Saving the trees of Kenya

We have started our 'Protect our Planet' topic this week, with a lovely book that tells us about the pioneering work of Wangari Maathai, who dedicated her life to environmental conservation.  We saw pictures of Kenya and were able to spot similarities and differences between our two countries and discussed the importance of trees.

Gustav Klimt's Tree of Life painting sparked conversation about the shapes used to represent a tree and the children made their own interpretations of this beautiful artwork.  We also started to learn the 'I'm an old oak tree' song.  In phonics, we have been rhyming and in maths we have been using money to buy things from the role play shop.  The marble run has also been very popular, with children using the larger balls and guttering to build a rather larger version!

We have also been learning about the necessity of 'hand washing' and why it is so important.  We had a look at pictures of different viruses and forms of bacteria and were shocked at how different they all looked.  We used glitter and paint to demonstrate the spread of germs before using soap to wash our hands clean.