Welcome to class 3V at Allerton CE Primary School in Leeds. Here, under the careful guidance of Mr Verney, we will blog to the Big Wide World.
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Happy Blogging!
On Wednesday 3V walked down to the United Hebrew Synagogue as part of our RE learning on the Jewish faith. We were warmly welcomed and were given a tour of the Synagogue and got to see many of the artefacts and symbols we had been learning about in class. The children were particularly impressed when the curtains were pulled back to reveal the Torah scrolls. The children really enjoyed their time there and many said it was the first time they had ever been to a Synagogue.
3V have had a lot going on these past few weeks….
We have been continuing on our roots and routes journey. The artists have been in school working with the children helping to explore our book George’s Marvellous Medicine. They loved particularly working with Bobak creating music and dances to the sounds of Victorian machinery.
3V have been entrusted this half term with being citizen scientists and looking after the hedgehog tunnel. This is a tunnel with hedgehog food in the middle, natural ink around the food and blank paper at the ends. If a hedgehog (or any other small animal) enters the tunnel and eats the food it will leave footprints on the way out.
3V were allocated the task of checking the tunnel each morning, replacing the paper and ink, and making sure that there was food in the petri dish.
Our local foxes were very interested in the hedgehog tunnel and the food. If you look closely at this fox you can see that it is a mummy fox!
Foxes regularly wander past the tunnel
Even in daylight at a weekend when the school is quiet a fox saunters past
But at night time, when foxes aren’t around, the hedgehogs come out for food:
And during the daytime, excited pupils discover the tracks left in the tunnel!
Friday saw our Arts Fortnight come to a close. It has been such a privilege to work with the children and see their creativity blossom. Together they produced so much artwork it was difficult to display it all in the Art studio. They should all be very proud of their final performance and how it all came together. Here is just a tiny snapshot of all the work they put in!
3V have had some amazing events in the last couple of weeks…
We had another session of Routes and Roots where the children were sketching their surroundings, taking photos and taking part in dances. And the weather was extremely kind to us.
We have also been looking at Lent as preparation for Easter. We began by taking part in Pancake races on Shrove Tuesday.
This week we begin our Arts fortnight and we look forward to sharing with you all the amazing things we create.
3V experienced their second session of their routes and roots collaboration this week. The children all took a trek down to Adel woods to meet the artists. They began by exploring the woods and choosing their favourite tree. After sketching the tree they then used forest items, such as leaves, pebbles and pine cones to create artwork on the floor of the woods. Just like Andy Goldworthy! After this the children ventured deeper into the woods where they encountered a beatboxer. Under his guidance the children created music using the sounds of the woods as inspiration and really impressed with their own beatboxing skills. The children really enjoyed these activities and were using their new singing skills to entertain the public on our walk back to school.
So this week saw the start of our art collaboration with the Balbir Singh Dance Company. There are lots of exciting things planned but we kicked things of with a session on movement and a session on observational drawing. The children really threw themselves into it and created some amazing human sculptures representing Ivan’s journey through the woods towards the Ice Palace. It really captured the class’s imagination and are now eagerly awaiting the next session.
What a week to start back! The children have shown huge amounts of resilience this week dealing with the snow and ice. They have all come back with huge amounts of enthusiasm which is lovely to see.
We are starting lots of new topics now that we have moved into the Spring term. In Geography we are going to be exploring continents and countries and comparing the UK with Iceland. In Science we are looking at Light. This week we have been sorting and categorising light sources and we will be experimenting with the properties of light over the coming weeks. We are focussing on drawing skills in Art, looking at shading and 3D drawing and will be eventually sketching an Artic creature. In writing, we are creating information texts around artic animals and are learning how to create an effective Non-Fiction text using organisational features. In Maths, we are moving on to formal methods of multiplication using the column method.
So, it is a busy term filled with lots of exciting learning opportunities that I’m looking forward to experiencing with the class.
3V had a really special trip to Murton Park this week. They donned their tunics, tied their rope belts and got stuck into some authentic stone/bronze age activities. 3V went hunting for wild boar, ground out wheat just using stones, created beaker pots from clay and completed cave paintings before all cosying around a fire in the roundhouse for a murder mystery story. They behaved impeccably and demonstrated how knowledgeable they were about the topic. They were a credit to the school and made Mr Verney a very proud teacher by the end of the day.
