This week we used Hansel and Gretel as our drawing club book.  We had lots of fun getting messages from the witch, writing secret codes to Hansel and Gretel, making potions and making sweets for the house.  We also turned our outside area into a valentines day cafe.  In maths we have been learning about length and height and we used different things around the room to measure.  We finished the week by taking a trip to see the lambs.

This week we came in to a surprise, an emperor penguin had been in our classroom! She left us a note saying she was looking for her egg but couldn't find it.  We wrote lots of letters back, letting the penguin know the egg had hatched and that the chick was safe.  The next day, disaster struck, the chick escaped and had hopped off around the school.  We made some great missing posters and luckily, the chick was found in the office and returned safely to hedgehogs class.  The mummy penguin returned that night to take the chick home.  We leant about the life cycle of a penguin and compared them to the human life cycles we had learnt about this term.

This week we celebrated Chinese New Year.  We discovered where China is in the world and the history behind it.  We found out about the different ways it is celebrated and we tried some of these celebrations ourselves.  We made some lanterns, tasted food, made a dragon for a dragon dance and even made our own Chinese shadow puppet theatre.

This week we found some letterboxes in our classroom so we began to write letters to Mop and seeing if he wrote back (which he did!)

We learnt more about the Polar Regions and looked at the Northern and Southern lights and painted pictures.  We went on a Polar adventure and wrote postcards to our families to tell them what we had done.  We had a parcel arrive and inside the parcel was an egg! We made nests for the egg and are excited to find out if it hatches!  We finished the week by finding out about the Emperor penguin and also made habitats for different polar animals.

This week, alongside out Antarctic adventures, we have begun learning about growing.  Lots of babies have arrived in our classroom and we have been thinking about what they need.  We had a visit from some of our younger siblings and learnt about what they need at different ages.  We have been sorting through different clothes, toys and food and drink items and thinking about whether they would be for a baby, toddler or child.  We then tried to match up pictures of our friends now, with their baby and toddler photos and talked about how they had changed.

We have been transported to the Antarctic! We have an igloo and snow has appeared in our classroom.  The weather has been very cold and icy too so we have been able to explore the ice and begin learning about animals that live in the Polar regions.