnips) and hope they grow enormous, magic beans in the hope that they will grow tall and tomatoes, because Angelos brought a huge selection of seeds and plants in from The Local Gardener Initiative uk - Thank you!

Our quest now is to find out how we can make our own story.  We collaborate at snack time, testing ideas out for story problems, possible baddies that might cause problems and of course happy endings.  We have even had one child demonstrate how a woodcutter could defeat a dinosaur by running up his tail, over his head and into his mouth to take out his 'razer-sharp' teeth (It worked).

I wonder what will hatch?

After half term, children returned to the classroom to find an egg had been mysteriously deposited in our classroom.  Some children believed it may have a cat inside.  We decided to investigate.

Our half term has been filled with learning all about different types of animals.  Could they have laid the egg?

Children began by exploring reptiles, enjoying stories such as 'The Egg' and 'The Dinosaurium'.  and 'Am I Yours?'.  We of course brought these stories to life in Drawing club where children drew new pet dinosaurs, a setting for a nest and predictions on what might be inside 'The Egg'..

We continued to explore animal types and found out about features of birds and mammals.  We have looked through our animal basket and sorted our toys into the different animal types, made feathery, scaly and hairy collages and even sang about 'feathers, fur and fins'.

Children are now pretty sure cats don't lay eggs.

But it might be a dinosaur!?