Trip to York!
Today, Year 3 and 4 visited York to go to the Yorkshire Museum and to see the flood defences.
Yorkshire Museum had exhibitions that were perfect for us to link to our History and Science learning; Roman York and Mary Anning Rocks and Yorkshire’s Jurassic World!
Here’s some pictures of us exploring and learning about the artefacts!
Our second reason for visiting York was for the flood defences. York gets flooded quite easily after periods of heavy rainfall so they have built many flood defences around river to help the houses and buildings near. We’ll be learning about this during our Geography topic after Easter.
To no surprise, there were floods when we visited! Here’s what we saw:
We made sure to stay safe while walking through York and around the river by walking in pairs and behind the railings.
Help at home by asking your child one new fact that they learnt while at the museum! For example, I learnt about the different under water dinosaurs that existed millions of years ago.
02 February 2024
- buses
- boxes
- churches
- dishes
- clapping
- skipping
- running
- jumping
The children will be tested on these words next Friday 9th February.
Please encourage your child to try practise the words by putting their words in a sentence using our handwriting guide. Also, look at the spelling activities guide for some ideas to practise these words.
Living and Learning – I know some drugs that are harmful and how to stay safe.
Over the last 2 weeks, we have had a focus on drugs, how they can be harmful and how we can be safe around them.
Drugs can come in all different shapes and sizes but they all do change the way the body or mind works.
We had a focus on medicines like Calpol and household items like cleaning products. We discussed when we might need to take or use medicines and how we might use these items.
We decided that:
- We should only take medicine if we are unwell and need it.
- We should always ask an adult before we go near a medicine or cleaning product as they can be dangerous if not used correctly.
- Even adults need to read the instructions on the medicine or cleaning product.
- These items should be kept out of reach of young children.
For example, dishwasher tablets could look really like a sweet to a baby and they might put it in their mouth! Help at home by asking your child to help you keep these products in a safe place.
Living and Learning: I know what a drug is.
In Living and Learning, Year 5 have been learning what a drug is, why people use medicine and how vaccines can protect the population.
We defined a drug as ‘a substance that changes the way the body or mind works.’ Then, we moved on to focus how medicines can help:
- prevent someone from becoming ill or stop a disease from spreading
- help someone manage an ongoing health condition, such as asthma or diabetes
- help someone feel better and relieve pain, such as from a headache
- help the body recover from illness
To finish off, we played ‘the vaccination game’. This helped us to look at how different percentages of vaccinated people can affect the spread of diseases. We learnt that the more vaccinated people in a population, the less likely it is for someone to get the disease.
Art, art and more art!
After many weeks of learning and discussing the artwork of Kandinsky and Napaltjarri, Year 3 have designed and begun creating sculptures that are inspired by them!
First, they sketched and drew rough designs of the shapes, colours and patterns that they wanted to use.
Then, they began cutting their shapes. As you can see, lots of the children have chosen to have a mix of shapes. Kandinsky is well known for his concentric circles so we have been inspired to use circles too.
The next step was then to start decorating these shapes using oil pastels, chalks and eventually, wax resist! Some have chosen warm colours, complementary or cool colours. Napaltjarri uses a lot of warm colours while Kandinsky uses complementary.
Some of us are ready to start slotting these shapes together to make our sculpture three-dimensional. Come back next week to see our final pieces…
Help at home by identifying colours of everyday objects. What kind of colour is your blue wallpaper? How does that blue make me feel? What does it remind me?
Living and Learning: What is a feeling?
This week during Living and Learning, we talked about feelings.
What are feelings?
‘A feeling is our emotional state, or our reaction to something. Feelings are important because they help us to manage different situations and look after ourselves. Feelings and emotions are about our minds but we might
also experience them in our bodies.’
What feelings might we have?
We drew ourselves and thought about the different feelings that we might have during the day. For example, feeling sleepy in the morning, overjoyed at break time and determined during a test! Our feelings change throughout the day depending on our experiences.
