World book day!
Today we celebrated reading in Year 2!
The children looked fantastic in their world book day outfits. We enjoyed talking about our favourite characters and books.
We started the day with an assembly celebrating the origins of world book day and listening to some of the teachers read extracts from their favourite books. Mr Wilks talked to us about how books can mean different things to people and how to spend the £1 book token.
Later in the morning, we enjoyed paired reading with Year 4. It was fantastic! all the children enjoyed sharing their favourite stories and reading aloud to a Year 4 child.
Finally, after playtime, we had a webinar with John Patrick Green – author of the Investigators books. We listened to how he creates the books and had a go at drawing some of the characters. The drawings were fantastic!
Help at home by discussing the activities your child has done today and looking at the free books they can buy with their £1 book token.
World Book Day!
Today was World Book Day! World Book Day is a day that celebrates books and reading all over the world. This year, the children were invited to dress up as their favourite character from a book and there were some fantastic outfits! We also spent some of our day discussing our favourite books and reading. Year 3 read with the Year 1 children. Take a look at some of them!
Year 3 were great with the younger ones and earned loads of choice chips for the class. Well done!
Science: How do we taste?
On Monday, we were joined by our visitors from the University of Leeds. This week they came to talk to us about how we taste. The children learnt that there are 5 different tastes. These are:
- Sweet
- Sour
- Salty
- Bitter
- Umami (savoury)
The scientific word for taste is GUSTATION.
The children then were able to try different foods that highlighted the different tastes.
Did you know that the nose and taste buds work together to tell you what taste and scent you are eating? Different parts of your tongue detect which taste it is.
Finally, they went on to look at the difference between whole foods and processed foods.
Help at home: Take a look in your food cupboards at home and discuss which foods are whole and which are processed. 
Safe Choices – Leeds United Foundation
Y6 welcomed Vicky from the Leeds United Foundation to talk about safe choices both online and offline.
We heard from some inspiring people who are from Leeds about the choices they’ve made in their lives and the positive impact it’s had on them.
There was an interactive quiz about each of the four sections:
- online safety (social media)
- anti-social behaviour
- gangs
- knife crime
Help at home by discussing the main thing your child learnt about each category.
Trip to York!
Today, Year 3 and 4 visited York to go to the Yorkshire Museum and to see the flood defences.
Yorkshire Museum had exhibitions that were perfect for us to link to our History and Science learning; Roman York and Mary Anning Rocks and Yorkshire’s Jurassic World!
Here’s some pictures of us exploring and learning about the artefacts!
Our second reason for visiting York was for the flood defences. York gets flooded quite easily after periods of heavy rainfall so they have built many flood defences around river to help the houses and buildings near. We’ll be learning about this during our Geography topic after Easter.
To no surprise, there were floods when we visited! Here’s what we saw:
We made sure to stay safe while walking through York and around the river by walking in pairs and behind the railings.
Help at home by asking your child one new fact that they learnt while at the museum! For example, I learnt about the different under water dinosaurs that existed millions of years ago.
02 February 2024
- buses
- boxes
- churches
- dishes
- clapping
- skipping
- running
- jumping
The children will be tested on these words next Friday 9th February.
Please encourage your child to try practise the words by putting their words in a sentence using our handwriting guide. Also, look at the spelling activities guide for some ideas to practise these words.
Living and Learning – I know some drugs that are harmful and how to stay safe.
Over the last 2 weeks, we have had a focus on drugs, how they can be harmful and how we can be safe around them.
Drugs can come in all different shapes and sizes but they all do change the way the body or mind works.
We had a focus on medicines like Calpol and household items like cleaning products. We discussed when we might need to take or use medicines and how we might use these items.
We decided that:
- We should only take medicine if we are unwell and need it.
- We should always ask an adult before we go near a medicine or cleaning product as they can be dangerous if not used correctly.
- Even adults need to read the instructions on the medicine or cleaning product.
- These items should be kept out of reach of young children.
For example, dishwasher tablets could look really like a sweet to a baby and they might put it in their mouth! Help at home by asking your child to help you keep these products in a safe place.
Living and Learning: I know what a drug is.
In Living and Learning, Year 5 have been learning what a drug is, why people use medicine and how vaccines can protect the population.
We defined a drug as ‘a substance that changes the way the body or mind works.’ Then, we moved on to focus how medicines can help:
- prevent someone from becoming ill or stop a disease from spreading
- help someone manage an ongoing health condition, such as asthma or diabetes
- help someone feel better and relieve pain, such as from a headache
- help the body recover from illness
To finish off, we played ‘the vaccination game’. This helped us to look at how different percentages of vaccinated people can affect the spread of diseases. We learnt that the more vaccinated people in a population, the less likely it is for someone to get the disease.
Art, art and more art!
After many weeks of learning and discussing the artwork of Kandinsky and Napaltjarri, Year 3 have designed and begun creating sculptures that are inspired by them!
First, they sketched and drew rough designs of the shapes, colours and patterns that they wanted to use.
Then, they began cutting their shapes. As you can see, lots of the children have chosen to have a mix of shapes. Kandinsky is well known for his concentric circles so we have been inspired to use circles too.
The next step was then to start decorating these shapes using oil pastels, chalks and eventually, wax resist! Some have chosen warm colours, complementary or cool colours. Napaltjarri uses a lot of warm colours while Kandinsky uses complementary.
Some of us are ready to start slotting these shapes together to make our sculpture three-dimensional. Come back next week to see our final pieces…
Help at home by identifying colours of everyday objects. What kind of colour is your blue wallpaper? How does that blue make me feel? What does it remind me?
Living and Learning: What is a feeling?
This week during Living and Learning, we talked about feelings.
What are feelings?
‘A feeling is our emotional state, or our reaction to something. Feelings are important because they help us to manage different situations and look after ourselves. Feelings and emotions are about our minds but we might
also experience them in our bodies.’
What feelings might we have?
We drew ourselves and thought about the different feelings that we might have during the day. For example, feeling sleepy in the morning, overjoyed at break time and determined during a test! Our feelings change throughout the day depending on our experiences.
How can we manage our feelings?
We decided what some good and not so good feelings might be and how we can manage these. Sometimes bad things happen and we need to have some self-care techniques to look after ourselves. Here’s some things that we thought would make ourselves feel good:
- talk to someone
- read a book
- have some quiet time
- get into bed
- take some deep breaths
- hug our teddies
- do some colouring
- go cycling
Feelings are normal and part of life but as long as we have these strategies in place, we will feel much better overall! Help at home by encouraging your child to practise some of these techniques when they are not feeling so good. Take some deep breaths, get some fresh or talk to someone!