'Once upon a very lovely long time ago there was nothing.'  So the Story of Everything  by Neal Layton begins which we are featuring this week to help us learn about the universe and the evolution of life on Earth.
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'No space, no planets, no people, no me no you, no nothing...' 

The children went off script and made their own suggestions.

'No sand.'
'No seas.'
'No toys.' 
'No food.' 
'No dinosaurs.' 
'No toilets.' 
'No life jackets.' 
'No animals.'
'No yes' 
'No no.' 
'No nothing!'  We arrived full circle. 

And then all of a sudden there was a BIG BANG!! 

Chapter 2: The Planets, next week! 

Guess what we are celebrating this week?! 

We have been on a magical far away journey to China! Lucky us!  
We have met dragons along the way, enjoyed discovering the joys of red envelopes full of money (or not!), and been taught by one of our lovely parents how to sing a Happy New Year song in mandarin. She made it seem so easy...

The children have lots to say about the rat who cheated his way to first place in the story of the Great Race about the order of animals in the Chinese Zodiac. ‘Clever rat!’ ‘Smart rat!’ ‘Naughty rat!’,  ‘ Cheeky rat!’ and ‘ Poor cat!’ who got  pushed into the water.  Some cats have no luck! 

The snow came down, there was a blizzard and penguins appeared! 

We looked at the globe and identified the Arctic in the northern hemisphere  and Antarctica in the southern hemisphere. 
'Why don't the penguins fall off the bottom of the earth?' one girl asked as we placed a penguin in Antarctica. 
An interesting debate about gravity ensued. We all concluded we were glad that the earth is a big magnet!

This is what the display board looked like at the start of the morning. Waiting for the children to decorate with snowflakes, mountains and winter wildlife.. 

One boy asked me; ' Fawzia why are we doing a Christmas picture when Christmas is finished?'
'Because it's a winter scene.'
'But it looks like a Christmas scene.' 
'Yes it does,  but it's a winter scene as we are now in winter. January, February and a bit of March is winter.' 
Pause for thought. 
'Is that okay with you?' I ask. 
'Is it really winter now?'
'It really is.' 
Another pause. 
'Alright then.'

Happy New Year! Hope 2017 brings happiness, enjoyment and laughter! 

We are looking forward to this first term of 2017!  Here is a selection of books to go with our topic of ‘The Story of the Universe and Everything!’ We are looking forward to getting creative with a winter display, celebrating Chinese New Year, making our own ‘history of time’ books and getting messy with papier-mache making our own planets! 

We will keep you posted..