How can we manage our feelings?
We decided what some good and not so good feelings might be and how we can manage these. Sometimes bad things happen and we need to have some self-care techniques to look after ourselves. Here’s some things that we thought would make ourselves feel good:
- talk to someone
- read a book
- have some quiet time
- get into bed
- take some deep breaths
- hug our teddies
- do some colouring
- go cycling
Feelings are normal and part of life but as long as we have these strategies in place, we will feel much better overall! Help at home by encouraging your child to practise some of these techniques when they are not feeling so good. Take some deep breaths, get some fresh or talk to someone!
Art – The Hepworth Gallery
Last Thursday, we had an amazing time at the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield. The children loved the gallery and were in awe of the size of not only the sculptures but the gallery itself. In the morning the children took part in a workshop where they explored parts of the gallery and drew some of the sculptures they liked. Then, they took their ideas back to the workshop room and did some printing. The children were so engaged and listened excellently to the workshop leader.
In the afternoon, we explored the gallery ourselves in small groups. The children were so excited and enthusiastic to examine the art and complete some careful drawings. Again they were extremely well behaved and a member of the public commented how well they had done!
Help at home by talking about the trip and exploring their artwork that they have brought home on Friday.
Topic – Art
Year 3 have begun their latest Topic – art! We have two featured artists that we are focusing our learning around.
Wassily Kandinsky
Martha McDonald Napaltjarri
We have used our Geography skills to locate on a map where these artists were born; Kandinsky in Moscow, Russia and Napaltjarri in Haasts Bluff, near Alice Springs, Australia.
We have since then, explored the use of complementary colours and warm and cool colours. We were inspired by Kandinsky’s Squares With Concentric Circles art piece and created these:
We put our concentric circles together to create one large piece of art.
The children explored using oil pastels and chalks.
Help at home by asking your child what complementary, warm and cool colours are!
Me and my money week!
This week has been all about money and we’ve learnt a lot about money, spending, prices and saving. We have had some visitors in to help us with our learning. Here’s what we’ve got up to:
It’s party time!
We had a two hour workshop where we learned how to plan a party. From thinking about what makes a good party to how much we were spending on balloons. We started by ranking elements of a party by how important they are. Here was one group’s final ranking:
We then chose a person to plan the party for and this was tricky as we had to think about what someone would want at their party rather than our own choices!
Finally, we had to think about what we would spend on what. Each group had a budget of £10 per guest and the children quickly realised how they needed to save money on a venue for the party so that they could have more decorations or food!
Overall, every group managed to spend under their budget which shows that they knew the difference between a want and a need.
The Lost Purse
We had a second workshop with some workers from the bank. During this session we learnt:
- People can pay for things using cash or electronically.
- The price of everyday items like a meal deal from the supermarket.
- People can sometimes borrow money but they have to pay it back otherwise there is consequences.We also were able to give advice to someone on how they should spend their money. ‘Mr I Spendalot’ wanted to book a £500 holiday. He could have either spent his money on his debit card or use his credit card and have to pay it back. We decided that maybe using his debit card was a good idea if he knew that he could afford it!
Help at home by thinking of different items that you have or would like and and decide: Is it a need or a want?
This is a Forest and Making a Stand
On Tuesday, Year 5 went to visit two art exhibitions: ‘This is a Forest’ and ‘Making a Stand’. To start the day, we experienced a series of artworks in ‘This is a Forest’. The children were able to take time to appreciate the art, learn something new and capture the sculptures in their own sketches. One of the artworks was called ‘A Howl’, which was an installation of a fallen beech tree with lights and sound. This section of the exhibition was in a small dark room, where we could initially just hear sounds and then after our eyes adjusted, we were able to see the shape of a tree.
We then moved on to our next activity where the children could create ecosystems. We split into smaller groups and were able to design and make terrariums. The children showed great teamwork!
