Spring Curriculum

Spring Curriculum - Magnificent Monarchs!

This term, we will be learning all about kings, queens and castles. We will be using lots of sources in history lessons to tell us all about significant monarchs. Using this information, we will then pick our favourite monarch to make a castle for them to fit in with our art lessons where we will be learning about sculptor Barbara Hepworth. This will encourage our designing and thinking critically skills. Our vehicle will also be used for our descriptive writing in English where we will be writing character descriptions about kings, queens, princes and princesses.

Today, we played a game of guess the character! One of us stood at the front and was describing a character using sentences like 'my character has long, blonde hair' and the rest of us put our hands up to guess! This was a lovely, engaging way to encourage children's use of adjectives to describe and also helped develop their imaginations

We were learning all about the weather in winter and spring in our geography lesson this week. We made a list of the weather we knew all about in these seasons and used this to write our own weather reports! We watched a real one on the news and then made our own. We had great fun listening to the theme tune and engaging with our audience. One of us even said 'It'll be cold outside because it's winter! If you're going out make sure you've got your coats guys!'

On Friday afternoon, some of us did an art activity with Mr Adamson. We used our knowledge of Barbara Hepworth's abstract sculptures to make our own out of playdough. We had a lovely time getting hands on and using our imaginations. Some of us came up with some really abstract ideas and thought of lots of different things our sculptures could look like.

Today, we spent some time researching Henry VIII as one of our significant individuals from history. We learnt some key facts about him but our favourites were that he chopped some of his wives' heads off and that he was very fat! We then made a mind map of key facts we could remember and had a go at drawing him.

Today in computing, we recapped our learning from last lesson about how to use the paint software on the computers - we can now confidently use the pen, paintbrush, spray paint and undo tools! We then looked at some artwork created by Piet Mondrian and decided it was abstract art that used shapes and lines and was filled using primary colours. We then had a go at making our own Mondrian style art on paint! We loved being artists and experimenting with the computers. 

This week, it was Children's Mental Health Week. The theme this year was 'Let's Connect'. In our PSHE lesson we talked about what mental health is and how it can be affected. We came up with some ideas about what we could do to cheer ourselves up and who we can talk to if we feel sad. We talked about what connecting with someone means and we decided it was who our friends are and who we can talk to about things. We made some things for displays around the classroom to remind us of who we connect with and that as a whole class, we fit together. 

Today, we held our class liturgy based on the theme of forgiveness. We planned it last week in class and Miss Evans found all of the readings we needed and prepared the prayer table. We used the Parable of the Prodigal Son during our liturgy to help us think about things we have done that we have been forgiven for. We also thought about how much the Father loved the Son in the story and reflected on all of the people we love and how we can show them that we love them even when we do the wrong things. We wrote down all of the people we love on a love heart and some of us wrote down the ways we are going to show them that we love them like the Father loved the Son in our parable.

Today in DT, we finished making our puppets! We have learnt all about joining fabrics by stapling, glueing and pinning. After that, we designed our puppets, used a template to cut them out of felt and joined them together. Today was the last step in the making process - decorating! We based our puppet designs on characters from Cinderella and we think they look fab! We really enjoyed being creative this afternoon.

On Wednesday this week, we started our new maths unit. We are learning about length and height. As our starter activity, we used cubes to measure our feet! When we found out how many cubes long our feet were, we compared the lengths of everyone's feet and found who had the longest and shortest feet. We also learnt the difference between height and length.

Today, we took our puppets home! We loved making them and we thought this linked really well to our vehicle 'Magnificent Monarchs' as our puppets were all based on the fairytale 'Cinderella'. We used descriptive language throughout this process during planning, designing and making which helped consolidate our English learning. We really enjoyed being creative and can't wait to see what our next DT project is!