Leopards@taddy

Today, the Leopards became archaeologists. We took a trip down to the Bears sandpit and searched for artefacts that had been buried in the sand.  We found some Roman coins, lava stones, pictures and a map labeled Mount Vesuvius. The children used their findings to discuss and infer what our new book could be about 🌋

This afternoon, we explored the movements of tectonic plates and the boundaries created. We looked at Divergent and Convergent boundaries.   To help children u sweat and this concept, we re created the idea of tectonic plate movement.  First we placed a piece of polystyrene (representing the supercontinent Pangaea) in a bowl of water containing red paint (representing the magma). We then broke the polystyrene into pieces to represent the continents separating. We then looked at what happened with each plate boundary. First we moved thes pieces of polystyrene away from eachother. This allowed the magma to appear between the pieces ( representing the divergent boundaries). Next we pushed one plate u see the other to represent convergent boundaries where volcanoes are formed. And finally we bumped the pieces together to represent how earthquakes occur. 

 Last week, we started to look at the formation of fossils. We decided to do an experiment ourselves. We started with a slice of bread at the bottom to represent the sea bed and placed a few gummy sharks on top of this slice of bread to represent the dead sea life (fossils).  We then added a slice of rye bread to represent the sedimentary rock. We then placed another slice of break on top and stacked some heavy books on top to apply pressure. We left this for the rest of the week.  Today, it was time to extract and observe our fossils. We peeled away the layers we had created to see what had happened.  Once we had separated our layers of bread, we were able to see the impressions of our fossils.

 A Christingle is made from an orange, four small sticks, sweets and a candle and is used by Christians to celebrate Jesus as the Light of the World. Each part the the Christingle has an important meaning: the candle represents Jesus as the Light of the world, the four sticks represent the four seasons, the ribbon represents the blood of Jesus, the sweets represent the fruits of the Earth and the orange represents the world.  Today we had a special visit from Olwen, Sue and James from the village to support the children making their own Christingle ready for the Christingle service in church on Wednesday. The children had a lovely time!