We've had an exciting week of learning this week with a visit from an author, Chris Connaughton on Monday and our visit to Dippy on Tuesday.

Chris Connaughton is a story teller and author. He told the story of the Elves and the Shoemaker, encouraging the children to join in with lots of adjectives such as amazing, incredible, unbelievable, terrific, remarkable and beautiful. Characters from lots of other fairy stories were included and the children recognised them all. Chris told the story in a very visual way using lots of gestures and actions. All the chldren listened attentively enjoying the humour and action. 

On Tuesday we had our much anticipated trip to Dorset County Museum to visit Dippy. The whole school attended. We learnt that he was dug up in 1898 and copies of his bones were sent all over the world. London received a set of bones to have their very own Diplodocus.

Our first activity was to be palaeontologists and dig for fossils in sand using magnifying glasses and brushes to look closely at what we found. There were ammonites and bivalves, belemnites and sea urchins, ferns, crystals and even a sharks tooth.

Next we went to the fossil room to learn about the pliosaur and megalosaur who lived on our Jurassic coast about 200 million years ago. We had to find the skull of the pliosaur, discover what it ate (fish) and find some of its very sharp teeth. We found the megalosuars footprints and its teeth.

Finally we were able to spend time with Dippy and learnt more about this amazing creature. It is 26m long, weights 15 tonnes and had to eat the weight of a small child in plants every hour. When it was born it was the same size as a human baby (about 5kgs) but was an adult by 10 years and could live for 70 or 80 years. We all had a fantastic time and learnt lots!

In maths we have been using meter sticks to measure how long different dinosaurs were compared to us. The diplodocus would have stretched right into the carpark from the playground!

This afternoon in our Natural Leaning afternoon the children all made nests for dinosaurs to lay their eggs in thinking about making sure the eggs wouldn't roll out, that they were soft and comfortable and that they were well camouflaged.  The children had great fun doing this and added stones and beech nuts to represent the eggs.

Tomorrow morning at 9am we are having our Mothers Day service in St Mary's church, Winterbourne Abbas. Everyone is very welcome. In the afternoon we will be sharing stories with the children along with hot chocolate and biscuits kindly donated by the PTFA. Thank you! This is instead of the bedtime story session that was cancelled on Thursday due to the snow.

Next Tuesday will be our dressing up as a book character day. Remember to bring the book in to share.