Category Archives: Big Acorns – Years 1 & 2
Swinging in the trees
Our key worker children did a sterling job helping with the roof construction of the roundhouse on Monday, then our Year 1 children had great fun swinging from the trees on Tuesday!
Year 1 Forest School
Letter and Sounds resources for Year R and Year 1 children
From Monday 27th April, online phonics lessons are available from “Letters and Sounds for home and school”. Further details can be found below. The link to the resource is here.
A Celtic Roundhouse at Brook
Mr Rumbold is very excited to be supporting the pupils in building our very own Celtic Roundhouse in the forest school area at the top of our school field.
Roundhouses were the standard form of housing for Celtic tribes, and were built from the natural materials they had available to them, with the walls being either dry stone or a ring of support poles. Our Year 2 children have already started to construct our roundhouse using wooden poles, and other pupils are looking forward to contributing to the project.
Forestry work
Our Year 2 children carried out some forestry work today, clearing and chopping the branches that had fallen in the recent windy weather.
Forest School
This week the children have been lighting fires, experimenting with building bridges across the stream and, of course, toasting marshmallows!
Chinese New Year Activity Day
Last Friday all the children and adults at Brook celebrated Chinese New Year. Each class took part in a carousel of different activities including painting Chinese dragons and making lucky money envelopes, Chinese fans and dragon shadow puppets. When visiting Little Acorns class, children read the traditional Chinese tale of “The Dragon Painter” and created their own dragons using pencils, water colours, pastels and collage materials.
Year 2 Forest School
Our Year 2 children were measuring and comparing sizes of tree trunks today, using themselves as tape measures! Did you know that although trees grow at different rates depending on the climate and other conditions, you can calculate a rough estimate of a tree’s age from the girth of its trunk? Trees such as oak, ash, beech and sycamore increase in circumference by approximately 1.5–2.5cm per year depending on their location, so by measuring the trunk circumference and dividing by 1.5 or 2.5 you can get a good idea of age. This method is known as ‘Mitchell’s Rule’, named after a UK tree expert called Alan Mitchell.
Romans in Canterbury
The children in Big Acorns and Young Oaks enjoyed their trip to Canterbury Museum. The trip supported their learning about Roman technology and Roman life. As well as a tour of the museum, the children made their own Roman coin using a hammer! Also, budding Roman generals were able to fire mini catapults! The children also took part in a fun hand-on workshop, in which they took on the role of archaeologists investigating real artefacts from Roman Canterbury.