Our trip to Lotherton Hall last week was absolutely spectacular. It was a wonderful sunny day when we arrived and the children had a workshop in the main manor house with Florence Nightingale. She told us about her life and then had us complete some activities, healing a teddy bear like a nurse and looking at Victorian objects from her lifetime. Then we went for our break and explored the grounds until we finally arrived at the animal house. We saw many tropical birds including flamingos and penguins!

This week after a lot going on (Sports Day, tests) we finally arrived at our next Maths topic. Position and direction. The children whizzed through the lesson and looked at word that cover position and direction to help them make a real life structure accurately from instructions – which they all achieved!

Take a look at the photos and you will see lots of successful mathematicians.

This last week we have been practicing our Maths more and more in our ‘Math Gym’ (10 min arithmetic session every day). The children have been working on what they find challenging, going through this until it starts to click more and then move onto the next challenge. I can honestly say as their teacher that they have worked astoundingly hard on this and I am really proud of the effort that some of the children have put into this. Here you can see us working on some problems on the board ready for tests next week.

In our PSHE lesson this week, we were studying how we can work together around challenging tasks and communicate effectively in order to achieve a shared goal. As you can imagine, this can be quite a difficult task to do, especially for children between 6 and 7. The task was to create the largest tower they could with only 6 sheets of paper, a glue stick and no help from the teacher – only from their group. However, the children performed excellently. Some groups collaborated really well, some faced some challenges and this was then discussed after to show how important group communication and feeling heard is. The photos do the children all the justice they deserve, particularly one group which created the greatest tower possible. Well done!

Recently, we have been exploring our school and its grounds. Covering National Curriculum objectives and being even more ambitious to give them mapping, navigation and fieldwork experience! The children have really gotten into this including this lesson where we were outside.

On the way to the library, we really focused on our local area and mapped it out. This included human features like the Lingfield Mosque, bus stops and houses as well as physical features like trees, a field and the flower beds. It showed that the children area getting a better concept of their position and place in the world around them and its relation to them in size and distance.

This week the children sketched flowers for their art which links in to their Science topic on plants. However a simple picture of a flower wasn’t enough so we of course had to go outside to sketch them in person. The weather was wonderful and was a perfect hands on lesson for the children to get them into the spirit of things.

Take a look for yourself as we definitely have some artists on our hands!

This week, the children worked together to be able to make some 3D wave art based on their upcoming story “The Further Adventures of The Owl and The Pussycat”.

The children also this week had a go of a novel computing lesson. They were looking at the idea of robotic algorithms. The idea that robots take very specific instructions and any lack of clarity can make them do something unintentional. They then directed myself as the robot and made Mr Arnett navigate around the classroom. After that they had a go themselves and directed each other around to specific spots in the class.

This month, we looked at the lunar space dome that came into school to understand the planets and the stars, we became ACE Scientists by using pipette straws to test the absorbency of materials, we drew our wonderful Saturn V rocket launch in space, made our lunar rovers out of egg boxes and tested them. Finally, closer to this month in March we had some visitors come in to show the children some owls to help them with their cold write.

In January, we managed to do a little more ACE Geography where we looked at a class map of our classroom and navigated around our classroom using it to find some little red bears. Finally, we used a map of the school to spot some landmarks around the site and find some hidden treasure in golden capsules.

This month was our Arts Fortnight, with the theme of Animals and Habitats we went for a Tarzan style jungle flair. The pictures show the progression from making silhouettes, to making our habitat boxes, sketching and collaging our gorillas, making our plasticine animals and of course, our large Kerchak gorilla mural.