Topic – Art
Year 3 have begun their latest Topic – art! We have two featured artists that we are focusing our learning around.
Wassily Kandinsky
Martha McDonald Napaltjarri
We have used our Geography skills to locate on a map where these artists were born; Kandinsky in Moscow, Russia and Napaltjarri in Haasts Bluff, near Alice Springs, Australia.
We have since then, explored the use of complementary colours and warm and cool colours. We were inspired by Kandinsky’s Squares With Concentric Circles art piece and created these:
We put our concentric circles together to create one large piece of art.
The children explored using oil pastels and chalks.
Help at home by asking your child what complementary, warm and cool colours are!
Autumn 2: Week 3
This week, we explored making shadows. We used torches to explore what happened to the shadows when we moved the light source closer and then further away from the model. We had lots of fun creating our own shadow puppets in the creative area. Some children explored making shadows of their models in the construction area.
In Literacy, our focus story was Night Monkey, Day Monkey by Julia Donaldson. For our writing activity, we drew and labelled pictures of things we see and do during the day and at night time .
Our word of the week was nocturnal.
A hedgehog used to live in my garden.
I saw a fox when walking home.
I have seen bats before!
Help at home: Draw a picture of a nocturnal animals and label it.
In maths, we introduced the children to composition by focusing on the preliminary skills: the concept of ‘wholes’ and ‘parts’. We investigated composition using own bodies and familiar toys. For example, we looked at Mr. Potato Head and talked about the smaller part that make Mr. Potato Head a whole. We also sand ‘Heads, shoulders, knees and toes’ and thought about our body parts. We used this stem sentence My […] is a part of me and the whole of me is [name] to explain our parts.
Help at home: Look at the pictures. Can you see the parts?
We also had a go at composing and de-composing Numberblocks up to 5 using cubes.
Reminders
- Library books must be returned every Monday. If you have one of our library books at home, please return it.
- Please make sure your child’s reading record is in their book bag every day in case we need to write in them on a different day.
- Learning Journey Drop In’s
Tuesday 12 & Thursday 14 December 8.45 – 9.15am or 3.15 – 3.45pm
A sign-up letter will be sent out shortly.
Trip to the Hepworth Art Gallery
Today, we had an absolutely fantastic school trip to the Hepworth Gallery in Wakefield .
We started the day looking around the garden, the different galleries in the art museum and sketching some of the sculptures. We saw lots of different pieces of art and sculptures by some very famous artists.
After lunch, we took part in a print-making workshop which included looking at some Barbara Hepworth sculptures and finding inspiration from their shapes. We learned that Barbara Hepworth was inspired by nature to produce her own art. We also looked for repeated patterns in nature and produced our own drawings using tracing paper and a black frame.
Using our inspiration from the shapes and repeating patterns, we were ready to make out own piece of printed art.
Living and learning: online safety
Our key take-always from this week’s Living and Learning lesson were:
– websites use cookies to keep information about us which can be useful (saved log in) or unhelpful (targeted ads)
– pop ups can try and persuade us to click on them
– games and apps are trying to make us stay online for as long as possible
We made posters to teach others how to stay safe.
Food Technology: leek and potato soup!
Last week, Year 3 made leek and potato soup! We worked in small groups to prepare the ingredients and then cook them, ready for blending.
We made sure that we washed our hands and wore our aprons for hygiene reasons. 
We used the bridge cutting method to cut the onion and potatoes into small chunks.
We also used the claw cutting method to cut up the leeks after we’d washed them. These methods are the safest way to cut food as they help us from hurting ourselves!
We then fried the onion and leeks together and added the potatoes and stock. We left it to boil for 20 minutes.
We used a hand blender to purée the soup and added black pepper for flavour.
Everyone tried to soup but we had some mixed reviews:
“I loved the leek smell and taste.”
“I didn’t like the sloppy texture.”
“I liked the flavour.”
Year 3 did a fantastic job and the soup tasted great!
Help at home by having your child show you the bridge and claw cutting methods.
Virtual author visit with James Mayhew
On Thursday, Year 2 had a very exciting virtual visit with the author James Mayhew. We know him from his series of books based on his sister Katie.
James shared with us how he begun to draw and paint as a child and this developed into writing. As we watched, James cleverly illustrated a picture whilst telling us a story. James allowed us to ask questions and we were impressed by the fact that he has had over 70 books published! He also writes around 2 books a year!
Over the next few weeks, we will be reading some of James’ books in school. So far, we have enjoyed reading ‘Katie and the Mona Lisa’ which links with our Art topic.
We went to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park!
What an action-packed day we had on Tuesday!
Y5 and Y6 went on an amazing trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park to support our Art learning for this half term.
Before we went, we had a look at the website and previewed the art which made it very exciting when we actually saw them up close!
We took our Arty Ideas books and did a lot of amazing sketches.
