Our new unit of inquiry for this term is 'Plants and Living things'. The learners explored the outdoor environment and collected a variety of plant materials to investigate. There was a lot of interest around the many seed pods collected and the neat rows of seeds that were revealed when the pods were opened.

We then looked at a variety of fruits and vegetables and after a discussion on each fruit the children all came to the conclusion that we would find seeds in all of our fruits except the banana. When the questions was asked 'How many seeds do you think might be in the paw paw or papaya?', there were answers ranging from 1 to 6. There were many wows as the papaya was cut and the hundreds of seeds inside were exposed.

The children made many comments on how fresh it all smelt when it was cut. Every last piece of fruit and vegetable was eaten with requests to buy fresh pear and cucumber.

During the week the learners listened to the story 'Jack and the Bean Stalk'. After listening to the story our friend Scklarky visited KB with some magic beans he claimed Jack gave him. The learners wanted to touch the magic beans so they were sent around the circle before we collected sand to plant them in.

There was great excitement when the learners returned to school the next day and found the magic beans had started to grow. It was decided to place a ribbon across the area to protect the magic plant until fully grown. Ocean helped position the red and white ribbon in place.

The learners then set about planting their own bean seed. The seeds were placed in a container of water overnight to help the seeds germinate quicker. We compared the size of the seeds that had been soaking overnight in water and a seed straight from the packet and noticed a difference in size. Everyone filled their plastic cup with soil before placing their seed into the soil. Now, we just need to wait and watch!

The learners all painted a still life painting of a vase of purple chrysanthemums with amazing results.

In Phonics, the children have been revisiting and consolidating the sounds they learned last term in order to confidently embark on the next stage of sounds. They have been learning sounds made up of two letters which we call ‘digraphs’ such as ‘sh’, ‘ch’ and ‘th’.

There was great excitement as we celebrated the Chinese New Year, the year of the Rooster. All the Chinese language learners demonstrated what they learnt about Chinese New Year in the forms of music, dance and drama. The learners also had the opportunity to experience a range of traditional Chinese games from Chinese painting to moving marbles from bowl to bowl with chop sticks. Then on Wednesday afternoon the finale with the Lion Dance.