Hello Summer Term,

Before we begin the journey into this term, we wanted to update you on our trip to Blists Hill Living Museum. We had an amazing adventure and we discovered lots of interesting information about life in the past. We dressed up as Victorian school children and experienced what life was like at school, I think we preferred our school today! The highlight of the day for many was the spending of old money in the sweetshop, the children worked out what they could buy and shared it out, some great maths problem solving.

So, let me tell you about the amazing journey we have embarked on this summer with a whole lot of splishing and splashing! At our school, our theme for this term is all about Exploration and Journeys, and this time, we are diving deep into the fascinating world of water.

To kick off our exploration, we began with the fantastic book Once Upon a Raindrop, The Story of Water by James Carter. The words in the book sparked our curiosity and set us on a path to discover more about the journey of water.

And guess what? We had the privilege of a virtual visit from the talented James Carter himself! He hosted a super fun and interactive workshop session on Kennings poetry, all centred around the theme of water. Not only did he charm us with his reading of some of his brilliant, published poems, but he even added some lovely music to the mix, much to the delight of our children.

The workshop was a hit with the children, inspiring them to create their own wonderful poems related to water and prompting them to ask some really thoughtful questions. James was so impressed by the engagement and creativity of our students that we have decided to send him even more poetry and questions. We could not be prouder of how our children embraced this experience.

Stay tuned as we continue to dive deeper into the realm of water this term. Who knows what other exciting discoveries and adventures lie ahead for us!

We had lots of fun on World Book Day with a parade featuring many different characters throughout the whole school, a reading café where we had hot chocolate and shared our favourite books with each other. Some of us created characters from our books and entered a competition.

We dressed in red for Red Nose Day and raised money for this worthy cause by telling jokes, lots of laughs were had throughout the day. We voted in our classes for the best jokes, and they were told in a whole school Red Nose get together.

For our Eisteddfod, this year the children were given the challenge of creating a daffodil head as part of a project in St Collen’s Church in Llangollen that we were invited to take part in. All the amazing creations were installed and were seen and enjoyed by the wider community.

Once again PC Hulley came to visit and talked to us about how to stay safe when playing out with friends. Tarian the dragon featured again in the story and the children enjoy his visits.

We have carried out scientific experiments to find out about materials and their properties and their ability to repel water. We are learning about carrying out a fair test.

We are delighted to have participated in the Science Club with Xplore, who visited our school over a four-week period to provide engaging lessons on STEM and science. Our exploration included creating slime to understand changes in states, experimenting with cup launchers to investigate forces, testing egg parachutes, examining volcanoes, and creating intricate fluffy paint designs.

We had the pleasure of hosting a Creative Practitioner from the Little Learning Company, who guided both parents and children in the ancient craft of making corn dollies.

During Outdoor Learning week, we engaged in planting apple seeds, which the children decided to do. We are pleased to report the successful growth of the apple seeds and eagerly anticipate planting them outdoors for future harvest. Additionally, we have dedicated time to observing the blossom and growth of fruit on our established trees, recording our observations in sketchbooks, and enhancing our drawings with carefully mixed paints. We also went on a colour nature hunt and gave each of our finds a new colour name, lots in interesting ones were thought of!

We are learning how to begin to improve our writing and develop the skills of self and peer assessment. We used the story Battle Bunny by Jon Scieszka and Mac Barnett. We are thinking about… How do you think you would feel if you improved or changed your writing? Can you explain how you have changed your writing? Do you think it is a good idea to change your writing? How have we been trying to keep improving?

One of our children has shared his tadpoles with us and we are keeping a very close eye on their development and learning about the life cycle of a frog. So, a big thank you.

We undertook lots of new challenges in Lego Club with some new Lego kits, which went down very well with our engineers and problem solvers. Lots of collaborative and persistent learning going on.