Say hello to Colonel Schneke

This week Mrs Lewis gave us some very exciting news, we were going to get a pet snail. Not just an ordinary garden snail though, a giant African land snail! 

At lunch time on Wednesday Mrs Lewis received a very unusual parcel, the label said it had come from snails4u! All of the children gathered excitedly in Foxes classroom to find out what it was. There was great excitement when the children realised it was our snail! Nischal thought "it's tiny!" but soon realised it would grow when it has lots to eat. Miss Sullivan asked the children what it would eat there were shouts of "apples" "bananas" "lettuce" and "not oranges or lemons" from the expert malacologists (people that study snails).

Archie and Reona set to work making the snails new home nice for it to live in, after all the snail had had a long and probably bumpy journey through the post. Archie told everyone that the compost needed to be damp. We then realised we didn't yet have a name for our snail.

The children went off in their phonics groups and listed their suggestions for names. Everything was suggested, from Sparkles and Princess to Turbo and Lightening. There were a few suggestions that caught our eye, Mr Snail, Schneke and Colonel Snail. Mrs Lewis and Miss Sullivan liked the idea of combining these names as schneke is snail in German. We gave the children the opportunity to vote to decide the name and the final decision was between Colonel Schneke and Mr Schneke. Colonel Schneke won the majority vote. We then left Colonel Schneke to settle into his new home.

On Friday morning Colonel Schneke was being very active. We have found that his favourite spot is to hang upside down on his roof! Nischal and Ruth asked if we could get the Colonel out for a bit. Ruth told Nischal they had to have clean, wet hands to touch him and off they both went to wash their hands. Soon most of the Foxes were gathering around the table desperate for a chance to hold Colonel Schneke. There were squeals of excitement and joy when he was placed on most of the hands but a few children (and Mrs Lewis) weren't a fan of the slimy body. Colonel Schneke was particularly fond of Megan's hand and slithered all the way up her fingers. He was feeling particularly hungry and was being hand fed lettuce by the children who were fascinated to watch him actually eat it.

The children were very calm and gentle holding Colonel Schneke and some kept coming back for more. When they had finished holding him the children used antibacterial hand gel before then going to wash their hands again with soap and water.

We are all looking forward to finding out more about giant African land snails and watching Colonel Schneke grow.

Dinosaur hunting

Have you heard about our palaeontology lab?

Last week the children were very excited to see a parcel addressed to them on the whiteboard step. It was incredibly difficult to wait until after the register to explore what it might be. One eagle-eyed otter recognised the handwriting and told us with absolute certainty that it was from Mrs Gill.

They were right!

The children passed the unopened package around the class and commented that it was quite heavy ..."heavier than my lunchbox" said Samridi. They guessed that it might contain a new afternoon story book.

They were wrong!


Chloe was selected as the person who would open the mystery package, she peeled back the Sellotape very slowly as the other children all inched forward and crept up onto their knees.

She pulled out a strange red rock, a small paintbrush and a tiny hammer.

"It's another rock to dig for fossils and dinosaur bones!"  Christopher exclaimed that Mrs Gill must've found it underneath the school cellar, "because dinosaurs lived in Germany didn't they?"

Peeking out from behind the rock was a letter addressed to the children, Jack confidently read it to the class. Mrs Gill had heard that we were interested in palaeontology and wondered if we could unearth another delicate dinosaur. Would we be able to find out what type of dinosaur it was?

Ask us about our palaeontology lab...we have unearthed all sorts of treasures!

Marble Run

For the last few months the marble run in Otters class has been an incredibly popular learning choice in the mornings. Miss Sullivan has been observing the children building their own runs and overcoming difficulties by working together and solving problems. She made a much larger space for the children to build in and was surprised when Mateo constructed a magnificent feat of engineering with a  marble run that rested on a nearby table. This solved the problem of stability in its wobbly middle!

Last month the children began adding other materials from the classroom to enhance their marble run.

The children moved some of the cylinders from the junk modelling table down to the large blackboard outside Squirrels class and started to tape them on. They created their own large scale marble run. The children were overcoming different problems than those they faced with the small plastic marble run in Otters class. However they were still using the skills they had been practising, such as perseverance and teamwork.

