On Tuesday, we visited Butser Ancient Farm to explore the Iron Age. We went into an Iron Age roundhouse for our introduction, before heading out into the sunshine to practise being archaeologists. We used trowels to uncover a whole range of artefacts. We found lots of flint, pottery, bone, chalk and various metal objects. Next, we learnt how to spin wool and we made bracelets. After lunch, we carved chalk using flint tools and dock leaves. Our last activity took place in a small roundhouse. This roundhouse contained Iron Age furniture and we got the chance to handle some objects and find out how things were made in the Iron Age.
Super Stone Age, Brilliant Bronze Age and Incredible Iron Age
We have had a lovely first week back. We have dived straight into our topic, Tribal Tales, which is all about the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age. This week we have started to look at how things progressed and changed across the time periods.
Enjoying the sunshine!
This week Woodpeckers have been taking advantage of the lovely sunshine by reading with each other outside. It is lovely to watch the children share books and to listen to the discussions that arise from their reading.
Finding the perimeter
This week in maths we have been looking at how to find the perimeter of different shapes. We then used what we had learnt to create our own irregular shapes on the playground and found their perimeters.
This week in PE
This week in PE Woodpecker class were able to use our fantastic gym equipment in the school hall. We all enjoyed using all the different apparatus.
Scrumptious Smoothies
On Thursday we made our delicious smoothies. We created shopping lists, planned our smoothies, cut up our fruit and blended them with either milk or juice. We even helped with the washing up! It was great fun and some of our smoothies were super tasty!
Graceful gymnastics
On Tuesday we enjoyed getting the gymnastics equipment out in order to practice our jumping and balancing.
Invisible Ink
This week we made our own invisible ink using lemons. We squeezed all the juice out of our lemons and mixed in a little water. We then dipped cotton buds into our juice and wrote messages on paper. Once our paper was dry, we used heat to reveal our messages.
Bananas about instructions
This week in English we have been focusing on following and writing instructions. W have written instructions on how to draw a picture, which Miss Dore has then followed. We have also be leaning how to make a banana split ready for writing our own instructions.
Super Sewing and Slippery String
We have had a great time during art week. Our topic was birds and in Year 3 we chose to create bird themed art using string and thread. This week we have developed our sewing skills by sewing birds - it turns out that this was trickier than we initially thought! We have created flamingos using string and we learnt how to paint with string instead of paint brushes. On Friday we welcomed Mrs Parsons into our classroom as she came to show us her sewing.
Shaky Tower
I challenged the Woodpeckers to build he tallest tower that they could using marshmallows and pasta. However, their towers also had to be strong enough to withstand and earthquake.
Violent Volcanoes
We made our own volcanoes using paper and plastic bottles. We then made them erupt by mixing vinegar, baking soda, food colouring water and washing up liquid.
Greek Pots
This week we have been exploring Greek pottery. We looked at the different types of pots that the Ancient Greeks used and their decorations. We designed our own Geek pots and started to make them.
Exploring Magnets
This week we have been exploring magnets in science. We have discovered what magnets are attracted to and that they can be different strengths. Whilst carrying out an experiment, we talked about fair testing and how to carry out a fair test.
Greek Diaries
This week we have explored the story of Icarus and Daedalus further. We pretended we were either Icarus or Daedalus and wrote a diary entry, using the first person, about our escape from the island of Crete. We then had a go at translating our diaries into Greek using the Greek alphabet.
Another Wonderful Week in Woodpeckers.
It has been another busy week in Woodpecker Class. This week we have really started to get into our topic of Ancient Greeks. We have explored the story of Icarus and Daedalus, created maps of Ancient Greece and thrown javelins in PE.
Well-being Week Day 5
Today we had a Birthday Party for all those Woodpeckers who had a birthday in September, October and November.
We had fun dancing, singing, eating treats and playing games!
I think everyone is looking forward to celebrating the December Birthday’s in a few weeks time!
Well-being Week Day 4
Today we took time to think about what we all can do and why it important to celebrate all the wonderful things we can do, big or small.
We wrote ‘I can’ in the middle of our page and created a poster with all the things we could do.
Some examples were ‘spell’, ‘be kind’, ‘be helpful’, ‘work hard’, ‘have neat handwriting’, ‘hold my breath under water’ ‘doing a backflip on a trampoline’, ‘be a friend’.
There were so many ideas and a wonderful discussion where we leant lots about each other.
Well-being Week Day 3
Today we spent time thinking about Gratitude.
We talked about what the word meant and why it was important to spend time thinking about what we are all thankful for.
We all shared many things we felt gratitude for and everyone had different ideas. Some ideas were big for example, being thankful for ‘family’, for our ‘hearts’ and for ‘oxygen’ and others were smaller things such as being about to ‘play an instrument’ and ‘swim’.
Everyone spent time creating Gratitude trees which had everything each person was grateful for at the ends of each branch. Everyone took their time thinking and presenting their work in a neat and colourful way.
Well-being Week Day 2
Today we talked about worries as part of our well-being week activity. We spent time discussing the difference between a worry and a problem. We talked about how a problem is a one off thing that happens but although it might upset us we can sort it out, often with a teacher if we are at school, fairly quickly. For example, someone knocks us over, they say sorry and it is finished. We then discussed how a worry is something that ‘hangs in our mind’ and makes us feel upset and anxious a lot. The children also identified how this can be something that can be difficult to talk about or know how to fix. We then created our helping hands. We drew around our hands and then identified adults (and some friends) who we trust and could talk to when we are worried, for example teachers at school and mum and dad at home. It was lovely to see that as well as adults they are currently in contact with at school, some children also identified previous teachers they had been with as trusted points of contact. We wrote these names on our hands and put them in our trays to remind us who we can talk to if we are feeling worried.