Please take a few minutes to have a read through our latest newsletter. Some great parent and carer opportunities available.
This week B11 got creative making paper mache Dinosaur eggs!
We’ve had some lovely sunny weather to end the year here at Blythdale and this week the children have been preparing to say goodbye for the summer and celebrating all of their hard work over the year.
The children have started the week with phonics, working on their reading and spelling, and have continued to do their daily handwriting practice and one-to-one reading with staff. The children have read the story Leaf in class, about a polar bear that gets lost and ends up in a forest, to finish off our habitats topic. Using this as inspiration, they have revisited their computing skills to make up their own lost animal stories using an online storyboard creator.
Thinking about European foods, the children have been in the cookery room again this week, independently mixing up batter and cooking this to make sweet crepes, which they ate with fresh fruit and berries that they prepared. The children have also been on a visit to nearby Chase Farm park. They have been learning about using their left and right to tell direction, and have practiced their independence and road safety skills, taking it in turns to lead the group safely to and from the park.
As a reward to celebrate the children’s hard work this year 6B have also had a movie morning, a sports activity morning and have had some social time at the end of the week to play games together and talk with their friends.
All that is left to say is well done to all of 6B, you have worked so hard and grown up so much this year! Daniel, Catherine and Pauline wish you all the best for next year and hope you have a great summer!
This week we have focused on bird homes around the area. We looked for birds within the school garden and thought about how their homes help keep them safe from predators and happy with lots of food to survive. We created our own birds nests made from the natural materials that we collected.
We made some bird feeders using pine cones, string, raisins, cheese, lard and seeds. Delicious! We look forward to spoiling our lovely birds with their treats!
This week the children of 6B have moved on to focus their learning on the North American continent, thinking about southern habitats in the form of beaches, and the more northerly habitats of Canada and the arctic tundra.
The children have been in the cookery room making their own homemade burgers and fries in the style of the United states of America, practicing all of the safety skills they have learned to safely use peelers, knives, ovens and hobs. Further thinking about personal safety, the children have considered the risks they might have faced on our beach visit later in the week, and discussed ways in which they could reduce the chance of any harm by these risks. On Wednesday morning 6B went out to visit the beach, carrying out a beach-comb to find interesting objects and talking about some of the creatures that might live on beaches, before going on to create a nature inspired piece of artwork using all of their found materials. On their return to the classroom, the children looked through the photographs of the day and shared their favourite memories, before creating a memory board using the laptops and their favourite pictures of the day.
Moving further north in North America, the children created mobile food chains by linking together paper plate animals to show off their knowledge of Arctic habitats and the creatures that live there. In outdoor learning, the children have discovered what it’s like to be a fireman, trying on the uniform, carrying out a search and rescue operation in the garden and even seeing what it’s like to run through a burning building with the help of the smoke machine.
As well as this the children have done their usual speaking and listening activities, describing pictures for their friends to draw by using 2D shape vocabulary, phonics activities, reading and playing games to practice their social skills.
Free activities in Cramlington for the summer holidays organised by Cramlington Town Council.
Continuing our journey around the world this week, 6B have been learning about the continent of South America and the Amazon rainforest. The children have looked at where South America is located in the world and have focused on finding out about rainforest habitats.
They have learned about different carnivores, herbivores and omnivores and worked in teams to fit the animals into food chains. The children have then described their food chains, using their ICT skills to record sentences onto the electronic storyboards, before writing their descriptions in their workbooks. The children have also thought about planning an Amazon safari, planning out routes to see different animals depending on the best times of the day to see each one and showing these times – at o’clock, half past and quarter past – on blank clock faces. As well as this they have thought about how to measure time using minutes and seconds, and taken part in a number of different jungle-related activities, estimating how long they expected each activity to take them to complete and then timing themselves with stopwatches.
The children have used different shades of green and brown paint with a range of objects and materials to print a rainforest scene and added different Amazon animals to it. They have used books and news reports to research the Amazon rainforest and have used this information to create a storyboard script to record their own news reports on the school cameras, with a particular focus on the damage being done to the rainforest by humans
Thinking about popular food from South American countries, 6B have cooked their own tortillas and safely chopped vegetables to make some tasty fajitas this week in the cookery room. As well as this the children have practised their reading and spelling in phonics and continued learning how to work together as a team through social games and activities.
This week we have been on a minibeast adventure! We visited Plessey Woods and explored the school garden to find minibeasts in their natural environment. We compared their similarities and differences using viewfinders to study their features.
We thought about the different microhabitats that minibeasts live in and used our knowledge to create fact files. We chose materials that would suit each insect and created comfy bug hotels.
This week we were given a challenge: to help others who are not as fortunate as us. We thought about things that humans need to survive and created lists of useful things that we could put inside ‘blessing bags’ for the homeless.
We created designs on to cardboard templates and stitched the templates together with fabric to create bags. We made flapjacks and bought other items such as soap, toothbrushes, toothpaste and water to fill the bags with. The bags will be donated to Ashington Life Centre alongside some cards with good wishes. Well done 5B
This week the children of class 6B have been learning about the continent of Australasia, and thinking about the Great Barrier Reef, have learned all about coral reef habitats.
They have done some research to create powerpoint presentations showing where Australasia is in the world and some of the different animals and creatures you would be likely to find living there. The children have talked about the animals’ needs, and used food webs to determine whether each creature is a carnivore, herbivore or omnivore. They have begun to learn about using food chains, and have created their own coral reef-based chain, practicing writing sentences at the appropriate level.
6B have also been thinking about capacity and volume this week. They have measured out amounts of water to plan out how much would be needed for each animal’s different home, comparing and ordering the amounts. Some of the children have even begun to write down their measures using the sign for millilitres. To end the week the children have continued practicing their measuring skills by making delicious tropical island juice cocktails as a Friday reward for their hard work!
In addition to all this, the children have used mixed media to create wonderful coral reef scenes. They have used glue and torn paper to make 3D corals, painting these with vibrant colours like a real life coral reef, and have created coral reef animals using coloured card. Drawing out the shapes and cutting them out, then adding detail to them with pencil and pen to bring their scenes to life. 6B have also done their one-to-one reading daily, carried on with individualised phonics activities and practiced turn-taking and managing relationships in their social skills activities.