They had to manoeuvre large bulky tubes, and various types of joining materials. The children soon discovered that using Sellotape was much more 'people heavy' than the blue tape which could be ripped whilst still holding the tube in place. The sellotape required a separate 'unroller', cutter, sticker and ''holder upper''. No-body was free to test that the marble ran down without any hitches!!! (This proved to be the most popular of jobs!)

There were a lot of test runs which resulted in some very skilled patching up of gaps and holes. The children very quickly learnt from their first mistakes and were soon heard calling out to each other to... ''hold the tube still or there will be a gap when we stick it.''

There was a very excited group of children when the marble eventually ran all the way through the do-it-yourself marble run unscathed. There were a few tricky moments when the marble was almost lost under the Hedgehog trays. That in itself required some tactical thinking. The narrowest tube was selected to poke underneath and push the marble into the upturned tape basket!

Mateo had his engineering hat on again and wondered if he could combine the plastic marble run pieces to their cardboard tube marble run. He very carefully constructed a small plastic run that he balanced precariously, on an upturned log from the creative area natural object baskets, so that it was at exactly the right level as the bottom of the blackboard. It worked!

This prompted the other children to think about other ways in which the two could be combined. A shute was added to the start of the run but a very interesting conversation about gravity was started because if it wasn't stuck on exactly level the marble would not spin down it but instead roll to one edge. The children still haven't solved this problem. The blue tape and masking tape is not strong enough to hold it level.

The next day we were surprised to see that Mrs Gill had left the children a challenge. She loved the learning that was happening but wanted to extend our thinking even more...She has challenged the children to make their own marble run that has some changes of direction!

This is proving very tricky!

But...

We will do it!!

Thank you for all of the tube donations...we have a lovely collection now. Lots of different shapes and sizes just right for the tricky patching up.

There's a dragon in the corridor...

Miss Sullivan arrived back to the classroom after lunch with a big parcel. It was addressed to her but she told us that inside it was a present for Otters class. We watched as she opened it and pulled out three new stories for carpet time. Underneath the brand new books was a very long and very crumpled piece of brown packing paper. Miss Sullivan was about to put it in the junk modelling box when Reese suddenly stopped her! ''We could make our own lion,'' he shouted out. Reese had remembered our Chinese New Year celebrations from this morning and made the link between the video we watched of the Chinese lion dance and this long, narrow piece of paper. ''If we flatten it out we can decorate it.'' Paige thought this was a brilliant idea...''yes, we can all fit underneath it.'' She noticed the length of the paper and compared it to the little lion head and fabric we danced beneath this morning. Only three people could dance underneath that costume.

Soon enough. all of the otters were thinking of ways to decorate the lion, it was spread out in the classroom before it was realised that perhaps it was too long and was causing some commotion to any children wanting to walk to another area of the classroom. Mateo decided it would be best decorated in the corridor. ''There's more space. It's long.''

As we were working together to decide which end should be the head and which end should be the tail something very strange happened. We didn't notice at first because we were so engrossed in creating our own lion. Infact, Miss Sullivan said that many of us looked up, spotted the strange visitor, and then got back to decorating without making any comments at all. It was Kerron who first noticed something a little odd. As she moved to add an eyelash to the lions eye she spotted a new visitor. It was a dragon. ''Oh, hello Mr Dragon.'' she kindly said.

Paige and Finlay heard Kerron's strange remark and noticed that the dragon visitor had a damaged wing. A passing Mrs Ewen commented that it was just like in 'How to train your dragon.''

We were very concerned that the dragon had been injured and quickly decided that it would be their job to keep him safe. Chloe and Faye patched up the wing with red tissue paper and gently told him not to worry, ''we will look after you.'' While the girls were tending to the wing Mateo and Lucas had found some polystyrene ' medicine; and were tempting the dragon to take a few in his mouth. Finlay was dabbing the dragon's tail and asking him to ''keep still, it wont hurt.'' All sorts of joining techniques were being used as the dragon was being patched up. Sellotape didn't stick very well so was put away in favour of the masking tape. The children soon realised that they could colour over the masking tape and heal the dragon completely. Faye was trying bandages and homemade plasters were stuck on with some very sticky double sided sticky tape. 

