During our topic on mini-beasts, we read the story of The Bog Baby, a mythical creature who lived in a bog and who became sick when it was taken away from its habitat, even though the people who had caught it loved it very much and tried to look after it in their home.

The postman brought some caterpillars for us to look after. We looked closely every day to see if anything was happening.

We had to wait patiently, but after a while, the caterpillars formed cocoons around themselves

After a week or so, we were excited to see four beautiful butterflies in the butterfly house.

We remembered the story of the Bog Baby and realised that even though we loved them, we could not keep the butterflies for ourselves, but had to let them fly off to where they belonged in the wild. We took them over to the school’s forest area and let them go free.

We are now looking for bog babies in the school pond!

A couple of days ago staff completed some tidying of the wild life area around the pond. It looks so much better - well done!

This term, year 3 have been looking after the Bunyanites, who were forced to move from their home in Hawaii when natural disasters destroyed their houses, shops and schools. We have spent a lot of time learning about the different natural disasters, especially volcanoes and earthquakes, including what they are, why they are caused and where they are most likely to occur in the world.

We have then helped the Bunyanites prepare for a move back to Hawaii. In DT, we have been looking at the different types of bridges and then worked collaboratively to problem solve and construct our own bridges to help transport the Bunyanites home.

In our first lesson, we looked at the links involved in building bridges and so we used paperclips and attached them to pieces of cardboard. After this, we have then spent several lessons building our own bridges out of empty food containers and wrappers, before covering them in papier-mâché and painting them.

In Foundation Stage the children have been continuing their learning through play. 

They have been able to follow their own curiosities and investigations to develop their existing knowledge.

Willows had a great time at the Food and Farming day at Writtle college. We discovered how grain is planted, harvested and what it can be made into; what foods we can grow (tasting was popular!); what animals give us food (the sausages and bacon were very tasty!) and what machinery is used to grow grains.