Another busy bug themed week for Robins and Wrens with lots of spider and shape activities. On Tuesday Robins used their shape knowledge to help them build a shaped web for Walter the spider. Great teamwork and problem solving skills Robins! On Wednesday Little Wrens went on a bug hunt to the Bowes Museum as part of their Nursery adventure, we found snails, slugs, spiders and even a wasp! Thursday was the day of our Bug Ball. What an exciting afternoon we had playing what’s the time Queen Bee and singing the spiders in his web; we even had a bug dance off. I think we have lots of tired bugs ready for the weekend now.

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This week Larks class   have been looking at seaside holidays in the past and making the best of the lovely weather in school. We tried on outfits that children would have worn in the past for a day at the beach. They  look very different to what we would wear to the beach in 2022!

We also  made a class family tree in our RSE sessions and have been writing instructions on how to make a jam sandwich!

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This week the Swifts went on an adventure back in time to learn all about the Egyptians and the process of mummification. The class handled real artefacts and even got to dress up as Pharaohs and learn style of an Egyptian. The class then progressed to viewing a real mummy and learning all about the process of mummification. The staff at the oriental museum could not believe how much knowledge the Swifts have, already on the Egyptians!

The Swifts on Friday also walked down to the river to build their very own skiff boat from their English planning and had a go sailing them. We were so successful we even had a whole class boat race! It was a very good race with lots of laughter and splashing! After our river walk, we then completed our problem solving for Shelly the egg to help her fly like a bird. We used our knowledge of addition and subtraction to buy resources with the money we had to build Shelly a parachute. We then measured our dropping point to make it a fair test and let Shelly fly, feeling the wind beneath her shell! Only one scrambled egg was made so maths was a success! Well done Swifts.

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It has been wonderful to get back to our usual routine in the Owls’ class post SATS. We have enjoyed investigating symmetry in regular polygons and creating symmetrical patterns of our own.
In English, we have used our library of topic books to research the Olympic-class Ocean Liners and used our writing skills to compose information texts by combining facts using conjunctions and relative pronouns.
We have investigated ways to increase air resistance in parachutes and spinners and even got some more gardening done too! What a busy week.
Special thanks to Evan’s Mum for dropping off a bath for the Community Garden. It will make an amazing planter.

Thank you also to our Climate Change Champions, who went along to Church today with Mrs Box, to set up their climate change display to promote awareness in our local community. Brilliant job!

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Congratulations to:

Wrens: Marianne

Robins: Erin

Larks: Layla Mae

Swifts: Edward

Owls: Emma

‘Keep shining brightly Stars!’

Congratulations to our Stars:

Wrens: Benjamin

Robins: Penny

Larks: Enzo

Swifts: Amber

Owls: All of Year 6… well done this week boys and girls.

‘Keep Shining brightly boys and girls!’

Another busy week for our Robins and Wrens. A special delivery arrived just in time for butterfly week; 10 caterpillars. We can’t wait to watch them change and grow into butterflies. We were so excited that we have even named our caterpillars; Jemima and Steve seem super happy in our EYFS. On Wednesday we had a real life experience and visited Costa. What a morning we had, watching the Baristas make hot chocolate and even tasting some ourselves. Yum yum! We then came back to School and made our very own Costa in the home corner and wrote thank you letters for all of the staff at Costa. We had such an amazing time and have used our rich real life experience in our imaginative and role play this week.

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We have had a busy and varied week this week with the children working especially hard in maths and English.  We had some new toys for our outside area and we enjoyed playing with these and adding up our scores!

In DT, we have finished our first puppet and we will be using these to make up our own plays.  In science, we went on a mini-beast hunt.  We found lots of different bugs and enjoyed looking at them carefully under the magnifying glasses.  We then drew the mini-beasts we had found.

As part of our RE we have been learning about Pentecost.  We made large badges of flames to wear, to remind us to tell others the good news.

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The Swifts have had a wonderful and scientific week looking at how we can turn a solid into a liquid and a liquid into a solid using a range of environmental factors. We started the lesson playing, “passy the ice cube,” and learnt that our own hands can turn a solid into a liquid using body heat to melt it. We were amazed that the tiny molecules that make a solid vibrate frantically when they are heated, loosening up to create a liquid. We then used our knowledge of body temperatures to measure the melting points of two solids, an ice cube and a square of chocolate. We all had different temperatures of water and used a timer and a thermometer to track the melting points of each solid. Some of us thought the ice cube would last longer because it was still cold from the freezer. We then learnt that chocolate’s melting point is 32 degrees. We learnt this through placing a square of chocolate in our mouth and comparing the speed of melting compared to the first investigation and learnt because our bodies are warmer than 32 degrees the chocolate would melt faster. Some of us cheated and chewed the chocolate but we won’t say names!

