Being Healthy themed week 2 July
Our next whole school themed week, based around Being Healthy, will be taking place from Monday 2 July 2018. Our key message will be how to be healthy; both physically and emotionally. A variety of events and visitors are planned to help us deliver this key aspect of education. We are looking forward to a very busy, healthy week!
Our School Council have been considering ways to support our school charity, Make-A-Wish, and as skipping has been taking off at school, we will be running a beat your personal best skipping challenge. On Friday 6 July, this will culminate in a Make-A-Wish day with all children invited to wear blue and bring a £1 donation to support our charity while trying to beat our personal bests.
There are also some opportunities for parents and carers to get involved in the week.
Monday 02 July 3:15pm – 4:15pm Health fair
Our Health and Sports Fair in the hall is to promote health and sport opportunities and services in the local area.
Come along with your child/children after-school to find out more.
Tuesday 03 July Sports day Key Stage 2 9:30am Reception/Key Stage 2 1:30pm
You are welcome to come along to support our annual sports day at Roundhegians RUFC. We require adults to help walk the children to Roundhegians so please contact the office if you can help with this.
Thursday 05 July 2:30pm – 3:15pm d:side drug education parent information session
Dave Hill from d:side, a health education provider, will be running an information session about drug education following his sessions with all classes during our themed week. Parents and carers from all year groups are welcome to attend. Please contact the office if you would like to reserve a place.
Following our recent walk to school week and the Big Pedal scooter and bike week, this themed week is a good opportunity to continue to think about healthy, active ways to travel to school. We will be encouraging children to use a sustainable method of transport, maybe parking further away from school, scooting, biking or walking to school.
Finally, can you help? Does your job involve an aspect of health? If you are able to support our Being Healthy themed week by coming into school, please contact your child’s class teacher directly or the office to arrange this.
Thank you for your support to keep Moortown a happy and healthy school.
Sports day 2018
This year’s sports day will take place, during our Being Healthy themed week, on Tuesday 03 July 2018, at Roundhegians Rugby Club.
Key Stage 2 events will take place at 9.30am and Reception and Key Stage 1 at 1.30pm. Children will be walking to the field, escorted by adults. We will require additional adult helpers so please let the office know if you can help with this.
If weather conditions mean we have to change the date, the reserve date is Tuesday 17 July.
The format of this year’s event will be competitive races and field events with children having the opportunity to compete for medals. However, all children will be rewarded for taking part.
Our teams will be: green, blue, white and red. If possible, please could your child wear a t-shirt to wear to match their team colour. Pupils may wear PE kit for the whole day.
As we are off site, please could you provide your child with a carrier bag to sit on. If you are coming to spectate, you are welcome to bring rugs or chairs to sit on.
Please could you ensure your child has their water bottle and a cap/hat at school; it would also be useful if you could apply sun cream before your child comes to school.
Normal lunch time and end of school collection arrangements will still apply on this day.
In the event of bad weather, updates will be sent via Twitter and posted on the website.
Your support is valued to make the event memorable and we hope you are able to come and cheer your child on at sports day.
Sacred Scarabs
Studying Ancient Egypt is proving to be a very fascinating and exciting topic. Today, we looked closely at Scarab beetles and why they were sacred to the Egyptians.
The ancient Egyptians used symbols in their art and religion. One symbol was that of the common scarab bug, a beetle found all over ancient Egypt. The scarab bug symbolized the restoration of life.
The scarab was a popular design for good luck charms, for seals used to stamp documents, and for jewellery made from clay or precious gems.
The rich colors used in the scarab design had meaning.
Red signified the god, Ra. Touches of yellow were used to symbolize the sun and the desert. Blue symbolized the Nile and green was the symbol for growth.
Why do scarab beetles push around balls of dung?
When a scarab beetle decides to be a parent, they lay their eggs inside some animal dung. The beetle then moulds the dung into a neat little ball. The ball that contains their eggs can be easily rolled around. That way they can take their unhatched babies with them wherever they go. It’s actually pretty clever.
Why did scarab beetles become sacred?
When the eggs hatch, tiny babies run out of the ball. To anyone watching, it looks like the babies magically appear out of nowhere. Because of this, the scarab beetle was believed to have magic powers. The beetle symbolized creation, life, and even rebirth. It was associated with the creation god Atum.
After the children had learnt about these precious creatures, work began on making their own. Take a look at the beetles so far. They will be painted and decorated next week.
