Year 6 were challenged with the task of making a raft that would float. Our English lessons are based on The Explorer where the main characters make a raft to sail down the Amazon river to Manaus. Some were much more successful than others!

Year 1 are looking at plants this half term and we have been busy planting cress. We discussed what plants need to live and how we could observe the cress over time. The children then planted their cress seeds and wrote their first observation.

We have also been looking at wild plants that grow. We discussed what this means and then went on a wild plant hunt around the school grounds. The children spotted lots of wild plants on their walk.

Every Monday afternoon our Nursery and Reception children shall be learning in our wonderful school woods, exploring the woods and learning about the environment.

This week the children learnt about – trees. The children looked how high the trees were and learnt the features of the trees.

The children learnt that the trees body was called it’s trunk and the branches are the trees arms. The children explored how big the trunks were…

The children then learnt about the bark on a tree. The children thought that the trees bark was like the trees skin and the children felt it and described its texture; bumpy, scratchy, hard, smooth.

The children finished the session by making a bark rubbing of the tree.

The children in Year 5 and 6 have participated in two workshops this week teaching them about music and coding. They used the coding program makecode to design and create their own arcade game.

What a week!

We started the week with the Science Magician – Dr Matt Pritchard, the Curator of Wonder. He wowed us with experiments and illustions. Some of which we tried at home.

We were really lucky to have a presentation by Julianna Wood, a user Experience Designer who helped design a head mounted display for environmental awareness and situational assistance-for use in ground spacecraft processing and incorporation into the astronaut suit at NASA.

On Tuesday, it was Science outdoors day where we were given several challenges to complete.

Wednesday was Mighty Machine Day. We made “Brush Monsters” and raced them. Some monsters didn’t last the full distance of the race!

Michelle Galvin from The Christie talked to us about being a researcher. She explained how they take blood samples and test treatments on them.

On Wednesday, we were challenged to program Artibot so that he could travel the same path that light does through a periscope. When we coded Artibot, we had to enter the measurement in millimetres that we wanted him to travel. It took several attempts to do this.

We also met with Ellie Hallworth who is an aero-engineer. She described what her role involved and what type of activities she was involved in.

Naomi from Jodrell Bank taught us about the universe. Did you know it has expanded over time?

Finally, Mr Caiazzo (Cesare’s dad) told us all about his job with SKA (Square Kilometre Array). This is a network of telescopes and antenna in the UK, South Africa and Western Australia. The parts are manufactured all over the world and brought together at the site. He talked to us about how the Commodore 64 inspired him to become involved in engineering.

Year 1 are having great fun joining in with the Music Trust workshop. We created our own pictures using Chrome music lab and then learnt all about how to change the sounds and colours.

This week Year 2 are joining in the Love Music Trust workshop. We are learning how to use Chrome Music Lab.

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On a Monday afternoon Reception and Nursery work together to find out about our outside environment. This Monday we went on a walk around the school grounds to spot the signs of spring.

The children worked on their learning and development in the area of Understanding The World. They commented and asked questions about aspects of the natural world, we talked about some of the things they observed with the plants, the children developed an understanding of growth, decay and changes over time – looking closely at the similarities, patterns and change.

The children found flowers starting to grow, blossom starting to show on some of the trees and green buds on other trees.

Class 2 designed and made their own pinball machines using everyday materials

Our week continued…. we made pinball machines and then we conducted a nappy investigation.

This week Nursery and Reception have been learning about the female scientist – Maria Merian. She discovered that caterpillars turn into butterflies. The children shared the story of The Hungry Caterpillar to learn about the life cycle.

We have been on a bug hunt looking for minibeasts in our outdoor area:

The children couldn’t find many minibeasts…so we thought we needed to do something about it…so we made a bug house to encourage minibeasts to come to our outdoor area.

Throughout the week we have been learning about minibeasts in our outdoor area:

As part of our Mighty Machine Day we investigated mechanisms such as levers and linkages…look at what we made.