Our Year 3 and 4 class is called Squirrels

 

2021-2022 Summer Term

Welcome to the summer term!

Our Key Line of Enquiry is What if there wasn’t any colour?

Race for Life

We have taken part in Race for Life – racing money for cancer research.

JUBILEE

We have all been celebrating the amazing life of Queen Elizabeth II and her achievements over the past 70 years.  We have been researching her life and writing a biography.   We thought about her family tree and how people are related to each other.

We helped to make our Christian Values in wooden mosaics – we learnt about different types of wood, how to tell the age of a tree, why trees are important for bees and that trees are habitat for fish too!  Did you know that Dendrochronology is the science of telling how old trees are?  Phytoplankton are tiny sea-living plants/algae that produce at least 50% of the world’s Oxygen?  Bristlecone Pine are the oldest trees in the world, over in California. The oldest of them are around 6000 years old!  

We had a procession and then a banquet, all wearing red, white and blue or royal clothing.

We entered our art competition painting a portrait of the Queen from the 1970s and 1980s.

We also made cork coasters using a printing technique before painting with acrylic paint.

Mini marathon

Congratulations to everyone, parents and children, who ran in the mini marathon.   You all did so well and we are very proud of you.  

Art – Fruit tiles.

We have made clay fruit tiles.  We did some continuous line drawing, used graphite and then drew the fruit.  After this we drew the tiles and mixed water colours to match the colours.  We practiced using clay tools to make different marks before we rolled out a slab of clay.   We used part of our drawing to go onto the tile.  We then used acrylics to paint them.

Science – How can we help prevent harmful microbes spreading

We did an experiment to show how far airborne droplets travel and discover the best thing to do if we cough or sneeze to help to stop the spread of diseases.  We discovered that the best thing to do is to cough or sneeze into a tissue, put the tissue in the bin and wash our hands.

Science – Water Cycle

We made our own mini water cycles.

 

Spring Term

Our Key Line of Enquiry is Is our world unique?    

Easter garden and hat competition

Well done to everyone who entered the Easter garden and hat competition – your entries were amazing.

DT

We have been thinking about pneumatics in DT.  We designed and made a toy using pneumatics.  We thought about doing a thumbnail sketch and an exploded diagram before we made them.  We were proud of our finished toys.

Salisbury Cathedral

We had a wonderful visit to Salisbury Cathedral.  We were excited to be going on a coach and going out with all our friends!  Many of us had seen the outside of the Cathedral but not visited the inside. 

We had a tour of the Cathedral and on each stop thought about a bit of the Easter story.  We also made bead strings to help us tell the Easter story.  We waved palm leaves saying “Hosanna” and after writing down our hopes and dreams we designed Easter egg prayer cards.  

We learnt some interesting facts about the Cathedral.  We were shown how the water level under the Cathedral is measured to ensure that there is just the right amount – too little and the sluice gates have to be opened and too much the sluice gates have to be shut!   We learnt that the Cathedral is laid out in the shape of a cross.

Kurling

We had the opportunity to take part in a class Kurling competition.   We learnt how to play and encouraged each of our team members to do their best.

Art

We have been looking at the work of Quentin Blake.  We made Mothering Sunday cards in his style.

British Science Week

This week we have had two virtual author visits.  The first was from the 3 engineers.  They talked about their jobs in engineering and the book they have written about litter.  The second was with Vashti Hardy, who talked about her fascination with science, and a scientist, who works looking at Mars.   Both talked about what they subjects they had enjoyed at school and how this had helped them to follow their dreams.

We also learnt that scientists think they can tell the age of sharks by their length.  We did an experiment to see if we could do the same with children in our class.  We discovered that we couldn’t!  We looked at some optical illusions which made our brains hurt!  We used the science of engineering to try to build the tallest tower of spaghetti and marshmallows.   We also made slime and oobleck. 

Red Nose Day

We all wore mufti to raise money for Red Nose Day.  We also told a lot of jokes to each other.

Geography

To finish our learning on mountains, volcanoes and earthquakes we made board games.  We came up with different ideas and then played the games that others had made.  Some of us wrote some tricky questions on the three natural features! 

PE

This term we are learning to play tennis.

World Book Week 2022

We celebrated World Book Day this year by having a poetry week.   We started the week by looking at the fantastic poem “I opened a book” by Julia Donaldson.  We read poetry, wrote poetry and turned our poem into a face!  We all decorated a book plate to go in the poetry book that school gave us to take home.  We also learnt Wynken, Blynken and Nod by Eugene Field so that we could perform it to the school.

Art

We have been learning about typography.   We then used what we had learnt to help make our 3d maps for our adventure story.  We also used just black paint and water to create different landscapes where our sky ship adventures either started or finished.

Maths

We have been learning to do column subtraction.   To ensure we really understand when and where we borrow from and how we write this correctly we always start practically.

 

Number Day 2022

We wore numbers to school today and took part in activities that show using and applying our maths skills to raise funds for the NSPCC.   We did times tables art and made biscuits, as well as taking part in the whole school Number Day quiz!

Chinese New Year

We learnt about the Chinese New Year.  Did you know that if you are born this year you might be good at acting, be an author or a lawyer?   People born in the Year of the Tiger are confident and courageous!  We looked carefully at pictures of Tigers and drew our own using oil pastels.  We then put a paint wash over before scrunching our paper up (once dry), putting over an oil wash before washing it off!   We think our pictures are fantastic.    We also made a healthy noodle dish using vegetables, garlic and ginger.   We all helped to chop the vegetables.   It was delicious – some of us had two helpings!

