This week the children have been creating story maps about the gingerbread man, from this they have created their own versions how the gingerbread man crossed the river “he could use a surf board” and “he could use a jet pack”. We turned these ideas into drawings and sentences remembering our capital letters, finger spaces, and full stops.
This week, Crew Wilkinson have been inspired by the charcoal works of Henry Moore and began practising using charcoal for artwork. We have been smudging, stippling, hatching and using a rubber to create lighter details like the light from a headlamp. This work will support us in creating our final art piece which will form the front of our lapbooks.
For our story in expedition, we decided to make our own little pigs. We used pink icing with some marshmallows and googly eyes.
we enjoyed eating these as much as we did making them!
Our new book for expedition is ‘The three little pigs’. The children have been reading the story and learning the sequencing. We have looked at the different types of materials the houses were made with and which is strong enough to withstand the big bad wolf!
Last half term the children focused on spreading and cutting different textures of food. We made jam sandwiches, fairy bread, fruit cutting and to link in with our expedition book, ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’, the children made bear faces with rice cakes. All the children enjoyed the new flavours.
Crew Wilkinson have been honing their geography skills by navigating maps to locate historic mines across the UK. They’ve been using compass directions—north, east, south, and west—alongside counties, regions, cities, and major roads to pinpoint sites. Their learning has also included key geographical terms, helping them build a deeper understanding of the UK’s landscape and the role mining played in its history. This navigation will aid us in creating our own map of key mines in the UK in our next Expedition lesson.
In Expedition, Crew Wilkinson have moved onto Case Study 2 focusing on being a geographer. We began by exploring maps, symbols and our local area. Using a key, we were able to identify our own school, local golf courses, roads, woodlands, places of worship and most importantly Bullcroft Colliery! These skills will support our understanding as we explore maps further. We will be identifying changes over time and locating previous mines across the UK! Great start Crew Wilkinson.
Crew Wilkinson deepened their understanding on the early conditions of the mine from the last lesson by exploring the dangers that people faced due to these conditions. To begin with, we looked at some artefacts that would have been used within the mine (helmet, gloves, pickaxe etc.) and discussed what these told us about working in a mine (e.g you could hit your head, get blisters on your hands, be injured by the pickaxe). We then worked in mini crews to create freeze frames of some mining situations that all involved a danger which helped us empathise with a miner’s plight. Can you guess what these are from our photos?
Finally, we got into the roles of miners and interviewers. We split into small groups and each group was given a role to play based on the experiences in the mine (ranging from young Victorian children in the mine to grown individuals who have worked in the mine their whole life and developed health conditions from the work). This further embedded the children’s understanding of empathy for the miners.
Crew Wilkinson took a close look at the mining industry, how it has changed over time and the reasons for changing. We started by piecing together a timeline of key events through mining history then began to look at these critically and reason why they might have happened. E.g. Why did the increase of steam trains require more coal? We then categorised these changes into political, social and technological to further embed the reasoning for change.
To hook us into our learning, we are going on STRIKE! Today, we have learnt all about the coal mine strikes and the reasonings as to why these took place. We were shocked to find out that 142,000 people actually went on strike when Margaret Thatcher tried to close 20 mines in 1984. Did you know that people who didn’t go on strike were called scabs?! Inspired by what we have learnt, we are planning our own strike! We have decided that school uniform should be a thing of the past! This afternoon, we have designed and created placards which we are going to use when we go on strike later in the week. Keep your eyes peeled – we may just march past your house!
