Exploration and adventure

There are lots of ways to integrate an exploration theme into your classroom. Children often enjoy learning about the adventures of specific great explorers, such as Captain Robert Falcon Scott , but there’s also a great deal of imaginative scope to be found in using a more generalised exploration theme as a starting point to get children thinking about the world around them.

1. Explorations

Read the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt by Michel Rosen.

• In a large space, set up an explorer’s course for children to follow, which will require them to ‘climb over’, ‘slide under’, ‘tunnel through’, or ‘go round’ a variety of different objects.
• Create a route of arrows or instructions to follow around your setting. Set up ‘Base Camps’ at different points, where children need to tick their names to show they have passed each point.
• On arrival at the finish point, get the children to use the activity sheet to design their own flag. Explain that many adventurers erect a flag of their country to claim their achievement. For example, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin raised the ‘Stars and Stripes’ American flag on the moon when they landed there.
• Use the questions on the sheet to spark ideas on colour and content. You can also use the Flags of the world poster to inspire the children.
• The flags can be cut out and displayed once completed.
• This is also a good opportunity to introduce the idea of symmetry to the children. Show them your own symmetrical flag design and prove that it is symmetrical by folding the flag in half and pointing out that it is the same on both sides.