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.

We started the day making Christmas cards based on Jen Aranyi’s art.

Our classroom has been gingerbread men, so we made lots of decorations.

Rudolph made an appearance and we ran around the playground doing our best reindeer gallops.

Christmas dinner was delicious with gingerbread men as pudding.

The afternoon was filled with whacking a piñata and pass the parcel.

We finished the day with a wonderful box of pressies to share with our family.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

To kick off Anti bullying week we have worn odd socks! Some children confessed to wearing odd socks most days!!!

Kai explained to the class how they celebrate Diwali, which is the festival of light, at home. For Diwali, Indians light candles, light fireworks and eat sugary sweets! The story of Diwali started when Sita was kidnapped by an eight headed demon who disguised himself as an old man. Then her husband Rama met the monkey god Hanuman and killed the demon by shooting him in the heart with a sacred arrow. To celebrate Diwali, Mrs Barnes baked us some scrumptious butterfly cakes.

Today we paid our respects whilst observing a 2 minutes silence. Angelica also read a poem she had written

Today in Year 6 we have learnt all about blood. We started with plasma, which is yellow in colour. When we added the red blood cells it turned the blood red. These carry oxygen, nutrients and water around the body. Next we added white blood cells, whose job it is to take the waste away. Finally, we put platelets in the mixture. These clot our blood and heal wounds.