Wow, we are now about to start the last half-term of your child's first year at school! 

Cook Class have had a fantastic first year at school, learning and growing with great enthusiasm!

We had great fun becoming 'Bug Detectives' on our school trip to Wellington Country Park. 

We had our own buckets, with a spoon and paintbrush to help us gently catch the mini-beasts we found. We learnt we had to look in dark, damp places, so we moved lots of logs and leaves to look underneath. We then looked closely at the bugs we had caught with magnifying glasses and tried to identify the ones we had found.

To end our mini-beast topic, we had a 'Brilliant Bug Ball' on World Bee Day 2025. We have a family in our class that keep their own bees in a beehive in their garden. W sent in a video of the beehive he has in his garden. The children enjoyed watching the video of the bees. W was a fountain of knowledge and taught us all lots of facts- the children also had lots of questions that they asked W and W could answer them all!

We also had an abandoned natural beehive to look at. There were slices from inside, where you could see the hexagonal pattern that the bees had made to store their nectar and make honey. We also had half of the rest of the nest, where you could see holes etc. of where the bees would fly in and out etc. and how they had made it into their home. The children were fascinated and enjoyed delicately passing it around to have a look.

During our Brilliant Bug Ball day we also learnt about nectar and pollen and their role and importance to bees, wildlife and us as humans! 

We had caterpillar races, climbed through a spider web and dug for worms in jelly! 

This half term we will continue our mini-beast learning as our class pet caterpillars arrive and we will learn about their life-cycle. 

We will have a special arrival that will lead us on to our new topic of learning, all about Dinosaurs! Please see the Summer 2 topic web and family learning attached to find out more. 

Mrs Garrett