Blythdale

This week Class 5B have read the story of Hansel and Gretel. They made predictions about what would happen in the story and were quite surprised at how unkind the parents were.
When it was our turn to explore the Winter Wonderland in the garden we found a Gingerbread House with a witch inside. We had fun acting out the story and even pushed the witch into the oven!
Later we made our own gingerbread houses in the cookery room ready to design and decorate next week. We made salt dough gingerbread Christmas tree decorations too.

This week the children in 6B have been reading the story of Hansel and Gretel. They have used the zones of regulation language to talk about how the characters in the story feel and practiced their sentence writing to describe this. The children have followed instructions with lots of baking as well as their measuring skills. Thinking about the story, they have baked bread and gingerbread biscuits. They’ve been out in the garden, exploring the Christmas wonderland that staff have set up and have started to do lots of Christmas art, as well as think and talk about their own Christmas traditions.

This week class 5B retold the story of Pattan’s Pumpkin through role play and thought about what the characters would say. They followed instructions to make Indian sweets called Coconut Ladoo’s, we hope you like them!

We looked at google earth to find India again and compared the Western Ghat region with Northumberland. They both have mountains!

We also thought about how to keep ourselves clean and had a go at brushing our teeth with new toothbrushes.

This week the children in 6B have been reading the story Pattan’s Pumpkin. They have learned a little bit about some of the areas in the book, which is set in India, and have compared pictures of the landscape there with the landscape of Northumberland. The children have written postcards to Pattan, telling him why they think he should visit Northumberland. In maths the children have been talking about times: o’clock and half past, and thinking about when they do things during the day like have breakfast, brush their teeth and go to bed, as well as some more practice recording times, using the stopwatches to record how long it takes for their friend to build a small Lego model.

The children have sculpted and painted their own version of the setting for Pattan’s Pumpkin in art and have used this to retell a scene from the story. They used the ipads with their setting to make a stop-motion video of the scene when Pattan brings the pumpkin home and it grows enormous! In science they have planted their own seeds in readiness for planting out their own vegetable garden in spring time. We have talked about individual responsibility and the children have been given their own jobs to be responsible for around the classroom.

This week class 5B travelled to India. We read the story of Pattan’s Pumpkin by Chitra Soundar about a farmer who grew an enormous pumpkin and saved the animals from a great flood. Pattan wrote us a letter and asked us to make a curry using vegetables from his farm. It tasted delicious!
We looked on google earth and found the Sahyadri Mountains where the story was based. We watched a film and chose pictures of the animals, people and places from the area to describe.
Last Saturday it was Diwali. We found out that Diwali is celebrated by the Hindu religion  all over the world. We made some crafts to celebrate including Diva lamps and Rangoli patterns.

This week class 6B have been finding out all about the Hindu celebration of Diwali which took place last weekend. The children have learned about the story behind it all – the story of Rama and Sita, and created their own pop-up story scenes showing the moment the demon king kidnaps princess Sita! They have found out about Diva lamps, and how it is a symbol during the festival, of light triumphing over darkness, and printed their own Rangoli patterns from recycled materials, learning how they are thought to bring luck during Diwali.

The children have also tried some traditional foods that are often eaten at Diwali, cooking their own vegetable curry and making their own coconut-square sweets. In outdoor learning the children have made their own pens and inks from natural material, and have used Google maps to find out where India is in the world and locate some famous landmarks of the country such as the Taj Mahal.

This week we found out why we wear poppies on Remembrance Day. We created our own poppies and Mrs Sanderson showed us photographs of poppies on the war memorial in Morpeth. We thought about our own memories and put them in order.

Then we thought about what it might have been like during the World Wars. We listened to music and made war time scones – we hope you liked them!

We have made some delicious pastries for our shop window display and created a supermarket in the classroom where prices are still reasonable. We have been doing lots of practical activities with money and I am sure we are going to make some good investments in the future. Our circus skills have improved, especially balancing. We have enjoyed two weeks of orienteering at Druridge Bay and Plessey woods, the children are loving exploring the environment and working well on their basic skills of orienteering such as map reading, navigation and direction.