Skiddaw

Exploring Heaves Farm

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Skiddaw and Scafell class enjoyed a fascinating time exploring farming today at Heaves Farm. We walked up briskly and arrived perfectly timed to be whisked away to the far reaches of the farm. We learnt all about the ways farmers and their animals provide for us – such as chickens, sheep, cows and pigs. We’ve walked inside the milking parlour and the cow shed, watched hour-old calves and learnt how robotics, machinery and IT keep the farmer in touch with their animals 24/7. There were also a myriad of other interesting farming and country related stations where we met spinners, veg growers, butchers, vets, sheep shearers, sheep dogs and their owners and dry stone wallers to name just a few. Sincere thanks to all the members and volunteers of the Westmorland County Agricultural Society and Roger, Carole and Gary Mason for opening their farm up to us. We’ve come back to school full of facts and insights into how farming touches everyone’s life everyday.

Outdoor Learning with Skiddaw Class

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What a wonderful afternoon we enjoyed in our woodland area.  We spent our time developing a range of skills in the outdoors including problem solving, communication, resilience, negotiation.   We exercised our creative talents making small-world environments and by creating images using only natural materials.  We also enjoyed a treasure hunt!

 

Pizza+Canoeing=Fab Day!

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Canoeing across to an island on Lake Windermere was made even more fun with lots of splashing from the waves, and lots from each other, but we were all dressed for the occasion and we made it in style! After a bit of exploring, we patiently made our own pizzas adding a wide variety of toppings lovingly prepared with mushrooms, ham, anchovies, salami, peppers, tomato and lashings of cheese. Once we had returned to the shore many splashed and played in the chilly water – sorry no pictures of that as we were having too much fun! Thank you to Phil, Pete and Chris for taking us – definitely a day to remember.

Busy Bees

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To mark UN World Environment Day 2019, we focused on bees and the essential job they do in the world. Having started with this rhyming story The Beeman – we explored facts about bees and how they live. We then explored tessellating hexagons to create our own hives and added a queen bee, drones, worker bees and house bees.

UN World Environment Day 2019

 in Bowfell / Scafell / Skiddaw / Whole School by

Every year the 5th June is marked as the United Nations World Environment Day. This is a day to question what contribution you are making to reduce the catastrophic footprint humans make on our very precious planet; before it’s too late.

The theme for this year is air pollution.  Did you know that 90% of people around the globe are breathing polluted air each day and many children die each year because of air pollution.

Following a whole school assembly on Tuesday morning, each class has been exploring climate issues.    Look out for more posts soon to see what we’ve been up to.

 

Knex Crazy!

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Thanks to FOLS, Skiddaw class enjoyed a fantastic Knex morning exploring maths, engineering and team work all mixed together! We learnt about how triangles are a stable and sturdy shape and that constructing things reinforced by triangles makes them more successful. We had competitions to see which team could build the highest sturdy tower and which team could build a helmet that fitted well and had a ‘special feature’. Our creativity and problem solving skills were certainly given a workout and Fran, our session leader who works all over the country, spoke very highly of all team’s perseverance, great ideas and determination. Well done Skiddaw – it was fascinating watching you at work and your teachers were really proud of you all.

Actual Size

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Just how big is a crocodile? What about a tiger, or the world’s largest spider? Can you imagine a tongue that is 60 centimetres long, or an eye that is bigger than your head?

Some facts and figures don’t tell the whole story. We have read this stunning book where Steve Jenkins illustrates animals both large and small at actual size, and that is what he named his book! We used the fact files for inspiration to draw out the actual size of animals in chalk on the playground today. See us here at work.

New Playground Equipment

 in Bowfell / Scafell / Skiddaw / Whole School by

This week, The School Council have been distributing the new playtime equipment that they have purchased on behalf of their friends so that we can be more active and have more fun at playtimes.

The items have been bought using funds raised by the School Council at events like our disco and our Afternoon Tea during the spring term.

The School Council worked together as a team carefully selecting equipment that they thought everyone would enjoy.

Thank you to everyone that has supported our fundraising events and well done School Council.

The Book Bus visits Levens

 in Bowfell / Scafell / Skiddaw / Whole School by

The Book Bus visited us today and the younger pupils had a lovely time, hearing the librarian read us a story and we all choose a book to borrow. This is a fantastic way of sourcing new reading material for school and the selection of new books is second to none! Thank you to the wonderful Library Service for all you offer to us.

Are we faster than Usain Bolt?

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In maths today we were learning about measuring in metres. We found out that the great Usain Bolt could run 100m in just under 10 seconds.

This was a challenge we couldn’t resist – we have been exploring how far we can run in 10 seconds. When we first tried it took us only 8 seconds to run all the way across the longest side of the playground – this was a problem! So we decided to measure how far we could run in 5 seconds and then double our measurements to tell us how far in we might be able to run in 10.

Here are the measurements for 5 seconds we recorded in the playground. Can you see any that are the same? Can you see any longer distances or shorter distances? Next, we will be doubling these to find out our distances.