The children in Nursery love their Forest sessions – a big thank you to the parents who are able to attend and make the sessions so successful.

On Monday Class 2 had a visitor. Chris from SMJ falconary brought in Ollie the Owl. We found out lots of interesting information. Did you know that owls have talons which are cylindrical so they can easily pick up their prey e.g. mice. We were all given the opportunity to hold the owl and then we were lucky enough to see it fly across the classroom. Can you tell me any information you remember from Ollie’s visit?

In Class 2 some of us kept forgetting to bring our book bags, diaries, homework and to change our reading books. The teachers in Class 2 decided that the children who brought in their book bags and diaries every day, handed their homework in and changed the home reading book twice in a week deserved a little treat. So every Friday if you do all of these things you get to have a chat, some juice and a biscuit while everyone else does other things. Last Friday Jessica, Moniba, Hannah H, Safia and Ransha received the treat. I wonder if there will be more children next week.

Our ambassadors have been working very hard over the past few months in preparation for guiding schools around the Anne Frank Exhibition at the Yorkshire Craft Centre. The first task they had to do was  learn about Anne Frank and the Holocaust in World War II. They then learnt about issues that arise in the world today such as; racism, discrimination, and children at war.

On Tuesday 7th and Wednesday 8th May our ambassadors worked alongside the ambassadors from Hanson, guiding Primary schools and a group of students from Bradford College, around the exhibition. They were very nervous to begin with but after the first guiding session they really got into it! By the end of the two days all of the ambassadors were much more confident and really pleased and proud of themselves, they had also become very good friends with the ambassadors from Hanson which was really nice to see!

I would like to say a huge well done to Lewis, Chantelle, Fawad and Summer, you were all amazing!

Two groups of children went down to Fagley woods to play games and build dens.

On our way to the woods we identified plants and looked for signs of spring; we found willow, daffodils, dandelions, nettles, daisies, sticky weed, forsythia and celandine.  Can you recognise more plants than the Nursery children?

When we got to the woods we played a fantastic game of 1,2,3 where are you?

Then we used string and a tarpaulin to make a shelter big enough for all of us to eat our snack in.

Our next challenge was to build a small house for a bear, the children used lots of sticks and had to work hard to make the shelters just the right size.

Then after a bit of tree and rock climbing it was time to pack up and head back to Nursery.

A big thank you to Mrs Verity and all the mums who came with us.

Scotts Miracle-Gro create an exhibition garden each year at the Chelsea Flower Show with the help of schools from across the country. This year, to commemorate 100 years of the Chelsea Flower Show, Miracle-Gro asked schools to grow crops associated with particular periods in history. We were selected to grow crops for the 1940s gardens. Gardening in the 1940s was deeply affected by the impact of World War II (importing food from abroad became very difficult). As part of the ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign, householders were encouraged to grow vegetables in their gardens. Potatoes, beans and carrots were popular crops.

Post World War II was a time of austerity and making do. To capture this spirit, we decided to use a discarded chicken feeder and an old tin bath as planters for our crops.

We chose to plant broad beans in our planters and the particular variety we selected was Bunyard’s Exhibition. This variety of broad bean has been around for over a hundred years and is popular with gardeners as it is reliable and produces a good yield.
We also chose to plant forget-me-nots to symbolize remembrance of those who were imprisoned or lost their lives in the war.

Once our crops had been planted, we took photos and submitted them to Miracle-Gro for judging. Only the best entries would be chosen to be exhibited at the show.

Today, we received the wonderful news that our chicken feeder planter had made the cut! It will be collected next week for transportation down to the show.

In the meantime, Miracle-Gro have asked that we make some labels for our planter so that show-goers can see which school the planter is from. If you would like to submit you design for the planter label you will need to follow these rules:

> The label should be no larger than A5 (the size of a normal piece of paper folded in half).
> The label should include the name of the school

You could also include the name of the crops we have grown (broad beans, and forget-me nots) and some illustrations of garden related things (flowers, butterflies, bees etc.) The label does not have to made of paper. It could be wood, slate, clay or anything else as long as it is smaller than an A5 piece of paper.

Your designs need to be returned to Miss Worthington by Friday May 3rd.
If you have any questons you can come and ask me or leave your questions in the comments box below this post.

……the green shoots could just be seen…………