Art: Sculptures
This week, Year 5 have started their art skills lessons where they have started to create their very own sculpture inspired by Barbara Hepworth’s ‘Family of Man’. Firstly, the children got into small groups to design their sculpture. The brief was to sketch something that related to them, whether that be a hobby, their family, a sport or a pet.
Once the maquette (a sculptor’s initial model or sketch) was finished, the children started to let their ideas come to life. They showed a lot of perseverance and determination when cutting into their boxes.
After their shapes were complete, they then took to covering their boxes in scrunched tissue paper to help create a patina texture.
Then, Year 5 painted their boxes white to create a consistent neutral base on to which they can apply the colour to next week.
Help at home: Discuss the inspiration of your child’s sculpture.
Living and Learning: I can recognise mental health is important.
For the past three weeks, we have been focussing on mental health in our Living and Learning lessons. This week, we discussed how to identify worry and actions that a person can take if they feel worried.
Year 5 identified how our bodies might feel if they are worried: a strange feeling in someone’s stomach, chest, head or throat; a faster heartbeat; dry mouth; sweaty palms; fidgeting; or difficulty concentrating.
We then focussed on different things that can be done to help relieve the worry:
- taking deep breaths
- talking to friends or family
- reading a book
- mindfulness activities
- playing a sport
- writing it down
Help at home: Discuss how Lauren in the following scenario can relieve her worry: ‘Lauren has got a test coming up at school. She is feeling nervous and finding it hard to concentrate.’
We are artists!
After many weeks of learning about Kandinsky and Napaltjarri, Year 4 have begun creating their sculptures inspired by them!
First, we cut out the shapes that we had chosen in our designs.
The next step was then to start decorating these shapes using oil pastels and chalk. Some children have chosen warm colours, complementary, cool colours or a mix!
This week will involve using Brusho dye to complete our colour choices and fixing the individual shapes together.
Watch this space for the grand reveal of our final pieces!
Living and learning: mental health
Over the last couple of weeks, Year 4 have been learning about mental health.
During our first session, we talked about feelings. Being able to identify and talk about feelings and emotions is an important part of our mental health. We spent time discussing different feelings and how to manage them. We also talked about how to spot how others are feeling by looking at their body language.
This week, we started to look at self-care. There are lots of different ways that we can practise self care. Some ideas are:
- talking to someone
- reading a book
- having some quiet time
- taking some deep breaths
- hugging our teddies
- doing some exercise
- writing our feelings down
Help at home by talking to your child about what self-care techniques they can do whenever they are feeling ‘big feelings’.
Guided Reading: Week 6
With the end of term fast approaching, Year 5 should be nearing the end of their guided reading books. Each guided reading group – if they haven’t already – should be reading to the end of their book before next week. Their book should be returned back to class before Friday 22nd December.
Basketball new year camp
City of Leeds Basketball Club, who run our basketball after-school clubs, are running a new year camp. Details can be found below.
We are artists!
This afternoon, we created our final print as part of our art topic. We had already created a background using tissue paper. We only used primary colours and overlaid the pieces to create different shapes as well as different colours. Inspired by Castle and Sun by Paul Klee, we created a design for our polystyrene sheets and then drew the design carefully on.
Today we rolled out our ink and precisely rolled the ink onto our polystyrene design. Then we pressed the design down onto our tissue paper background and rolled it flat with a dry roller. Finally, it was the moment to reveal what we had created. We were so happy with our final pieces, I think they all look amazing! I love the changes of colour, shape and pattern the children have made. Unfortunately, I was a little busy (and inky!) to capture photos of the process! However, I have included a photo of everybody’s final piece, they should all be very proud of themselves!
Help at home by talking to your child about their own piece of art and how they created it.
Autumn 2: Week 6
This week, we’ve had lots of fun getting into the Christmas spirit. We’ve been busy doing lots of chilli challenges in the areas of provision.
Santa’s elves enjoyed decorating the role-play area ready for Christmas.
We used our fine motor skills to make Christmas trees in the playdough area.
We used our segmenting skills to write letters to Santa.
We practised our cutting skills when making paper chains at the finger gym table.
We used our subitising skills in the maths area.
Phonics help at home
Your child should have a phase 2 tricky word mat in their bookbags. Please practise reading these at home over the Christmas holidays.
Next half term, we’ll be starting phase 3. In this phase, the children will continue to learn more digraphs (two letters making one sound) and they’ll be introduced to some trigraphs (three letters making one sound).
Don’t forget to attend our Phase 3 phonics stay and learn session on Tuesday 16 January.
This is an opportunity for you watch a phase 3 phonics lesson and see your child’s progress.
Literacy
We’ve been reading the The Jolly Christmas Postman. We enjoyed looking at all the different things inside the envelopes. This morning, some of the children went to post their postcards. Make sure you look out for them in the post!
Poetry Picnic
Click here to watch this week’s poem.
PE
For our final gymnastic session, we decided to practise our jumping skills.
Next half-term, PE will be on a Tuesday. Please make sure your child comes to school wearing their PE kit suitable for outdoor PE.
Christmas events happening next week…
Reception, Y1 & Y2 will present their Christmas production, ‘Lights Camel Action’.
There will be two performances:
Tuesday 19 December – 2.15pm – 3.00pm
Wednesday 20 December – 2.15pm – 3.00pm
Friday 22 December – Non-uniform day and Christmas party
Finally…
Thank you to all of the parents and carers who came to the learning journey drop in sessions. We hope you enjoyed looking through your child’s books. We are super proud of the progress the children have made this half-term. Keep up the good learning, Reception!
Gymnastics
Today, we had an even more exciting PE lesson than normal!
As we’ve been gymnasts, we’ve been practising skills such as balance, movement and control – including when mounting and dismounting apparatus.
In this lesson, we put it all to the test by using the equipment shown below. At times, we had to see how high we could go (which was hard for Miss Wilson on the rope) or how we could travel across the bars from one side to the other.
As always, we were safe and worked fantastically as a team.
It was a lot of fun!
Help at home by discussing the ways we kept safe in today’s lesson.
Sketches, Sculptures & Maquettes
In Art, this week and last week, we have moved away from Art History and turned our attention to our own art projects.
We sketched a maquette which is the first stage in our sculpture process.
Next, we came together as a group to create a joint maquette which is the final stage of our planning process.
Help at home by discussing the visual and tactile elements of art that they’ve used in their maquette such as line, shape and composition.
