Year 3 went pumpkin crazy this week.

Linking Art with Literacy’s poetry, guided reading and handwriting, we each created a pumpkin to decorate our classroom door for our PTA Halloween party.  Each pumpkin face looks so unique with it’s own individual character and expression!  Brilliant work, Year 3!

Click on ‘Read more…’ to take a look at some photos of our different activities, and read our class pumpkin poem.

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One of our parents at the school is a talented art teacher.  She has been working with the Year 3 this week, helping them to develop their art skills.

In our sunset silhouette art project the children mixed primary colours to create secondary colours.  They learnt how to blend these colours in horizontal lines to create a sunset sky effect.

Then using templates, as well as their own shape ideas, they cut out different silhouetted objects in black paper and stuck them onto their sunset background. Some children also overlapped their silhouettes, just like they do in real life.

The activity encouraged the children to understand how things that are closer appear bigger, and how things further away appear smaller and they were introduced to the vocabulary foreground, mid-ground, and background.

Thank you, Charlotte.  We had great fun and learnt lots of new art techniques, too!

You may have noticed a pumpkin patch taking over the Year 2 Hummingbird Class! We have been studying them closely for our observational art lesson. We have been working on keeping our drawings to a large scale and focusing in on different parts of the pumpkin, such as the inside. We have been learning how to draw using chalk pastel colours, carefully blending colours with in the direction of the lines, or using the flat side to create a thick line or the pointy end to create a thin, defined line. We have also been remembering that with observational work, you stick to what you can actually see in front of you and not work from imagination or add extra parts in that you cannot see!

Come take a look at the fantastic art we have created on display in our classroom and take a peek at some photos below.

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Cuisenaire Rods provide endless opportunities to introduce, investigate, and reinforce key math topics such as addition, subtraction, geometry, measurement, multiplication, division and much more.

Cuisenaire Rods come in 10 colour-related sizes and also electronically as virtual manipulatives!

This week, Year 3 has carried out a number of Cuisenaire Rod investigations.  Take a look at them busy applying their measuring, adding and multiplication skills to solve the different problems.

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In Year One, we have been exploring throwing and catching in PE.

This week, we practiced catching our ball using only one hand.  We remembered to use our ‘big hands’ stretching up towards the ball to catch it. To make it even harder, we tried clapping our hands together before catching the ball.  We counted how many times we could clap our hands before catching the ball. After that, we attempted to throw the ball, spin around once completely and then catch the ball again. To finish our PE lesson, we perfected our throwing and catching skills with a partner. We remembered to aim for our partner’s hands as we were throwing.

We are looking forward to showing you all that we can do on Friday 9th November at our ‘Year 1 and 2 Gym and Court Sports Showcase’ at the Graceway Sports Centre – starting promptly at 9:10 AM.

Year 3 are enjoying their very own peaceful classroom space in their new ‘Mindful Corner’.  Relaxing with a book on the cushions, tracing patterns and feeling textures, observing nature, releasing anger by squeezing the ‘argh’ balls, writing down their thoughts and listening to serene music.   There’s something in here to help everyone relax.

Everyone is appreciating this special area.  The children have been bringing in their own special items to enhance and share in the Mindful Corner, and children from other classes are keen to come in and experience this quiet, relaxing space, too.

The ‘Mindful Corner’ was inspired by us being introduced to the MindUp Curriculum, which aims to provide children with emotional and cognitive tools to help them manage emotions and behaviour, reduce stress, sharpen concentration, and increase empathy and optimism.

Please feel welcome to come in and enjoy the peace and tranquility in our ‘Mindful Corner’ for yourself!

See some photos of us exploring our new area here. [Read more…]

In Letterland, ‘Robot R’ gets his brothers to help him to steal vowels in words.  His brothers are ‘Arthur Ar’, ‘Orvil Or’, ‘Ernest Er’, ‘Urgent Ur’ and ‘Irving Ir’.  When they stand after a vowel in words they often catch it and put it in their net and report back to ‘Robot R’ on their radios, saying their second name, ‘ar’, ‘or’, ‘er’, ‘ur’ or ‘ir’.  The poor vowel is too shocked to speak in the word after that.

The class set out to find all these robbers that steal vowels in words.   The children made posters for each of the Robot Robbers to help them look for them.  They worked by themselves or with a partner.  When they thought of words that had their robot sound in, they wrote them on their poster.  They also found extra words in their reading books and around the classroom.  Those robbers are certainly very busy with stealing vowels… they found a lot of words!   Click ‘read more’ below to see photos of the children busy making their posters and to see all of the words that they have discovered that have these sounds in.

The children also each wrote a story that included lots of ‘ar’ words.  Here is one of them called, ‘The Party Centre’.  Come and read all their stories.  They are hanging up in their Hummingbird classroom.

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