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We have been learning how to translate shapes within a coordinate grid in Maths and many of us have decided this is our favourite maths topic!
The Year 5 pupils have been showing us their fabulous PowerPoints about Polar climate and we have continued to learn about the location of different climatic regions in relation to the Equator.

As we journey through the Easter season, we have reflected on the thoughts, feelings, experiences and beliefs of the disciples, who loved Jesus most. We wrote short plays and enacted the scene in the upper room as the disciples waited patiently to be ‘clothed in power’. We too have had to trust God to clothe us in the Holy Spirit and to give us the gifts we need to do our best in our SATs this week. We are so blessed to have God on our side.

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This week, the children have been designing scientific fair tests to find the strongest magnets. They came up with some fabulous ideas and were surprised to find that the size of the magnet didn’t matter.

In topic, we have been learning about climatic regions and then used cold and warm colours to produce some gorgeous art work.

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The Swifts have had a really busy week learning new sports skills in tag rugby. They are currently being coached by the coaches from Newcastle Falcons and have been thrilled and inspired already with what they have learnt. They have even began to practice their rugby skills at break and lunch times to strengthen their skills ready for next week.

The children have also been learning in more detail about the river Nile and arid climates. They couldn’t believe how long the river Nile was and how many countries it flowed through! They have thought of some very challenging questions to find out about the the desert as we are still unsure why there is so much sand in the desert. We also are challenging ourselves to try and find out what grows in arid climates! We have learnt that papyrus was a very special crop that made many important items in ancient Egypt. We can’t wait to re create our own boats to sail down the river soon.

I have also included the images from the flag making at the Bowes Museum. We couldn’t believe how many countries were in the common wealth and that we were part of it too! What a big community to be a part of!

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The Y1 children have enjoyed making habitats for the Gruffalo story, some enjoyed reading bible stories and they all have been busy looking at O’clock and half past the hour. The whole class went looking for things that were alive, dead or had never been alive! Super scientific investigation skills.

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This week has been worm and herb week. On Tuesday we took our very own super worms on an adventure, some of us even made a tower for super worm. Little Wrens went to Morrisons on Wednesday to buy herbs for our outdoor pizza kitchen and then we made some amazing smelling herby pizzas. Robins then visited Morrisons and Gillian kindly donated some pizza making ingredients for us to make our very own pizzas, yum yum! This week we started our sunflower maths challenge and we have some super sunflower experts in both Robins and Wrens. We are very impressed with your knowledge. Anyone for pizza…

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This half term we are learning all about mini beasts. What busy bees we have been this week. This week has been our bee themed week, where we have learnt all about bees. On Wednesday Little Wrens went on a walk to look for bees with Betty Bee and had a honey sandwich picnic. On Thursday we planted flowers to attract the bees and wrote letters to the Queen Bee. Did you know that bees are very important as they help plants to grow fruit and seeds?

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Swifts began the week exploring solids, liquids and gases and had a chance to look, feel and smell a range of materials in school to help them categorise a solid, a liquid and a gas. Building on our knowledge of a liquid, the hexagons went a step further and found some liquids don’t fix to the shape of the container such as thick hand cream. They learnt this is a very special liquid called Newtonian liquid that doesn’t fix to the shape of the object completely! We then learnt that nappies have a special chemical in them to change water into gel. We were so impressed that we even managed to make fake snow out of the gel and reverse the gel back into a liquid using salt.

We also went on a learning hunt to find the definitions of our connected curriculum words and solve the missing puzzle set up around school. We enjoyed learning our new words and putting them into context within the lessons.

We also had a wonderful liturgical prayer lead by Joshua, Edward and William who read a scripture and shared ways in which we can recognise new life in ourselves as we are always growing.

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Owls have had a busy first week back. On Monday, we welcomed parents, grandparents and friends of St Mary’s into school to begin planting up our Community Garden. Have a look at more photographs on our school website page. Our classroom is now full of germinating seeds! The garden is already looking fabulous and we can’t wait to get the fence erected next week.

In maths, we have been learning to convert between metric and imperial units of measure, estimating and solving challenging problems.

