Living and Learning: I know how to be a good friend
In RSE (relationships and sex education), we’ve been thinking about different relationships we have with people and how we can have positive relationships. In particular, we focused on friendships and the influences they have on us. In groups, we acted out scenarios where friends are pressuring others into certain situations by using a range of techniques: put downs, rejection from a group or situation, huddle, looks and giving reasons to do or not do things.
We followed this up by discussing what feelings the person being pressured might have in the scenario and how they could deal with it in the best way. We all agreed that telling a trusted adult is a really good idea.
Christmas celebrations
As we approach the final week of term, it’s time to get Christmassy, but as you know, it’s going to be very different.
We can’t invite you in to share any Christmas celebrations so instead we’re going to share Christmas with you in a different way. From Tuesday 15 December, there will be a video posted on Class News of your child’s class taking part in some Christmas celebrations. We know that this doesn’t compare to what we normally do but we hope that it helps in some way.
During the final week of term, there will be a virtual pantomime performance that children will be able to watch at school. Thanks to the PTA who have paid for this.
Christmas lunch will be on Tuesday 15 December and all children will get a Christmas cracker!
On Friday 18 December, there will be Christmas parties in classrooms. Children can come to school in non-uniform. There will be some goodies coming home which have kindly been bought by the company who provide and maintain our photocopiers and printers.
It’s a very different Christmas this year but we’ve worked so hard to stay safe that we don’t want to spoil it now.
We hope that you have a happy and healthy, enjoyable and restful time with your families over the Christmas holidays.
Virtual after school clubs
Aimed mainly at primary-aged children, a different theme has been assigned for each day of the club – Adventure Monday, Tuesday Play, Wild Wednesday, Thinking Thursday and Fun Friday.
Find out more: https://www.youthsporttrust.org/AfterSchoolSportClub
Living and Learning: I recognise emotions in myself and others
Recognising emotions is an important first step in helping us manage our emotions. For example, it’s ok to feel angry, as long as we try to manage it in a way that doesn’t negatively affect other people. It’s great to feel proud as long as it doesn’t lead to showing off.
This week, we played an emotions game with a friend. Whichever emotion we landed on, we had to talk about a time when we had felt like that. We followed this by creating our emotions wheel- drawing pictures or patterns to represent an emotion.
Virtual Tour: Leeds City Museum
As part of our history topic, we’ve been learning about ancient Egypt. At the moment, we’re unable to go on a school trip, so we took a virtual tour around Leeds City Museum instead. We saw a real-life mummy and found out all about mummification.
It was made more interactive by Miss Beatson asking some children to put their hand in a bag which had something wet and soggy inside to represent the organs; to hook wool out a box to represent pulling the brains out of a nose; and smell spices which were used to scent the body during mummification.
We followed up the virtual tour by writing a set of instructions: How to mummify a body!
Balancing act
This week in PE, we’ve been exploring different balances with a partner and using a bench. We had to make sure we could hold our balances for three seconds. Some were harder than others!
Healthy eating assemblies
The whole federation joined together to take part in an assembly about healthy eating last week. It was very exciting to see the other classes in the other schools! We had these booked in for Health Week last summer, which had to be cancelled.
The Leeds Health and Wellbeing Team delivered the assembly where we learnt all sorts of interesting things about keeping healthy and finished off with an interactive quiz.
Living and Learning: Odd Socks Day
Well done to everyone who came to school in odd socks today. It was a great way to start Anti-bullying Week! We talked about what the odd socks represented and the importance of respecting differences and treating everybody equally. We watched an assembly to show what Odd Socks Day is about. Click here to watch it.
Getting creative with clay
This week, we’ve been enriching our history topic with some clay work. We looked carefully at some pictures of stone age jewellery and how it advanced throughout the bronze and iron age.
We decided to use clay to recreate some jewellery from the stone age. We practised shaping the clay and created different shapes including bone and teeth shapes. Then we practised using a variety of tools to create patterns and add detail to each bead.
After that, we mixed some paints using similar colours available during this period. We’re looking forward to painting our jewellery to create our finished product.
Hunter-gatherers
This week, we’ve been enjoying our history topic all about the Stone, Bronze and Iron Age. One of the words we’re learning from our history vocabulary list is hunter-gatherer. We found out that hunter-gatherers were pre-historic nomadic groups who would move around searching for food for basic survival.
Hunter-gatherers would rely on hunting and fishing animals and gathering for wild vegetation and other nutrients like honey, for food.
The early hunter-gatherers used simple tools. During the Stone Age, sharpened stones were used for cutting in order to hunt and gather.
So, we decided to become hunter-gatherers in our school grounds but focused on the gathering of plants!
We found out that there were lots of plants that hunter-gatherers would eat/drink that are not as popular today. Some of these include dandelions, beechnuts, acorns, nettles and hawthorns.