Oh dear! The dinosaurs have escaped! When we arrived at school on Friday morning, there was a huge hole in the dinosaur trap we’d built last week and there were glittery footprints all over the table. The dinosaurs had escaped! We searched around the classroom but there was no sign of them anywhere. We checked outside and in Form 1 too, but no luck. The children thought the dinosaurs were probably hiding somewhere around school so they had the fantastic idea that we could make some pretend fire to put around the school. They thought the dinosaurs would think it was real fire and be so scared of burning their bottoms, like the Big Bad Wolf, that they would come home to Transition. We also made some posters with warning messages so our friends and teachers could help us look too. When they were finished, we set off around Russell House to make sure everyone knew what had happened!

When we arrived at school on Monday, we couldn’t find the dinosaurs anywhere! Where had they gone? The children suggested we might need to make some more posters, but how could we make sure we’d checked everywhere? A map! We worked hard to create maps of the school and local area, thinking carefully about the different places the dinosaurs could have gone. It was lovely to see the children looking out of the windows to work out where we needed to draw each feature on our maps. Some of the children even added their homes onto the map, I hope the dinosaurs don’t end up there!

It was nearly time to set off on our exploration, but there was just one thing missing… binoculars! The children showed fantastic concentration and problem solving as they explored different ways of joining materials to build their own binoculars or telescopes. I loved the variety of decorations used, and once we were done, we collected our maps and set off on our hunt. We searched high and low looking for those dinosaurs, but we couldn’t find them anywhere until we noticed something peculiar in the corner of the Paddock. We decided to have a closer look, and there they were! Digging! The dinosaurs were doing their own excavation and they had found dinosaur fossils buried underneath Russell House! We gathered them up carefully and brought the dinosaurs and the bones back to the classroom for a closer look. 

The following day we learned all about fossils and excavation and we even had a go ourselves. The children loved using the brushes to clean off the fossils and they were very intrigued by how much each one weighed, comparing them using the weighing scales. Some of our fossils were still trapped in the mud and needed excavating. The children worked together, experimenting with different tools to find different ways to dig them up, and we found that the spoons and clay tools worked the best.

Continuing our dinosaur theme, we used dried pasta to create our own dinosaur skeleton pictures, working out where the bones should go. The children made some fantastic pictures, some even had three heads! We also practised our fine motor skills as we assembled our dinosaur robots, carefully screwing and unscrewing the different features using our screwdrivers. These were very popular with the children, and although they were a bit tricky, Transition did not give up! 

We also celebrated Remembrance Day this week. We explored some beautiful poppy pictures together, and we began to consider why we wear poppies and why it is important to take two minutes of silence. The children were excellent at recalling why we wear our poppies and enjoyed creating their own, using craft materials, paint or play-dough. At 11 O’clock, the Pre-Prep came together to remember. All of the children showed fantastic respect and sat absolutely silently for two minutes. It was a lovely chance for reflection in a busy school term!