Train like a ninja
Change4Life and Star Wars have joined forces to help get more children active with an exciting new Train Like A Jedi programme. The video, featuring double Olympic gold taekwondo champion, Jade Jones, will demonstrate a series of 12 moves that will help children master the ways of the Jedi.
This resource is a great way for children to get active and to contribute to the recommended daily 60 minutes of physical activity (30 minutes during the school day). We can’t wait to try out this video as one of our daily brain breaks.
Why not have a go at home to try and master some of the Jedi moves?
Tennis for free
A community sports charity is offering free tennis coaching every Saturday at Cross Flats Park. These are fun sessions for all abilities.
Cycling events
Recently, some of our Key Stage 2 children enjoyed taking part in the Brownlee triathlon at John Smeaton Leisure Centre. It is always one of the most popular events on our competition calendar.
This weekend, it is the real thing and the World Triathlon Series returns to Leeds. Starting locally at Roundhay Park, this is a perfect chance to see the athletes as they head to the city centre.
There is also a Let’s Ride pop up ride at the Brownlee Centre on Sunday.
Whether you want to ride for fun or fitness, the free monthly pop-up events gives you the chance to ride a traffic-free cycle circuit as many times as you want, at a pace that suits you.
The event is open to all ages and abilities and the circuit is easy to ride, with volunteers on hand throughout, ensuring peace of mind and safety for all cyclists.
What time is it?
By the end of Year 4, children are expected to be able to;
read, write and convert time between analogue and digital 12- and 24-hour clocks
solve problems involving converting from hours to minutes; minutes to seconds; years to months; weeks to days.
The class have been working hard to grasp the concept of time. To aid understanding, we have used lots of time related resources.
Children need hands on and visual hooks to understand new concepts in Maths. Resources play a very important role and provide the children a ‘window’ in, to make sense of the problem at hand by touching them, playing with them, exploring the patterns and relationships which can make a huge difference between understanding for depth or just for procedure.
“Playing a time game has helped me to understand how to convert to digital.”
Question your child about time.
How many days in a fortnight?
True or false? There are seven months in the year that have 31 days?
A school day lasts for 6 hours and 35 minutes. How long is this in just minutes?
What is the difference between am and pm?
How many years are there in 9 decades?
Are you a good friend?
It is important for the children to understand how we all have relationships with other people and how we need to have certain qualities, characteristics, attributes in order to maintain these relationships. The children need to understand that good relationships are so important to keep us happy and healthy. By understanding this they can begin to protect themselves when they recognise things going wrong
Today, we discussed a famous friendship that has spun over many years – Ant and Dec.
The children watched a clip about this well known duo that showed their very strong and positive relationship. We then thought about why their relationship is so good and what attributes to a quality friendship.
Having made a list of positive attributes, we then thought about whether we could identify some of these attributes in ourselves. We should be proud of these attributes and the effect they have on friendships.
Can we think of another attribute that we would like to develop?
Year 4 were very honest about which attributes they could recognise that needing some developing.
“I would like to be more patient.”
” My anger is something I need to improve!”
“Sometimes I can be bossy and my friends get frustrated with me.”
Ear defenders and popcorn?
To finish off our topic on sound, the children were set a task to design and make some ear defenders. The main objective was to find out which materials were the best to use to muffle or reduce sound.
The children looked closely at the resources available and then made predictions. They had to think carefully about making their tests fair.
- “I think that cotton wool will be best because you can pack it into all the space.”
- “The ear defenders need to fit securely to your head otherwise sound can still travel through to your ears.”
Time to get going ….
Time to test the ear defenders…
C
What a laugh we had! Ask your child to find out what happened.
Cooking with sound?
Year 4 staff and children thought about what ingredients, whilst cooking, would create sound. We came up with popcorn.
Honey and popcorn flapjacks
The children had to listen carefully to the sound of the popping corn and describe it. We all had great fun and the noisy flapjack tasted delicious!
- “I’ve had the best lesson ever.”
- “I understand how sound travels now.”
- “This learning has been great fun!”
Well done to all the children and many thanks to Mrs Pearson and Mrs Charlesworth for all their hard work. It has been a fun, and sometimes noisy, mini topic. We all now need some peace and quiet so enjoy the half term break.
Walk to school prize draw
Well done to all pupils who have encouraged their families to walk to school this week or if you had to come by car, you have parked further away to park and stride. We hope you have enjoyed the benefits of this active travel.
Once our Living Streets travel tracker data is available after the half term, we will have the prize draw for all children who have walked/used park and stride this week.
Hope you get some chance this half term to continue to enjoy lots of physical activity – maybe a local walk, a parkrun, a bike ride or a swim.
