Brilliant Brodrick
Cuthbert Brodrick designed Leeds Town Hall aged just 30. Today, year 5/6 enjoyed the amazing architecture on offer in the centre of Leeds. From the Corn Exchange to the First Direct Arena, we were able to study some incredible buildings.
In school, we have been studying line and perspective drawings. At home, you might want to practise your skills by drawing your surroundings.
Amazing artists
Recently, in our topic lessons (inspired by our class novel: The Nowhere Emporium), we have been learning, practising and improving a range of new art skills.
In particular, we’ve focussed on observational drawing (ask your child what ‘observational’ means). After developing our skills with some more simple items in the classroom, we went outside to draw some of the structures we can see in our school grounds. Ask your child what they drew.
We’ll be applying these skills on our trip into Leeds city centre where we’ll study some of the more interesting buildings as well as finding out about the architects who designed them. Ask your child what an architect is – can they name any?
Super Scientists
This half-term, our science focus has been materials. After spending some time sorting different materials and finding out about their properties, (help at home by asking your child if they can describe some objects in the house or garden using their new scientific vocab: opaque, transparent, translucent, conductor, insulator, rigid, elastic, flexible) we planned our own scientific investigation – Which plastic bag can hold the most weight?
We worked scientifically, changing only one variable, to ensure our results would be as valid as possible. For each bag, we raised it and placed weights in gently in 1kg increments.
We used poo bags, nappy bags, sandwich bags, bags for life, bin liners, cheaper carrier bags and reinforced carrier bags. Ask your child which plastic bag held the most weight – a whopping 27kg!
Reflect in this by asking your child: Can you spot the inconsistency in these pictures? Could this limitation have affected our results?
To melt or not to melt!
Science this week involved some hands. But not as you know them…these were ice hands! The children investigated through observation, touch and discussion what happens when water changes from solid to liquid.
They measured the temperature of the water and noticed the changes as they happened.
….and observed the changing of state from ice to water.
The interesting class and group discussions around how water can be changed from a liquid, solid or gas then changed back again was fantastic.
It was a very ‘hands on’ investigation! We all got a bit wet but it was very exciting.
Help needed : plants and bulbs
We are hoping to plant some bulbs, ready for Spring, and hopefully some bedding plants to see us through the Winter (pansies, for example). If you can help, please drop them into the office or any of the year 1 or 2 classrooms. Thank you!
Animals and apples!
We’re really lucky to have several fruit trees in our Nursery garden and at this time of year, some of our favourite activities involve apples. Children love to collect them outside and transport them in wheel barrows. We also love to bake with them. This week, some of our older children enjoyed baking mini apple pies. One group carefully helped to chop the apples whilst the other group made the pastry. They smelt delicious and tasted pretty good too!
The jungle small world area has been very popular and some children extended their play, building the animals homes using the building blocks. This required great concentration and involved lots of testing and adjusting to make sure that the bricks weren’t going to fall down. When they did take a tumble, there were lots of helpers to build them back up again. Great team work, Nursery!
Children are still busy exploring Nursery and the newest children are enjoying returning to their favourite areas each session. As they become more familiar with the different areas of provision, you will start to see us enhancing them slightly to reflect their current interests. One area that we have chosen to adapt for next week is the small world area. Now that children know where to access the jungle animals independently, they have been returned to the basket on the shelf and instead of a jungle, we now have a bear cave!
We loved listening to ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’ last week and children especially enjoyed re-telling the story outside as we moved through the long, wavy grass and tip toed through the forest (in our garden, of course!). To reflect this common interest and favourite book, we have adapted our provision to capture children’s imaginations and to encourage them to re-tell the story themselves.
If you want to join in at home, please enjoy reading the book together if you have a copy. If not, you could visit the library or watch this short video of Michael Rosen telling the story. It’s fantastic! We especially love his sound effects. Listening to sounds and making different voice sounds is one of the first ways that we begin to teach phonics in Nursery. We’ll add more about how we teach Phase One phonics over the next few months in our web site posts.
Finally, you may have noticed bright yellow post-it notes starting to appear under children’s photographs on our ‘What makes us tick?’ board in the entrance to Nursery. Please jot down any interests that your child currently has or favourite games, songs or stories. We use these ideas to help us plan activities that are exciting and relevant for your child. Thank you.
Outdoor PE
Key Stage One (all year 1 and 2 classes) enjoyed an outdoor PE lesson today. We made the most of the lovely weather and did some running and races on the field.
Golden stars
Well done to our two most recent golden stars.
Living and learning
Year 5/6 have been discussing taking safe risks. They were able to talk about risks they could take at home and at school. Some children felt more comfortable now to take risks in the classroom. These included reading their work aloud and answering questions when they are not 100% sure of the answer.
Year 2 Information Evening
Thank you to all the parents and carers who came to the Year 2 Information Evening. We hope you found it useful and informative. The presentation can be found below. Thank you.