Spring 2 2026

This half term we'll be answering the question: How does Antarctica compare to the UK? We began our learning by listing what we already thought we knew about Antarctica, there were some things we agreed on (Antarctica is very cold) but other things we weren't sure about (what animals we might find there). The first thing we learnt about Antarctica is that it is a continent, not a country, and is located at the very bottom of the earth. We used maps and a globe to talk about where Antarctica is and why this might mean it is so cold there all of the time. We learnt that an invisible line called the equator splits the earth into two halves, the equator is the hottest place on earth and as you move further away from it the weather gets much colder, which is why Antarctica is freezing cold - it is the furthest continent from the equator!

Antarctica has a harsh, cold, windy environment where not many plants grow so only certain animals can live there. One of the few animals that live on Antarctica are penguins, in particular we've been learning about emperor penguins, which are the tallest penguins in the world (they grow even taller than some of us!). We've been reading a story called The Emperor's Egg, all about how emperor penguins look after their eggs in the cold until the egg can hatch. We discovered that it is the daddy penguins who look after the egg and keep it warm for two whole months while the mummy penguins go in search for food, the daddy penguins have to keep the egg on top of their feet and tucked under their bellies so it doesn't get cold. It's amazing how these animals are able to survive in such freezing temperatures, as we discovered that Antarctica is not a place where many other animals live, in fact even people do not live on Antarctica permanently.

To help us compare the UK to Antarctica we will also be tracking the weather of both places each day. This will give us a daily account of how different it would be for us to be in Antarctica.

English

As mentioned above, our book this half term is The Emperor's Egg. For our English we've been doing lots of writing about emperor penguins, including the incredible facts we've discovered about them from our story. We've been making our writing about penguins interesting by lengthening our sentences with conjunctions and adding in lots of adjectives, including lots of adjectives to describe the cold.

Science

This half term we've been continuing our learning all about materials in our science lessons. In our first lesson we looked at the word opaque, which means something you cannot see through. We're continuing to think about why certain materials have certain properties and what wouldn't be a good material to use for different items e.g. we decided that having opaque glasses would be a bad choice because glasses need to be seen through.