Living and Learning: Health and Prevention
Over the past two weeks, in Living and Learning lessons, the children have been looking at the importance of hygiene (especially handwashing) and the importance of sleep.
We defined hygiene and talked about several different ways we could make sure our hygiene was good. A few responses were: showering, brushing teeth and washing hands. Afterwards, we focussed on why we need to keep our hands clean (to prevent the spread of germs) and how to keep them clean. We also found out some very interesting facts about germs: did you know that if one million micro-organisms were packed right next to each other they would only cover a pin head in size? Did you know there are more microbes (good and bad) on one person’s hand than people on the planet!
Furthermore, we discussed how sleep has a variety of benefits. These being an improvement in memory; decision making; concentration and mood; immune system; and growth and repair. We learnt that a child aged 10 should be getting about 10 hours of sleep every night!
Help at home: Learn the handwashing soap and sanitiser song and put those actions into practice!
Or try some of our top tips to get a better night’s sleep:
- breathing exercises to slow down your heart rate;
- writing down worries in a diary;
- thinking of good things that have happened that day;
- talking to someone you can trust.
Living and Learning – I know the importance of sleep
This week in Living and Learning, Year 4 have been recapping and learning more about sleep. Sleep is really important for us for so many reasons. For example:
- It helps our minds to feel ready and positive for a new day.
- It helps our body to grow and repair.
- It helps our body to feel energised.
Without enough sleep, we won’t be as able to concentrate and learn as well as we might if we did have enough sleep.
Children need 10-11 hours sleep a night on average. This sounded like a long time to Year 4 but we agreed that our bodies need it as we are growing constantly!
We also discussed the important of a sleep/night time routine. This includes all of the small things that we might do that help us to get a better sleep. Here’s what we came up with together:
- Brush your teeth,
- get into your pyjamas,
- have a glass of milk,
- read a story or book,
- have a calm conversation with someone at home,
- close the curtains/blinds
- get cosy in bed,
- listen to calm music or an audio book,
- focus on one thought rather than lots of thoughts,
- hug family and pets goodnight
- go to the toilet so you won’t need to get up in the night!
All these things, that we probably do without even thinking, are important in getting our bodies and minds ready for sleep.
Help at home: Write down your night time routine. Is there anything you could change to help you sleep better? Is there anything you could do more of to help?
Science – plants
This half term in science we are studying plants. First of all we talked about what we already knew about plants. We knew so much and we named about 10-15 different types of flowers!
In our first lesson last week, we looked at some onion bulbs and talked about how bulbs are different to seeds. Can your child name any other plants that grow from bulbs?
We planted some onion bulbs in some soil and gave them a good water.
We also set up an experiment where we took away something from the bulb. One bulb had water and soil but no light. Another had water and light but no soil and the final bulb had light and soil but no water. Which one do you think will grow the best?
Today, we checked on our bulbs after they have been growing for one week. We were very impressed by the results!
Help at home by talking to your child about plants you can see in the park or the garden. What are they called? How do they grow? Can you name the parts of the plant?
Living and Learning: health and prevention
Over the last fortnight Year 1 have been learning all about what keeps us healthy. We started off by discussing all the things we knew about staying healthy. We knew lots and lots, I was very impressed.
In the first week, we learnt about the sun. The sun can provide us with lots of things we need, like vitamin D for strong bones, but we need to be really careful in the sun too. As a class we discussed the dangers of the sun: heat stroke, eye damage and sunburn.
We knew all the things we needed to keep safe too:
- sun cream
- hats
- water
- wearing long sleeves
You have to put sun cream on so your skin doesn’t get damaged.
Drink lots of water when you are in the sun.
In the second week, we learnt about the importance of good sleep.
We talked about what makes a good sleep routine and why it is so important to get a good sleep to keep us healthy. We had lots of good ideas of what makes a good bedtime routine.
Help at home by talking to your children about how to keep healthy and helping them make healthy choices.
Living and Learning: I know the importance of sleep
In this week’s L&L session, we learnt about the importance of sleep.
