I can't look at a red cabbage without thinking of Victoria Wood! If you are too young to remember – look it up on You Tube! As I have mentioned before we are doing lots of work on trying to get the children to recognise every day fruit and veg. We are also signing ' Cauliflowers Fluffy ' which does indeed mention many and various varieties. Today's activity came from a discussion with a child around a line in the song that says ' and cabbages green ' I remarked that not all cabbages were green and they refused to believe me. So today I took in 4 red cabbages (even more confusing because they are purple) to see what they … Read More
Large Scale Construction – is a tower ever too tall?
As I have said in my previous posts the construction at the school that I am consulting in is severely lacking and doesn't allow for much differentiation or progression. I am in the process of remedying that but in the mean time one of our parents donated a load of flat pack boxes that were perfect for a bit of large scale work. I have always been bemused by the signs that I see in settings that say construction can only be built to shoulder height – Why? So many opportunities are being missed if we put restrictions like that on children. If you are really going to learn some fundamental laws of physics, it is difficult to do with … Read More
Reduce, Re-use, Recycle!
In the spirit of recycling ( and becaue the setting I am working in has limited resources and funding) today I have been mostly making transparent funnels out of Diet Coke bottles! Here are said bottles before… and after… I just chopped the bottom of with a pair of scissors! Not rocket science, I know! and here they are in use… This was a lovley activity with one of my TA's where she was getting the children to wash ducks! As you can see they clearly loved it. Al's diner produced an oat, raisin and sunflower seed chewy cookie which were great! Making biscuits was a direct request from the children so we were fulfilling … Read More
IKEA anyone?
Found myself in IKEA again today, trying to do classroom refurbishment on a budget. What is difficult is trying not to make your classroom look like one of the 'show rooms'. Many will be tempted by the 'pop up' fabric buckets with the numbers 1 to 3 on them but STOP and ask yourself 'why?' Will it really lure them in to the PSRN area. The answer is 'no' because we all know the buggers won't come anywhere near the PSRN area even if there were fire-eaters in it! Dr Chris Pascal has done some very interesting writing about school environments and how we need to strike a balance between a 'learning' environment and a 'home' environment. We need to … Read More