Today has been World Book Day and at Merry Hill a love of reading is at the core of everything we do, so today was especially exciting for us. We began the day with our parents visiting us for a morning read, what fun it was sharing some of our favourite books with our parents!
Then, we headed into World Book Day assembly and were introduced to the whole schools focus book: Here We Are, by Oliver Jeffers. The teachers shared the text with us, telling us the story!
After that we had a day packed with Here We Are activities where we dived into the world of Oliver Jeffers. Our activities covered a range of topics including PSHE, Science, Literacy and Art in our learning.
In Literacy, we learnt even more about Oliver Jeffers by being enquirers. Our surprise teacher was Miss Stringer and she placed clues around the room for us to uncover some interesting facts about Oliver Jeffers. Using those facts we completed a fact file booklet all about the author. It was so exciting to find out more about him, for example he wrote the book Here We Are because he was inspired by his son! Take a look at some of our learning below:
In PSHE with Miss Finch, we played the swap game where we had to swap places with a friend if they had a similar opinion, interest or idea. Then we watched a video about how animals are adapting to our world due to climate change. At Merry Hill, we follow the golden rules so, we made our own golden rules for how to look after earth. We came up with lots of ideas.
In Science with Miss Honnor, we learnt about endangered animals. We found out what the words ‘species’ and ‘endangered’ mean and talked about when an animal is classified as endangered. We thought about some of the different reasons why animals might be endangered. We learnt that habitat loss can endanger animals and that it can happen naturally, such as from wildfires and volcanic eruptions. We also thought about the effects humans can have on habitat loss when they cut down trees to make space for roads, homes and new towns. We found out that siberian tigers are endangered and that orangutans, hawksbill turtles and bumble bees are critically endangered. We then went up to the forest to make habitats for some of these animals that we had learned about.
In Art with Miss Bates, we talked about planets in our solar system and made art for a new display in the dining hall. We took inspiration from Oliver Jeffers’ book ‘Here We Are’ to show our place in the solar system. We talked about all the different stars you can find in space: shooting stars, comets, black holes and practiced drawing them on our whiteboards. We have also been drawing and colouring, showing off our cutting skills and mixing chalks and different powder paints to imitate Oliver Jeffers’s art.
