Gardening Club
In November last year, we started our new “Gardening Club”! Three amazing parent volunteers and Miss Selman supervised a mixed age group of children during Thursday lunchtimes and we cleared out the Spiritual Garden ready for planting and planted over 300 spring bulbs. There is a lot more planting planned for this year, too. Thanks to the PTA, we have enough bulbs, plants, gloves and gardening equipment for everyone in the club. We are starting up again in March but between now and then there will be a lot of planning behind the scenes for another exciting projects.
ECO School
We are in the process of becoming an Eco School and as a part of this we are expanding our outdoor curriculum for the whole school. With funding from the PTA, we have already installed 8 large raised beds for vegetables, flowers, herbs and fruit. We have planted 9 fruit trees to plant in our new orchard and we will be building a large outdoor classroom round a fire pit and making the most of our little woodland area near the carpark. We are also adapting an outside storage area for all our equipment. We plan to have a dedicated area with water butts, compost bins, wormeries, a cold frame, a potting table and all the other resources needed for a whole class to have a lesson outside.
We want to create a lifelong interest in plants and the outdoor environment by giving every child the opportunity to plant, grow and harvest fruit and vegetables themselves. They will learn the annual growing cycles, how to compost and reuse and hopefully develop a love of gardening. With help from staff, parent volunteers, Nursling Men’s Shed, S. Wood Timber Merchants and many other local residents we are building something that children for many years to come will get to enjoy.
Volunteer Day
A BIG thanks to all the volunteers that turned up on a cold but sunny Sunday to help plant the trees, fill the raised beds and clear out the shed area. We are having another volunteer Sunday on February 13th from 12 -3pm. We need to get 7 tonnes of soil into the raised beds, so we need lots of volunteers, wheelbarrows and shovels. We will also be thinning out and making paths in the little woodland area near the carpark. The more people we have the quicker it will be so please come along and help for an hour or so. Children welcome, we have gloves etc for them but they will need to be supervised.
If you cannot make it but can lend us a wheelbarrow that would really help, too. Message Karen on 07963 781930 if you can help in any way.
Year R - Building Pirate Ships
This week, Year R embarked on a team pirate ship building challenge! The children showed us how good they are at sharing their ideas and listening to each other and this helped them to make decisions together that everyone was happy with. It was a pleasure to see how proud they were of their creations when they excitedly told the rest of their class about them. Well done, Year R!
Year 1/2 - Trip to the Library
This week Beech Class, Elm Class and Cedar Class walked all the way to Lordshill Library! We had a wonderful time looking at books. We went to share our Winter’s Child and Spring’s Child book. Then we got to look at all of the books and then the librarian called Liz read us a story about a cat that ate lots of food. We had the best time!
‘I got to choose a fairy book to borrow’- Gracie
‘I loved looking at all of the books’ – Charlie
‘I found a Harry Potter book and there was even a big painting of the Hogwarts Express on the wall!’-Louin
Written by Gracie and Charlie
Year 3/4 - The Vikings
This week in Year 3/4 we started our exciting new project on Vikings! The children started by drawing and labelling what they thought an ancient Viking looked and behaved like. A lot of children had the preconception that Vikings were just vicious warriors who rode dragons while wearing horned helmets! Through the session we learned that although they were tough and formidable fighters; the ancient Vikings were highly skilled sailors and farmers.
The children also sorted a timeline of important Viking historical events before researching how Viking invasions to the British Isles changed after 865 and the Great Heathen Army. The change, we discovered, was that pre 865, the Vikings staged short raids to grab riches and slaves but after this date the army was determined to stay and make parts of England their permanent home. We found that they wanted to do this because of the high quality farm land that was available on the British Isles.
Year 5/6 - Disolving Substances
This week the children in Year 5/6 have explored how substances can dissolve in water and although they seem to disappear, the substances are still present. We explored how we could separate salt and water from a solution and discovered that the crystals formed when the water evaporated were interesting and beautiful!
The children learnt how to write sentences using passive voice to add formal language structures to a newspaper report and we looked at how we could add informal language in the quotes.
In topic, we designed and created a paper mock up of our Eco-Friendly shelter. The aim is for them to protect our Lego test subjects from the elements our temperate climate can produce.
Look out for our real versions next week and see if they could withstand the testing.
On Friday afternoon, two teams of footballers went down to Mountbatten to represent our school in a Tournament and Festival mini-league. See the write up from our school sports reporters in the newsletter.