It was great to see both abstract and figurative sculptures – just like we’ve been learning about in school.
Spot the difference: Moortown vs Network by Thomas J Price edition.
Zodiac Heads was definitely a fan favourite.
The texture and scale of the sculptures was sometimes mind boggling!
We did a lot of walking – luckily, the scenery was stunning. Can you spot Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure: Arch Leg in the distance?
In the afternoon, we took part in a workshop with a real artist!
We investigated patterns, colours and shape in Three Stones for Three Trees by David Nash.
And did some artwork without looking at the page – it was quite spiritual in a way.
Another great moment was seeing Barbara Hepworth’s Family of Man in real life! We had a tour of the sculptures and learnt all about the story of what they represent.
Lastly, inspired by the sculptures we’d seen, we made our own out of clay, just like Henry Moore would have done. He used a maquette made out of plaster.
Help at home by asking your child about their review of the trip which we’re doing in writing!
Anti-Bullying Day!
Monday was national anti-bullying day and the beginning of anti-bullying week. Lots of children wore odd socks to create an awareness of this important day and to celebrate how we are all unique and different We also centred our learning around this too.
We read our school’s anti-bullying Policy which outlines what bullying is and what we can do if we or someone we know is being bullied.
“Bullying is when you hurt someone, physically or emotionally (including online), several times on purpose.”
We define it by using two STOP acronyms:
- Several Times On Purpose
- Start Telling Other People
One’s a definition of bullying and the other’s a solution.
Our school definition helped us understand the different types of bullying – physical (hurting our body), emotional (hurting our feelings) or cyber bullying (online).
We used our weekly circle time to think about the role we all have to STOP bullying and discussed how we can share our feelings.
We know that we can go to these people or places for help:
- Safeguarding team – Mrs Weekes, Mr Wilks and Mrs Russell
- Any other members of staff
- A trusted adult
- Someone in your family
- Friends
- Childline (0800 1111)
- Write a worry slip and put it in your Living and Learning box or the whole school worry box (outside the school office)
- Email stayingsafe@spherefederation.org
Help at home: discuss our school definition of bullying with your child. Do they know the difference between falling out and bullying, and between a one-off situation and something that’s happened more than once?
Guided Reading Week 2
Here are the target pages for this week’s guided reading. These need to be read by Friday 25th November.
The Boy and the Tiger: up to chapter 8/page 75.
Extra Time: up to chapter 17/page 75.
Flood and Fang: up to chapter 5/page 72.
Dirty Bertie: up to page 67.
Kensuke’s Kingdom: up to chapter 5/page 69.
Autumn 2: Week 2
This week, we celebrated Nursery Rhyme Week. In Literacy, we read Each Peach, Pear Plum by Allan Ahlberg and Janet Ahlberg. When reading the story, we played ‘I Spy’. We used prepositional language to describe where the characters were hiding, for example, Baby Bunting is under the bridge.
After reading the book, we looked for nursery rhyme characters hiding around our classroom. We drew a picture of one of the characters and wrote a sentence. For example, I spy Humpty Dumpty.
This week’s chilli challenges were all linked to nursery rhymes. Take a look at some in action…
We helped build a wall for Humpty Dumpty.
We played Busy Bus in the maths area.
The playdough area spelt delicious! Lots of bakers making cakes and cupcakes.
We used our fine motor skills to catch and order the numbered fish.
We had fun making up our own number stories with the 5 Little Speckled Frogs.
How many frogs are sat on the logs?
How many are in the pond?
How many altogether?
We used pastels to draw twinkling stars.
We used our fine motor skills to catch spiders at the finger gym table.
We created our own our clocks for the mouse.
Help at home: Practise singing some nursery rhymes at home. You could send us a video of your favourite!
Poetry Picnic
This week, we decided to learn a new version of Row, row, row your boat. We had lots of fun thinking of our own actions!
Phonics
This week, we learnt four more graphemes: v, w, x, y. The children are really enjoying their daily phonics sessions and are becoming super readers!
Help at home: Practise reading these tricky words. You could play a tricky word hunt at home.
Writing process
In phonics, we’ve started to write captions, e.g. a red sock.
To help us with the process, we follow six simple steps.
Think about what we want to write.
Say it out loud.
Count the words.
Segment each word on our phoneme fingers.
Write each word.
Check our writing makes sense.
Help at home: Write a caption about this picture.
Maths
This week, we’ve been comparing the number of objects in two sets by matching them 1:1. When comparing, we noticed that some sets had more than, fewer than and an equal number. On Tuesday, the Three Bears needed our help to make sure they had packed an equal number of things for their picnic.
Help at home: Set the table. Do you have the right amount? Is it equal?
Stay and learn
Thank you to all of the parents and carers who attended to the maths stay & learn session on Wednesday. It was lovely to see so many of you! The next stay & learn is our a Phase 3 Phonics session in January.
Have a happy and healthy weekend.