Reading

We have introduced an extra Reading for Pleasure time – half an hour on Friday mornings where we can choose what we read, who we read with, where we read and how we read.  Some of us love sharing books and others like to read quietly.   We can bring books from home or choose to read books we have a school.  We can read magazines, manuals, comics or books.   We are all enjoying this time because we are all enthusiastic readers!

 

Science

We made edible layers of soil to learn which order the layers are in!

In science we are looking at rocks and soils.   We discovered that some rocks erode easily and some rocks are permeable by doing experiments.   We have been using Venn diagrams and Carroll diagrams to sort them.

 

Autumn Term

Our Key Line of Enquiry is What does a hero look like?

Christmas jumper day

We all wore our Christmas jumpers to raise money for Save the Children and took part in a Christmas dash around the playing field.

 

Christmas cooking

We made Christmas biscuits.  We had to work in groups to read the recipe, weigh out the ingredients and follow the instructions to make the biscuits.  Mrs Hillier helped by putting them in and taking them out of the oven!

Christmas Stockings

We looked at different stockings to think about why we liked them.  After practising different sewing stitches, learning how to add buttons and ribbons, we designed our own stockings.  One of the hardest jobs was threading our needles but we all managed.  We then cut out our patterns, added our embellishments and sewed the two parts of the stocking together. 

Christmas plates

We designed our own Christmas plates – they are all amazing!

Calendars

We made our own tree printing block to make our calendars.

Elf day

We have taken part in Elf Day to support research into alzheimers.

Light of the World.

The Bridge came in to help us understand how Jesus is the Light of the World.  We watched the Darkness to Light clip from Salisbury Cathedral and talked about how we felt about darkness and light.  We suggested that you need light to guide you, it also gives you warmth and you can get energy from the sun to power your lights at home.  

We discovered that light has no shadow!

We found out that the four Gospels (good news) were written in different ways.  Matthew wrote for the Jews, Mark for the Romans, Luke wrote in great detail and John wrote about what Jesus said and did.  We looked at Jesus’ life timeline to discover that his life started before he was born and continues now into eternity.

We made collars to put round tea lights to remind us of all we have learnt – Jesus is the Light of the World.

Our two stars of the day linked light and Jesus’ life timeline to the Lords Prayer!   “The Power and the Glory” being energy and “for ever and ever” being eternity.

Dragon dens

To help with our instruction writing we made some dragon dens at home.  Aren’t they fantastic!

Children in Need

We all got our Strictly sparkle on for Children in Need.

Anti-bullying week: One kind word

We are all wearing odd socks to school this week for anti-bullying week.   We have also made brown colour wheels to show that all browns are not the same but they are all brown!   We have also designed our own hero, decided what their super powers are and what they stand up for.   We have talked about how one kind word can start a chain reaction.

Remembrance Day 

We wrote on poppy leaves who we were thinking about on remembrance day.

Diwali

We learnt about Diwali on 4th November and made some diva lamps.

 

Young Writers

Three of our Year 4 children received certificates from the Rotary Club for their entries into the Young Writer competition last year.   Congratulations to them!

 

Teaching Live

We have been taking part in Teaching Live this term with Pie Corbett.   We have been writing poems and uploading them onto teachinglive.net.   You can see our work by visiting teachinglive.net, scrolling down and clicking on the Newton Tony school tag.  An example of one of our poems is below:

Feathers

What are light?  A feather from a beautiful blue bird, a sharpened pencil on the ground and paper flying in the air.

What are heavy?  Doors  opening and shutting, a mattress lying on a bed and some burning metal on concrete .

What are hard?  A long piece of wood, a large wooden chair and a toasty radiator in the cold kitchen.

What are soft? A comfy blanket lining on a worm cosy smooll bed, comfy worm clothes in a draw and a dog’s warm fur.

Harvest

We made a Harvest Sheaf loaf for our service in the church.

 

We also wrote prayers for our Harvest service.

Dear God,

Thank for our world.

Thank you for the fields, trees and rivers, that are part of our world that allow us to grow our fruit and vegetables.  Thank you for trees that give us apples and pears, for bushes that provide blackberries and raspberries and for fields that provide wheat.

Thank for the sunshine and the rain to grow the crops.

Thank you for our wonderful world,

Amen

 

Dear God,

Thank you for our farmers who look after animals and grow our crops.

Thank you for people, machines and animals who harvest our crops.

Thank you for people who look after the machinery.

Thank you for fishermen who catch our sea food.

Thank you for sailors who deliver the food to all different parts of our world.

Amen

 

Science

This term we were thinking about forces and magnets.  We thought about pushes and pulls, how forces work on different surfaces and the force needed to pull different weights.  We discovered which materials were magnetic and which were not before exploring how magnets behaved towards each other to understand that magnets have two poles.  Finally, in groups we invented our own educational magnetic game.

 

Dragons!

The Year 4s found a dragon-fruit outside our classroom.  We are reading a book about a boy who hatched a dragon from a dragon-fruit so we put it on our windowsill.   One morning the children came in to discover it had hatched and a tiny dragon was sitting high up on our window.

Wilderness Warriors

We have been taking part in Wilderness Warriors.  We have made clay creatures, built them a home and made our own dens.

 

Below are our expectations for the class returning to school in September 2021

Expectations September 21

We will be reading many wonderful books this year.  Please see the letter below with details of some of them.

Squirrels book letter