Monday 26 June 2017

Chanukah - the Jewish festival of light 🕯🕎✡️

On Friday we had a Jewish visitor who came to talk to year 1 about a Jewish celebration called 'Chanukah' (pronounced Hanukkah). This festival takes place in December close to, or sometimes on, Christmas Day. Jewish people light a special candlestick called a 'Menorah' which has 8 candles and a larger helper candle in the middle, which it uses to light the other 8 candles. The number 8 is special because it represents how long the oil lasted in the miracle story told by Jewish people of the past, in their holy scroll, the 'Torah'. 

We also learnt they have a big party with their families including lots of tasty foods cooked in oil (such as donuts and pancakes) and they give each other gifts, 1 each day for 8 days. Usually the gifts include a toy called a 'dreidel' which is a spinning toy with instructions written in the Jewish language of 'Hebrew' on it. 

The children sat nicely and listened carefully to our visitor and we would like to thank her for giving up her time to share her information with us. 

 

 

Superstar of the week 🌟

Our superstar was chosen for improved maths work. Her confidence has soared and she no longer needs to rely on others for answers, she understands most of her work and has shown she can apply her knowledge in different situations. Good work 👍🏻

Thursday 15 June 2017

What do plants drink?

The children asked their own questions about plants and we decided to investigate the answer to 'What do plants drink?' 
 
We thought about feeding some plants some different types of drink and observing how it affected the plants' health.
 

These were the healthy plants before we started the experiment.

 

We fed each plant 10ml of liquid each day for a week to make it a fair test. We used orange juice, water, cola and milk. 

These were the results. The plants which were fed orange juice and milk had badly wilted. 

The water-fed plant was looking the healthiest but the most unexpected result was the cola-fed plant. It still looked quite healthy which we did not predict to happen at all. We thought the sugar would damage it straight away! 

Just goes to show that science is not always predictable! 😊

Superstar of the week 🌟

This weeks superstar was chosen for improved phonics and showing good progression since September. Well done! 👍🏻