Herd Farm Residential
Monday 11th – 13th February 2019- Herd Farm
At the beginning of this week, the Year 4 children went on a residential visit to Herd Farm, Eccup. It was a fantastic experience for the children, which will no doubt be remembered as one of the highlights of their year.
The 3-day trip was packed full of exciting activities: the giant swing, archery, an assault course, a zip wire, orienteering, puzzle palace, songs around a campfire and a muddy night walk.
For many children, valuable life skills were learned and happy memories made.
Here is what some of the children said:
“It was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience.” Lucas
“I did the zip wire all by myself!” James
“I loved singing songs around the campfire with my friends.” Lily
“I just want to be there now – we had so much fun!” Matilda
Thank you to all the staff who volunteered their time and effort to spend a wonderful 3 days away.
Photos of the trip will be uploaded once they have all been collected.
Den Day
As part of our class novel topic, year 5/6 have been designing and building their own shelters.
Den building
Year 5 and 6 have had a thrilling morning creating wonderful shelters and dens. They had to work hard in their teams to build strong structures using only piping and canes. They had to ensure their dens were waterproof. The adults thoroughly enjoyed testing this with buckets of icy cold water!
Drama for writing (and Living and Learning – consent)
To enhance our Big Topic, we have been involved in some drama workshops delivered by The West Yorkshire Playhouse this week. They were based on the Katie and…. books by James Mayhew. We used Katie and the Dinosaurs and were transported into a wonderful imaginary world of dinosaurs. The children immersed themselves in the drama and produced some writing describing the dinosaurs they created.
The Living and Learning part involved the important topic of consent. We asked children for their consent to be photographed and we also asked Paul, our facilitator, for his consent too. This sets a good example for children and helps them to realise that they can consent (and withdraw their consent) for their photograph or video to be taken.
Keeping active – starting good habits
Every Friday, each class takes it in turns to lead the daily Wake Up Shake Up (WUSU) session, which is part of our commitment to provide 30 active minutes every day (in addition to our PE lessons). It was F2’s first chance to lead this week. They were really excited and showed us their two favourite dances. Young children enjoy being active and find it easy to join in, without feeling self-conscious, so we hope this continues. Well done, F2!
Amazing homework
This week, we had some amazing responses to our Creative homework: I can plan a short story.
We really celebrated each other’s effort and left lots of positive comments in our homework books.
There were too many great pieces to show them all but here’s a few of our favourites…
A brilliant film trailer about Marvin the Meatball
Another awesome iMovie film trailer
A highly creative plant based story plan
A pair of well thought out, well presented story maps
A scenic opening paragraph
And, a blast from the past
We shared our views on this week’s homework, too:
I enjoyed planning my story. I can’t wait to write it now!
It was fun trying to think of a way to make planning a story more creative.
I like it when people at home help me.
I tried harder than I normally do this week and I feel really proud of myself.
I didn’t really spend much time on my homework this week but now I’ve seen how creative people have been I will definitely try harder next week.
Golden Star Award
This week, it goes to…
Living and Learning-Safety Week Electrical Safety
Wow! What a superb week we have had! Everyday, we have had something very exciting planned to help us learn about safety. Today was no different. We had an education advisor from Northern Powergrid to help us learn about electrical safety. You too can find out what we learnt here.
Electricity is really useful but also very dangerous. We learnt about how it is made, transported to our homes and how it can electrocute us if we’re not careful! We were given booklets and pencils to help remind us of the ways that we can ‘Be Careful’ around electricity in our homes.
‘I loved the electricity machine Leena had. Seeing the electricity was so cool and also a bit scary!’
‘This week has been the best week ever!’
Living and Learning – Safety Week
This week, we have been learning how to stay safe.
On Monday, we had a talk from the Dogs Trust. We listened carefully to a talk in the hall. We had to decide which situations were safe and which situations were not safe. Some of the children’s comments are below:
- “If a dog is sleeping, it’s not safe to touch it.”
- “Don’t stroke a dog when it is eating.”
- “If you see a dog all alone, don’t touch it. Wait until someone (an owner) come and ask.”
On Tuesday, we looked at ways to keep safe in school. We did an indoor/outdoor risk assessment.
- “If you see a chair, put it under the table.”
- “You can’t run by the pool…it’s wet and you’ll slip.”
- “We can’t run in the classroom. We might bump put heads.”
On Wednesday, we looked at ways to keep safe on the road. We listened to a story about Super Cat, a cat who uses his senses for good to help children cross the road. We learnt the Super Cat’s road safety rap.
We also had a visit from the local fire station.
On Thursday, we listened to a story about Smartie the penguin. He taught us how to keep safe when using the internet. He told the children to always get support from a grown-up if something pops up on their screen and they don’t know what to do. Smartie taught us another safety rhyme.
Home-link – 3 challenge cube
Can your child tell you 3 things they have learnt from safety week? Please email or write down what they tell you. This will support us in our assessment by providing evidence towards the health and self care strand of the EYFS.
Children talk about ways to keep healthy and safe.
Safety week
We hope that your child has already told you all about their learning this week. They’ve been talking about keeping safe; hopefully they will have shared lots of safety tips with you and told you all about the special visitors that came to Nursery.
At the beginning of the week, children helped to carry out risk assessments for Nursery’s indoor and outdoor area. They spotted things that might cause them to trip or slip and talked about where was/wasn’t safe to play when it’s icy or wet outside.
There’s a great game on the Nationwide’s website where children can explore a virtual home and spot the dangers. (Link to follow shortly.) Children were very good at this! Well done, Nursery.
On Wednesday, we were joined by Lollypop Lady Sue. Lots of children recognised Sue and knew that she helped us to cross the road safely. We looked at Sue’s special high visibility jacket and her Lollypop sign. Some children recognised the ‘STOP’ letters and we sounded them out to read the word. Sue had lots of safety tips for us for how to travel to school safely. She reminded children to always hold their adult’s hand when they are walking on the path and crossing the road. We also talked about travelling in cars and reminding parents and carers to park safely, away from the school’s zig zag lines and driving slowly. We watched a video about road safety which gave us the message to “Stop, look, listen and think” before we cross the road.
Another highlight of the week had to be a visit from the Fire Brigade. Children were really excited and enjoyed hearing the loud siren and feeling how powerful the water hose is! To follow on from their interest in fire fighters, we have created an Emergency services role play area with the children’s ideas. They suggested lots of things that they would need and enjoyed answering 999 calls.