We have also designed and created a jigsaw piece that will be incorporated in a collaborative art installation to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee

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Congratulations this week to:

Wrens: Dryden

Robins: Fearne

Larks: William

Swifts: Charlotte

Owls: Byron

Keep shining brightly Stars!

What a busy Easter themed week Robins and Wrens have had, making gingerbread Jesus’, stained glass crosses, Easter blessing cards, and we have even had an edible Easter garden. We have read the story, Is a nest noisy? and made our own nests using clay and natural materials. On Wednesday we were incredibly proud of all children who completed the sponsored walk, their listening skills and behaviour was impeccable. On Thursday we had our Easter themed stay and play for parents. A huge thank you to all parents who attended, we all had such a super afternoon.

Lots of pictures on Facebook from the Stay and Play.

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Larks had a visit form our Community Police Officer Preet this week – they were talking about Stranger Danger and learning how to keep themselves safe. Preet also talked to the children about the role of police officers in our local community. Thank you Preet- lovely picture too!

The Swifts have had a very busy week building their Victorian houses and looking into ways they could create a circuit to include a switch to light it. The class also went on their sponsored walk for CAFOD and learnt the finer details of Barnard Castle’s Castle. I even learnt some facts from the children too, I was very impressed with their knowledge! We ended the walk with a spiritual lesson on the golden rules of a healthy relationship where the children wrote a golden rule on a rock or in the sand and shared why their golden rule was important but also unique to their own relationships with friends and family. The class also created some beautiful Easter cards and were inspired from Alfie’s idea in his RE book to create the image from the Gospel Matthew. I am incredibly proud of the detail and thought that has gone into them and their fantastic links to scripture.

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Owls thoroughly enjoyed their sponsored walk this week to support Cafod’s Walk Against Hunger. It was brilliant to see parents, Auntie’s and Grandparents join in the walk too.. and even some of their pet  dogs. Well done Owls… our faith in Action.

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Congratulations this week to:

Wrens/Robins: Abigail

Larks: Joey

Swifts: Rosie

Owls: Mary

Keep shining like the Stars you all all boys and girls!

Wrens and Robins

This week we have had an out of this world space week. We have learnt about Neil Armstrong and how he is famous for being the first man on the moon; we even made our own Little Wrens and Robins astronaut and icing sugar planets. Our story of the week, Whatever Next, has inspired us to go to the moon like baby bear in our rocket and use the telescope to look at the stars. In Maths we printed 2D shaped rockets and Wrens even made some 3D rockets using the creative materials. We then mixed colours and shaving foam to make moon foam, which was extremely messy but lots of fun. In the home corner we have had Kitty Lacey’s hairdressers, with lots of budding hairdressers shampooing and curling hair. Mrs Dominick and Mrs Box certainly recommend the hairdresser’s- such a unique service!

For music this week we used the glockenspiels to play the notes C and G.

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Larks have made the most of the snow this week during their breaks and lunch times… just as we started to think about packing up the hats, scarves and gloves!!

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Swifts

This week our carousel planning has progressed well and the children’s designs and knowledge of electricity has led them to create their very own spinning carousels. The class were cheering for joy that they worked and spun beautifully! They are very proud of their designs and linked them to the Victorian carousel designs from beamish.

The class have also progressed with their understanding of the scripture, learning why Jesus washed the disciples feet to lead as an example that we are all equal. They retold the story and even performed it, describing how important this word is to follow in our daily lives.

The class also listened to the scripture from Luke during Journey in Love and shared why relationships are important and why it is always possible to reconcile and repair them if they are ever broken. The class did a wonderful job getting into groups and building their friendship bridges. I was blown away with how different all the bridges looked. We even talked about how our bridges may change when we get older or how we may decide to cross a different bridge and that is completely normal! They class presented their bridges and shared ways and ideas in which we can build stronger relationships

I have also shared in the photos the Mother’s day cards and the Beamish trip.

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This week we had a visit from Castle Players. They performed  a dementia play with Oscar the puppet, and also workshops afterwards encouraging children to think about the everyday lives for people with dementia.  The children seemed to gain a lot from both the play and the workshop and the Castle Players were impressed with their interaction. Laurence has left a bag with the book, the script and the workshop ideas along with five things to remember about dementia. He has asked if the children could write a letter to ‘Oscar’ to let him know what they thought of the play, how it affected them or what Oscar could do to help Gran. Thank you for organising this Mrs Fells… our very own Castle Player!

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