Week beginning 19th January 2026

The Investigation Hub at Sidney Grove

Characteristics of Effective Learning

This week we continued exploring gloop, after it caused so much curiosity among the children last week. To link with our learning about ice and melting, we froze the gloop in trays to make little “gloop ice cubes,” then investigated what happened as they melted. There was lots of excitement!

The first challenge was working out how to get the frozen gloop out of the trays. The children shared lots of ideas:

“We should smash it!” “Let’s pour on warm water!” “It’s working!”

Once the cubes were free, the children were eager to get hands-on and compare the experience with similar things they’ve tried before—experimenting, observing, and making connections independently ‘it’s like ice cubes!’ ‘Is it ice-cream?’ “It’s like sticky, sticky chewing gum!”

Parents as Partners

This week we have explored the story ‘The Three Little Pigs’ and have revisited the story several times over the week, encouraging the children to join in with repeated refrains such as ‘NOT by the hairs on my chinny, chin, chin!’ It was interesting when sharing the story that the children were already aware of alternative versions of the same text and so we had lots of fun thinking of different ways to scare the Wolf off:

‘He can huff and puff his way to space!’ ‘He falls into the pot of water and burns his bottom!’

In small group time the children explored a variety of materials and thought carefully about choosing resources to build a ‘strong’ house which would not blow away in the wind. They combined materials and added in other resources such as masking tape to ensure their houses did not blow away! We even used a handheld fan for a ‘wind test’ and their houses were incredibly sturdy!

‘It’s strong…I put loads of tape!’ ‘I stuck it here and I stuck it onto the table!’ ‘It’s so strong! I used paper and put a door on the front!’

In small group time we also made fruit smoothies for Mr Wolf, so that he would not eat the Three Little Pigs. The children helped to chop fruit using child safe knives and practising a safe technique to cut. Some of the children shared their experiences of making smoothies at home “you cut it up and put it in the thing that mixes it! It cuts it and makes a drink!”

We shared lots of discussion about healthy eating and the children had ideas for what to add next time “The next time I will put berries in!” “If you make some porridge you can put berries on! Mr Wolf will like that!”

Outdoors Learning

Outside in their plan do review sessions the children have been collecting leaves and sticks to make homes for spiders. They have been problem solving to find ways to pull the crate along, first using wool and then realising it was not strong enough so switching to a bungee rope. The children have also been interested in using the rope to walk along in different ways, which created lots of opportunities for teamwork, balance and coordination.

Please find the link to the story our school leavers have shared together in their PSED session together this week…

We hope you enjoy the weekend and we cannot wait to hear what you have been doing next week! Best wishes, the Investigation Hub Team 🙂