Welcome to our Year 3 and Year 4 Squirrels Class
Our Class Teacher is Mrs Hillier and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Leatham and Mrs Sweeney
Click on the links to find out more about our class:
Autumn 2 term newsletter Squirrels 2023-2024
Autumn 1 Newsletter Squirrels 2023-2024
Squirrels Parents curriculum Meeting 2023-24
Spring 1 term newsletter Squirrels 2023-24
Summer Term
Our Key Question this term is "What is a world without colour?"
Historic workshop - The Maya
We learnt about Mayan Gods, Mayan maths, looked at artifacts and made Mayan pots.
R.E.
As part of our learning about the impact of Pentecost we looked at art works. After discussions about symbols and different forms of art we all made our own piece of art work.
Sir Harold Hillier Gardens
We had an amazing trip to Sir Harold Hillier Gardens. We were focussing on art in nature. We all made our own nature diaries that we can draw and write in. We all drew an object that had been found by a friend that we had not seen so we had to draw by thinking about how it felt! We then drew the same object using continuous line drawing and finally observing the natural object carefully. We wrote some poetry after forest bathing. We walked through the grounds admiring all the trees and plants learning more about these. Then we matched colours with the flowers. Finally we made our own art and frames using natural objects found on the ground.
D-Day
We learnt more about D-Day. We watched some veterans of D-Day talking about their experience. It made us all think about how lucky we all are. We designed our own D-Day medal.
Salisbury Schools Mini Marathon
Well done to all the children who took part in the mini marathon.
Breaking
Due to Breaking coming to the Olympics this year we were taught how to do some break dancing. It was great fun!
Art
We are thinking about sculptures this term. We started our lessons doing a continuous line drawing using our dominant hand and then our non-dominant hand. We then drew nests using our own choice of pens, pencils, graphite sticks and charcoal. We painted nests using materials we found out in the playground.
Science
We are learning about plants. We are conducting some experiments to see how air, water and light affect plants. We have identical plants next to the experimental ones so that we can properly see the effects.
Butterflies
We have watched our tiny caterpillars go through their life cycle process and turn into beautiful butterflies. We have now set them free.
D.T. Pneumatic Toys
We designed and made our own pneumatic toys. We had to follow a design brief - they had to be suitable for Year 1 children so we needed to make them fun and colourful. We could use any shape or size box we wanted. Some of us had to solve the problem of how to make the box open when we had chosen a very large box and quite a small balloon! There was a lot of good discussions between peers about how this could be done. We then shared them with the Foxes Class. They loved seeing the balloons make the boxes open!
We decided that these toys would not have been as interesting if they had not had any colour on them.
Step into the NHS competition
Some children chose to enter the Step into the NHS competition. The entries have been sent off. Good luck to you all!
Reading for Pleasure
Now it is the summer term we are enjoying using our outside area, as well as our beanbags, for reading for pleasure.
Science
We have been learning about rocks and soils. We have learnt about different types of rock, how fossils are formed and different types of soil.
We have done experiments to see which soil is the best draining soil and also put our soil into water, shaken it and left all the sediments to settle and separate.
Spring Term
Easter
Some of us entered the school Easter bonnet and Easter garden competition. Below are some of the entries.
Milestones Museum
We visited Milestones Museum to revisit our learning on how children's lives have changed. It was a fantastic place to visit.
Science Week
We started the week by looking at whether fruit slowed down the process of jelly setting. We had to design a way to record our results and then check the jellies regularly. We used a control jelly which set the quickest. The jellies with the fresh pineapple in them didn't set at all! However, the tinned pineapple, peaches and raspberries all set not long after our control one.
We then looked at rocks to decide whether they would easily erode and what uses they could have for us. We used vinegar, water and a nail.
We had a visitor in who helped us with the circulation in our bodies and did a stomp rocket experiment, looking at whether the amount of water in the bottle made a difference to how far it travelled!
World Book Day 2024
We all dressed up as animals because we are enjoying at the "Interview with ...." books by Andy Seed. We made bookmarks, had a house quiz, painted animal plates and had our own class quiz. We read our own mixed up fairy tale stories to the other classes in school.
Kelly Simm
Kelly Simm came to visit the school. We all did a round of exercises with her before she spoke about her journey in gymnastics. She told us we should all follow our dreams and work hard to achieve them.
Art
We have been learning about still life. We used what we have learnt to draw flowers for our Mothering Sunday cards.
The Bridge came in to talk to us about how Light, Water and Bread relate to God and Jesus.
Science
We have been learning about States of matter. We have found out the properties of solids, liquids and gases. We have done experiments with ice cubes to see what affect different temperatures of water had on them. We timed how long our finger took to dry on it's own and with us blowing on it. We also looked at how the water cycle worked using a glass jar, ice, foil and warm coloured water.
On-line safety day
We were learning to understand that technology's design can influence people's choices. We learnt that persuasive design is what companies use to try to persuade us to use their apps and purchase things from them. We then thought about how the internet influences us and how it can change people's thoughts, feelings and behaviour both positively and negatively.
We had a taster session of badminton. Great fun!
Number Day
We all dressed up in numbers and did fun maths activities to raise money for the NSPCC.
Christmas
Christmas sewing. We all designed and made a felt hanging decoration. Our brief was to use a patch to applique onto our decoration and to use cross stitch either to sew the patch on or as decoration.
We made Christmas biscuits. We had to read the recipe and follow it in the correct order. We used maths because we had to weigh out all the ingredients accurately. Mrs Hillier and Mrs Sweeney put our biscuits in the oven for us.
Saint Nicholas
Fundraising
We all took part in fund-raising for Children in Need and Alzheimers.
Anti-bullying week
We all participated in anti-bullying week. We wore our odd socks and invented our own anti-bullying heroes.
