World Book Day and Science Week – Reception

For World Book Day the children dressed up as their favourite character and brought their favourite book into school to read. They then did lots of activities about books. They wrote a sentence about a book, spoke about their favourite books and answered questions about them and drew the front cover of books.They also designed and created their own potato superhero after Stephen from Asda read the story ‘Supertato’.

Reception: Monkeys Class
For World Book Week and Science Week we read the book ‘Who Sank The Boat?’.
The children looked at :
Who the characters were in the story.
Where the story took place.
Predicting what would happen next.
Retelling the story.
We then looked at different types of boats – toy boats, pictures of boats and boats on the internet. We looked at the shape and design of the boats.
Then the children made different boats out of different materials to see if they would float.
They made boats out of plasticine, playdough, air dry light clay and foam. They adapted the shape and thickness and persevered to make them float. The play dough boats didn’t float, some managed to make the plasticine boats float but this was tricky but they found the air dry light clay and foam was the best material for floating.
They then had to see how many animals they could put in their boat before it sank like in the story. They looked at the size and shape of the animals and balancing them. The children enjoyed experimenting with this activity.

Then the children made different boats out of different junk modelling materials to see if they would float. They first spoke about what materials they were going to use and what they could use to fix the materials together. They made predictions if they thought their boat would sink or float, then tested it in the water. If it didn’t float they adapted their model. The children also made boats out of different construction-they particularly enjoyed using the lego.

They made boats out of paper with an adults help they folded the paper and then decorated them. They also made boats out of corks, they persevered to hold them together with elastic bands and then made their own sails. We then saw if they floated and if the wind blew the sails. We then constructed with drainpipes and stands channels for the boats to race down. The children enjoyed racing each other and working out which sized jug was best to use to push the boat down the drainpipes the fastest.

As part of Science week the Monkeys class were predicting and experimenting with different materials, constructing for purpose and floating and sinking.

Next children predicted from a range of objects that were made of different materials whether they would float or sink. They recorded on whiteboards their predictions and then tested whether the objects did float or sink.

Then the children made boats with their parents at home using the knowledge they had learnt and showed and spoke about their models to the class during ‘Show and Tell’.