It’s recommended that at 10 years of age, you get 10 hours of sleep per night to reap the following benefits:
1. Concentration – increased concentration on tasks throughout the day
2. Health – you’ll feel fuller thus making it easier to maintain a healthy weight
3. Decision making – more decisive decision making
4. Memory – short term memory is transferred into long term memory
5. Mood – a better mood and less irritable
6. Repair – body’s muscles, organs and tissues are repaired during sleep
Well done, Gurvar, who received this week’s L&L certificate!
Help at home: establish a clear, structured nighttime routine with your child to ensure they get the recommended amount of sleep each night. This will help their social, mental, emotional and physical health!
Living and Learning: health prevention
In our latest learning about ‘healthy me’ we thought about what a healthy person would be like.
Healthy = keeping your body working at its best.
Being safe in the sun is one way we can keep our body healthy and this reading fluency text helped us to understand why this is important.
We’ve also been thinking about the importance of sleep.
Sleep helps your body work and can help you get better if you don’t feel well.
If you don’t have enough sleep, you feel grumpy, you can’t focus and you can’t control yourself.
If you have a busy brain it can be hard to get to sleep.
We thought about the things that can help you get to sleep.
- calm music
- relaxation and mindfulness
- yoga
- reading a book
- counting sheep
- drinking some warm milk
- thinking of something nice that you want to dream about
- being in a dark room
- having a teddy or toy with you
- stop using a screen an hour before bed
Sometimes, things can stop you getting to sleep.
- loud noises
- lights
- nightmares
- being on a screen close to bedtime
- staying up too late
- if you are scared
- if you have a worry
Help at home: ask your child what the three key sun safety messages are.
Have a look together at these sleep tips for children.
History: The Leeds Blitz
In History, we have been exploring how Leeds was impacted by The Blitz on the 14th-15th March 1941. We used secondary research from Leeds Becket University.
We found out that most of the bombs landed in the city centre and the closest event occurring nearest to Moortown was a fire in Meanwood.
Here are some of the events, the children found interesting:
Help at home: Explore the interactive map and find out more information about how Leeds was impacted by The Blitz.
Summer 1: Week 2
Literacy
This week, we’ve been reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. To help us remember the order of story, we made our own story maps.
Next week, we’ll be getting creative with our writing. We’ll have a go at making our own versions.
Last Friday, we had special delivery…
We were so excited when the caterpillars arrived! We are looking forward to watching the life cycle of a butterfly.
Role-play
Yesterday, the role-play area turned into a bug cafe. From worm and spider spaghetti to slug slime soup, we had lots of fun making lots of disgusting meals!
Help at home: Using your imagination, can you think of a new menu choice to make in our bug cafe? Draw a picture and label it.
Bug hotels
This week, we put sticks, grass, leaves and pine cones into our bug hotels.
A group of children put the bug hotels around school. Can you spot the bug hotels in our front playground?
We evaluated our bug hotels and wrote sentence about what we enjoyed.
Reminders
- Friday 05 May – Coronation celebrations
Your child can come to school wearing red, white and blue. - Reading records need to be returned every Thursday.
Super skippers
Here are the final results from the Year 4 skipping festival this week.
The Skipping School programme (for Year 2 and Year 4) is one of the ways we invest our PE Premium so we always like to check if the investment was worthwhile for the children.
Pupil feedback
I learnt lots of new skips. Now I can do fancy footwork and at first I had no clue what to do!
I enjoyed the skipping festival because we got to have a little bit of competition and skipping is great exercise.
I couldn’t do side straddle and now I have learnt how to do it.
I learnt different skips and I had a really good time at the festival.
I really enjoyed it because of all the new things I learnt.
It was good to do skipping in PE as well as other sports.
I learnt to have fun whilst exercising and winning doesn’t matter. Taking part was important.
Parent feedback
My son thoroughly enjoyed this event. He doesn’t normally do PE competitions so it was really good for the whole class to go. He was so proud of his two certificates.
Organiser feedback
Your Year 4s did an amazing job at the festival this morning.
Save the date – Wednesday 21st June
Wednesday 21st June is the date for our Year 2 skipping festival. It will take place at Leeds Trinity University and more details will be sent out shortly.
We are doing lots of practising at school and ropes are still available to buy (£3 at the office) to keep improving those skills at home.