This week has been STEM week in our academy. Being in EYFS much of our work every day supports children's skills in these areas but this week was a chance for everyone to engage in some STEM activities.

The week started off with Gingerbread men! The task was to design and make a boat that would enable the gingerbread man to safely cross the river without getting wet. The children were able to use paper, card, glue, sticky tape and anything else they could find in the junk modelling box. They quickly set to work modifying their designs as they went along. There was a great deal of talk amongst the children while they worked with children challenging each other on the design choices they were making. Once made, the boats took to the river (water tray) and set sail! Nearly all of the boats successfully made it across the river without getting the gingerbread man wet. The highlight of the activity for many children was eating the gingerbread man at the end! 

   

     

On Tuesday the theme of food continued! Our core text for this term, "The Magic Train Ride", stopped in the Land of Cakes this week, so naturally, we had to make some cakes! We made chocolate krispie cakes and talked about the ingredients and the changes that happened whilst we made our cakes;

      

Later in the week the children used their experience to help them write instructions for how to make the cakes. We learnt about imperative verbs such as Mix, Pour, Stir, Melt, Break to give clear instructions to our readers.

On Tuesday afternoon the children were tasked with designing and making a bridge that would span a set distance using blocks taped to a small table. The bridge had to hold at least 3 toy goats. The children were put into teams and each team set to work using the variety of resources available in the classroom to create their bridge. Every bridge was different and the children worked very well together as a team. There were many discussions had during the afternoon within the teams and children were ensuring that they listened carefully to each others ideas before deciding what to make. It was lovely to see children negotiating and modifying their work following their coversations with each other.

On Wednesday afternoon the children were delighted to experience a science carousel, working their way around 4 classrooms, each hosting a different science activity as follows;

EYFS classroom - Making blow rockets

Year 1 classroom - Exploring static with balloons and different materials

Year 2 classroom - Exploring magnets

Year 3 classroom - Making a paper aeroplane and seeing how far it can travel

 

The children have also been doing lots of coding this week using different technology. We started the week with Beebots and learning the importance of using the X button to clear the previous instruction before adding a new one. The children were able to program Beebot to move around the sound mat to visit different letters. Some children decided to program Beebot to visit each letter of their name in turn! How clever!

   

To really test the children's skills Mrs Baldock introduced the whole class to Scratch Junior on the iPads. Wow!!! What amazing little coders we have in Penguin class! The children took to coding Scratch the cat so quickly and were soon discovering what each of the tiles did. They can't wait to continue investigating the app further over the coming weeks. In the meantime, here's a sample of some of their work.

You can view more photos in our photo gallery.