What an end to a successful term! We have now finished our learning on the Shang Dynasty, natural disasters, peace in Christianity, electricity, seasons in Spanish, shading and contrasting watercolours in Art and creating products in DT. Wow. 

This week, we took part in a cricket festival with everyone in our phase. Starling A won the tournament! Well done us!

Last week, our class were busy planting trees at Forster Memorial Park. We planted a total of 142 trees of different species. Go down there one day and check it out. 

Today, we are sending off our persuasive letters to people within our community that might be able to help us with art and sports equipment, books or plants and flowers. Let’s see if we get letters back in Summer term.

Have a wonderful Easter break!

As part of our History topic, Year 5 have been learning all about the Mysterious Mayan’s! We had a look at Mayan weaving in DT as we explored different patterns and materials. We learnt that for Mayan people, weaving represents a tie to the past and to their ancient traditions. Mayan women used traditional methods such cotton, wool and silk as well as using natural dyes. The children had a go at designing their own pattern and then creating it using the ‘cardboard circle weaving’ technique. They worked incredibly hard and understood the hard labour this ancient civilization had to take part in, in order to earn a living.

Here are some wonderful examples of the children’s work.

The children, in Hummingbird class @FP, have been exploring science this week and have completed an experiment with paper flowers, learnt about fire during fabulous flames, had a fire brigade visit and planted during our go green day.

At Oakbridge Nursery – we went ‘quackery’ for ducks. 

We’ve been learning about life cycles, so what better way to learn than to see it happen in our classroom. 

On Monday morning we had a visitor who delivered us some eggs. On Tuesday we had one duckling, on Wednesday we had two ducklings, on Thursday we had three ducklings… our last duckling was a little tired so didn’t hatch until the weekend. All the children took it in turns to hold the ducklings every day, we made sure that they had water and food, the ducklings even went swimming in our water tray.

The children have had the best experience looking after our ducklings, they have now gone back to the farm to find their mummy & daddy ducks. 

In Year 4, Chaffinch class @FP, the children took part in a science work shop this week. The scientist came into school and showed the children some interesting experiements. She talked to them about atoms, electrons and neutrons! They also got to make their own slime.

Did you know:

Everything in the universe is made up of atoms. They are the basic building blocks of all types of matter in the universe.

Atoms are incredibly small, measuring one-tenth of a billionth of a metre across. They are so small that you can’t see them even under a powerful microscope. Because they are so small, it takes trillions of atoms to make up anything, for example, there are 7 billion billion billion atoms in your body.

Swan and Flamingo @FP have been learning about L.S Lowry and have been exploring line and shape to recreate some of his artwork.

We have also been writing our own picture books. We were inspired by ‘Traction Man’ by Mini Grey and we wrote a story about a toy going on an exciting adventure around the house.

Our stories are in our classroom libraries for us to read together. (Writing By Brensi and Elyon)

This week in Dove class @FP we have been learning about an artist called Ramona Pintea. She creates amazing colourful art and uses crowns a lot in her work. We are Kings and Queens so made our own versions. 

In our maths lessons we have been learning to count in 10s. We have been using dienes to partition numbers. Ask us how many tens and ones in numbers to 50 and we will be able to answer you! Also help us to practise our ten times table at home. 

In English we have been reading the book ‘The Queen’s Knickers’ by Nicholas Allan. We have been busy making missing posters and thank you cards.

The children have had a great time today dressing up as their favourite book characters for World Book Day.  Check out some of their photos here:

In Nightingale class @FP, we have had a great start to the term so far. In maths we are looking at fractions and have been matching pictures to unit fractions. We have also been getting creative and making rainbow paintings and doing a lot of construction with cardboard and the wooden giant Jenga bricks – Alex constructed his own chair. We have also had a great time welcoming our new friend Kaiden who has settled in well and made some friends already. 

Thank you so much to the author Banji Alexander, for coming along to Forster Park and inspiring our children during their World Book Week.