Jack and Samuel were very interested in finding out where the dragon came from. Samridi and Christopher said that he came from 'Dragonland'. We thought that perhaps this was a long way away. Mrs Gill was very excitedly fetched from the snackroom and she wondered if perhaps the dragon had heard and seen our loud dragon dancing this morning and wanted to meet us.

Lucas thought that maybe the tear in his wings were because he had flown too fast to get to us and had brushed past a bush. Meanwhile Jack found some 'blood' in the classroom and told us that he must've been hiding in there throughout the morning. Lucas scurried off to create a map so that we could find Dragonland, he thought it would be in fairytale land ''quite near to Room on the Broom.'' He came back with a paper aeroplane, ''if his wings don't heal he can fly back in my aeroplane. He has a map to follow now.''

We were desperate to share our exciting news with all of the adults in the school, so much so that three of us wrote to Mrs Scarisbrick to tell her about the 'Dragon Emergency.' Mrs Russell and Mrs Hird-Shaw heard about our unexpected visitor and listened to us problem solve and work together.

Kerron said that it was very lucky that the dragon had landed outside Otters classroom. ''He knows we work as a team...that's why.''

Miss Sullivan agreed with her and said how kind and caring we had been. The dragon is now resting atop of our creative area in the cosy woodland. He feels very at home. We wonder if he will still be there tomorrow?

Christmas with the Aliens

Thank you for coming to watch our magnificent Christmas performance this morning. The children haven't stopped talking about it all day, they really enjoyed being on stage and showing off all of their wonderful singing and loud speaking. They had so looked forward to sharing their nativity play with you and all came off the stage wanting to talk about how happy and smiley you all were as you watched it.

As Mrs Scarisbrick said, your children have been involved in every part of the production. They made posters to advertise their play, wrote invitations, created tickets during their computing lesson and even created their very own programme. We hope that you all got to see one of the programmes that were placed on your seats.  Your children worked as a class team to organise each page needed. We had teams creating a picture for the front cover, teams compiling a cast list and organising labels and photos, teams working together to write a succinct and informative blurb and a very technologically advanced team videoing themselves saying a thank you for our thank you page. This was then turned into a QR code by Mr Scarisbrick.

Alongside all of this was some very complicated problem solving...we had to think about how to set out the chairs for you all to sit on and decide where best to sit on the stage. Before Zack left, he made a very good director. He ensured all of the children were using their loud voices by standing at the back of the hall and giving a big thumbs up. He suggested that he needed a clipboard so that he could note down any changes that he felt necessary.

Of course, we must say another big thank you to you! Our Stay and Play was a big success and I am sure you will agree that your creativity in making backdrops, props and costumes really added to the play today. Your children were so proud to have had a part in creating the whole stage design and were excitedly telling their friends which parts you had
helped to make.

 Well done to all of our singers who sang 'Let it go'! We had to squeeze that popular song in somewhere. Yumiko  played the  Alien/Frozen super fan very well.

Our wonderful narrators worked with Mrs Gill to accompany our 'three kings song' with percussion instruments. They kept a very steady beat and remembered not to play when the kings were singing their solo lines. There were a lot of children singing solos today! We are incredibly proud of how confidently and beautifully they all sang. (Mrs Lewis and I could never rehearse those parts with dry eyes!!..Today was no exception) All of the foxes and otters sang beautifully today and really helped to tell the story by singing all of the words clearly.

We are incredibly proud of all of the foxes and otters! We had very high expectations of them and they exceeded them all...

At the end of the day Tilly asked what time we were performing tomorrow! All of the children have enjoyed the whole process of putting on a production and said how special they felt on stage in their costumes. Thank you for coming to watch and letting your children feel what it is like to perform to a happy and proud audience. Like Tilly, I just wish we could perform it over and over again.


Please leave a comment under this blog post so that we can share what you thought with your children during snack times this week.


Thank you again,


Miss Sullivan, Mrs Lewis, Mrs Sturrock and Mrs Balmer.