Brand New Workshop for KS1

We know that KS1 teachers love having us in to do shows and workshops but with the new 2014 science curriculum so many of the things we get up to have moved to KS2 so we decided to make sure the younger scientists didn't miss out by creating a workshop especially for KS1 to complement the show All About You.

Usually when we go to a school with our shows we have the whole school in a number of age appropriate groups but then if there is any time left we will work with class sized groups in workshops. Often this is KS2 so we have added a special workshop for KS1 to our programme.

Our show All About You is such good fun and full of amazing facts about our incredible bodies. When we are working with the younger ones we focus on things that really matter to them such as what can I have in my lunchbag if we are a Healthy Eating school? 

Timmy our 3rd member of the team comes along to helps the volunteers make a lunch bag full of healthy goodies that are good to eat. We have sourced some amazingly realistic prop food so we we pack up our insulated bag for lunch so that we can have some tasty snacks that keep us healthy.
We explore our super senses with feely tubs and grot bags....as you can guess the older ones love going for the grot bags and putting their hands into disgusting goo or slimy snot!!

We take our huge mouth and have a good explore of how to clean our teeth and what all those nashers actually do. Then we actually get a couple of volunteers out to make home made toothpaste and test it against shop bought.

We use our blue cuddly cold virus to talk about keeping healthy and safe from colds and to show how easy it is for colds and other nasties to spread we give a whole class a cold. Helen has the most amazing glittery snot you have ever seen!!

For KS2 we offer tasty toothpaste or bath bombs as a class workshop  and we have decided to extend part of the show about senses and make it into a full workshop for KS1. We have been busy sewing feely bags ( little bags which you put you hand into and try to decide what is inside just by feeling). Helen has sourced strange objects to put inside....nothing too scary but things which feel amazing. 

We have some lovely shakers as sound makers and have an ingenious way to let everybody test their sense of smell with some strange odours!!

Everyone who has tried this new workshop has really enjoyed it so now it has a full place on our programme alongside All About You our show about being healthy. Teachers can now choose to have a workshop with KS1 about Super Senses, with lower KS2 making toothpaste or upper KS2  making bath bombs.

Being Healthy

We are looking forward to a busy week of school visits.
On Monday we will be in Great Sutton Ellesmere Port with Meadow Primary school for the start of their Healthy Schools Week.
We will be doing our All About You show for each Key stage.
So Timmy will be coming with us to help KS1 create a healthy lunch box

we will be exploring our feely tubs and trying to work out what is inside the sound eggs

Then with KS2 we will challenge a few brave volunteers to put their hands into the GROT BAGS and discover the grunge inside, find out why we need to wash see the amazing images up close and personal of our skin. We will discover just how much snot we produce when we have a cold and are those really skin cells shed?????

In the afternoon we will be working with year 4 making and testing home made toothpaste.
So on a sunny afternoon I was preparing two class sets of ceramic tiles ready for cleaning

Tripping the light fantastic

What a wonderful job we have!
On Thursday we travelled to Parochial Primary School Ashton-u-Lyne to deliver our show Inside the Rainbow which is all about light and colour.

We couldn't believe that it is almost a year since we were first there but some of the children remembered us - which was great!
In two sessions the whole school including the nursery were able to experience one of our favourite shows.
Picture the scene - you enter the school hall which is in darkness and at the front you can see so many twinkling, spinning and colour changing lights - it is like a mini Blackpool!

The youngest ones were so excited but incredibly well behaved and sat through the whole show riveted - some were very brave and came out to help us.

Starting in the dark we explored natural and man made lights, looking at shadows on the way and experiencing all the colours of the rainbow with the wonderful rainbow glasses.

We were dressed in black with EL lighting which is very flexible and can be twisted into lots of shapes so we we were wearing it around us.

For the older ones we found out about the vocabulary used in light, we explored chemical colours, bio and chemi-luminescence and Helen showed off her super light sabre

We heard all about Helen's dog Monty who was given a lovely new ball for Christmas but it was red and as dogs don't see red very well we all decided that for his birthday she should buy him a blue and yellow one which he will be able to see really well!
The show finished with Helen illuminating hidden messages on the walls with a UV torch.

A very sensory experience for everyone and a super day for us all.