Life Cycles and some simple homeed science

This week and next week our learning theme is 'Life Cycles'; in order to cover all that we want to get through, I have made this week far more structured.  How has this worked, I hear you ask?  Well, firstly I am now totally knackered (as normally I do put things off a bit so I can go sit down and knit) but this week I have focused 100% on the children and it's taken a lot of energy! Secondly, I am totally behind on my own work as that also often gets priority, BUT we have done loads, and I've enjoyed it - I think the children have too!

As the girls are older I wanted to get them to create thier own projects; and what is the best way to engage with teenage girls?  EMAIL.  I emailed them links to websites and asked them to complete their projects!  Excellent use of technology, and Sophie has now created an excellent Power Point presentation (it sings and dances and speaks too!) and Lily is still mulling over hers.

I found some great websites for KS2, including this interactive one about plant reproduction (a little young for the girls but they liked playing the games!) and then I very kindly let them take apart one of my daffodils.

Following the book....

We are working on three projects; Seed Sowing, Seed Sprouting and Growing Bacteria.  The children were asked to divide a piece of paper into three and to predict what they think the outcomes will be; what I loved most was the they all chose a different way to divide their sheets (just a small thing but interesting I thought).  The girls were totally freaked out about growing Bacteria (which is currently cultivating in a warm cupboard!)

Making their predictions

Noah choose a 'Mercedes' design to split his page!

Sowing Seeds

Seeds ready!

Preparing the shoots

Petri dishes to cultivate bacteria.... yum!

 We will be keeping a diary and will update the blog on our findings!  If you want to copy what we did, these are the books we used:



I pre-ordered the resources from Amazon and have a few other things lined up to; great books and very easy to use!

angela xx