Skiddaw

In Skiddaw Class we have been thinking about how our words, as well as our actions, can upset other people.  Our morning involved playing some circle time games and listening to one of our favourite Mr. Men stories,  We also created life-size silhouettes within in which we wrote examples of unkind things people might say to each other.   Each comment was then transferred into tearing away part of the heart.  Soon the heart was badly damaged and beyond repair.  We  considered how even the smallest unkind words can actually do so much harm to the people around us.  Skiddaw’s message – think before you speak – words can hurt just as much as sticks and stones!

Following our berry picking on Monday, we have now made Autumn Jelly. We added some of Phoebe’s apples to the berries and rose hips we picked. Here is a copy of the recipe in case you’d like to make some too.  Autumn Jelly Recipe

Here we are eating it! It tasted just like jam, it was delicious and sweet.

We’ve been out and about in the sunshine exploring the school grounds and the wider village to find examples of seeds. We know that plants disperse their seeds using clever tricks to spread them far and wide. They use the wind, water, catch a ride on an animal, burst or shake, drop and roll or disguise the seed in a juicy berry.

We were especially looking out for berries. Some are only fit for birds and other animals to eat. A few special ones are good for humans to cook and then eat! We picked some blackberries, rowan berries and hawthorn berries as well as a few rose hips. We will be using these to make some Autumn Jelly.

We came back into school and sorted our finds. Finally we made careful observational drawings of our treasures.

We are learning about seeds and how they disperse or spread. Sycamore seeds disperse by spinning to the ground and are like mini helicopters. We have been making different types of helicopter spinners. We could change the colour, the number or type of paper clips, change the paper, or the size like small or big. To be fair we only changed one thing from our control helicopter and we tested them by flying them in the school hall.

Here are some photos of us doing that!

The new Skiddaw Class have been learning about nouns – the common ones and the proper ones. We went on a noun hunt, labelling lots of things in our classroom including ourselves, of course! A quick test for a noun – if you can put ‘a’ or ‘the’ in front of the word then it could be a noun.

Year 2, 3 and 4 children have been working on a special Lego project in collaboration with C-STEM this term. Tim Farron MP came to see and hear what the children have been working on. Over the past 10 weeks they have been building different computer controllable Lego robots each with particular mechanisms that move, rotate and roam around. Taking inspiration from the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing, the 5 teams have been building their own moon bases incorporating areas for energy, water and air capsules. They also rebuilt and modified one of the robots and programmed it ready to demonstrate to visitors. This project has been a wonderful springboard for true teamwork and the children have showed resilience when things haven’t gone to plan. They have been patient with one another and discovered new strengths and talents in each other.

Tim said: “It was great to see some brilliant teamwork and some real imagination from the pupils in their designs, thinking of the things you’d need to have to sustain life on the moon. They also had some really clever use of robotics and computers in their projects, proving that Levens Primary School is home to some of our budding engineers of the future.”

Thank you very much to Tim Farron for coming along to view our work and to Fran Ward of C-STEM for including us in this amazing project.