In our reception classes we have been very lucky this term. They have been observing the life cycle of a caterpillar first hand in our classroom! It has been exciting watching the caterpillars make cocoons around themselves and then turn into butterflies. All the children watched in amazement!  

We released them last Wednesday to set them off on a beautiful journey. 

​As part of the Thurrock Trailblazer initiative, East Tilbury Primary School are proud of adding art, design and technology, and creativity throughout our curriculum. Below are some of the imaginative lessons our school have taken part in across the key stages this term. 
 

As you can see, using a little imagination we can work the arts into many different lessons in various ways from English ‘design a god’ activities to historic art work and cultural imagery for RE plus much, much more.
 

​We have been getting messy and creative in art! We have been learning to experiment with tools and techniques, focussing on foam board printing. First, we learnt about printing and about the different types of printing that are used. Before creating our own stencil, we practised our sketching techniques and designed our very own Tudor house. Once our teacher had checked our designs, we started to use a pencil to draw them onto the foamboard, before pressing our pencil into the foamboard to create the stencil. After, we had created our stencil, it was time to print! We used a roller and ink to print onto our sketch books. These are our finished designs; we are very proud of them!

​We have started to learn more about adventure stories in English. On Monday we listened to the story Katie in London., which we all really enjoyed. After reading the story we have started to create and design our very own characters and settings. Next week, we will start to write our very own adventure stories. We cannot wait to share them with you!

In PSHE we have been learning about ways to safe at home. We looked at dangers in our homes that we need to be aware of such electrics, knives and sharp tools, certain chemicals, and medicines. We then completed a quiz and voted on which items are safe and unsafe.  

​In our recent English lessons, we have been looking at ancient myths.  The Ancient Egyptians had many fascinating gods, goddesses and origin stories.  By learning some of these we have been able to begin creating a bank of ideas to inspire our own creations of good and evil gods.  We are going to utilise these as we write an Egyptian themed myth of our own next week.
 
Through this week in Maths we have been advancing our knowledge of statistics by revisiting our knowledge of tally charts, pictograms, bar charts and line graphs.  This has included listening to some funky Numberock YouTube songs involving cats, creating tally charts about fantasy class pets, illustrating popular holiday destinations by bar charts and showing favourite subjects by pictograms.  It is fair to say that we have enjoyed exploring statistics in a range of engaging ways.
 
In our Foundation learning, we began making some canopic jars by using strips of newspaper, covered in PVA glue, wrapped around some repurposed plastic bottles.  We are going to be continuing to develop these next week.  In Science, we discussed the states of matter and considered the melting point of chocolate.  Who knew that science learning could look and smell so good?