In Denmark class today we had a special Easter egg hunt to practise the maths we have been learning this term. The children had to find maths questions hidden in eggs around the field, solve the problems and match to the answers. The Year 1 children focused on addition and subtraction whilst the Year 2 children answered multiplication questions. 

Despite hunting high and low we couldn’t find the last egg anywhere and we were left with an answer without a question! This gave us a great opportunity to extend our thinking and come up with our own question. The children were given the answer 6 and had to think of their own maths question that would match to this answer. The children really impressed us with their work and came up with a huge range of maths questions involving addition, subtraction and multiplication that had the answer 6. Well done Denmark Class!

In our RE lessons in Denmark class we have been learning about the Easter story and what the cross means to Christians. The children have done some fantastic thinking and talking, reflecting on what is important to Christians at Easter time. We learnt about traditional and modern symbols of Easter and to conclude our learning we baked our own version of simnel cakes. The children decorated their cakes with 11 balls of icing and were able to describe how this represented 11 disciples. The children linked this to the Easter story and could explain why only 11 of the 12 disciples were represented.

We had the absolute pleasure of inviting Amelia Bowman, a local printmaker, into our class. 

Amelia Bowman is a Norfolk-based artist printmaker who creates intaglio collagraph prints and hand-drawn, digitally coloured pattern designs.

She demonstrated how she completes her pieces of art using a print plate, brown ink and colourful paper!  She used a pasta machine to fuse the art onto paper which in turn, created her art piece!  

The children then had a go at creating their own stamps using craft foam, super sticky paper, sand and ink.  They created flowers and printed them onto card to create a spring card to send home.  

The workshop was so inspirational and really helped to bring our CUSP art lesson alive!

This week we had a very special visitor!  We were very lucky to welcome a student teacher into our class who is originally from Africa.  Mrs Hindle grew up in Kenya and is from the same tribe as Akeyo, the main character from the story we have been learning about in English – Handa’s Surprise!

We learnt about what the villages are like in Kenya and compared this to the bigger towns and cities.  We learnt about homes and how having a straw roof helps t0 keep the houses cooler in the hot weather.  We used our geography knowledge to find Africa on the map and discovered that Kenya is near the equator, and this is the reason why it is so hot there. 

We got to handle special objects such as wooden sculptures, and we saw some lovely jewellery made from wire and beads.  We also got to handle some traditional clothing, and we got to try it on too!

We finished the session learning how to say hello and goodbye in Swahili and we sang a song in two different languages!

It was an amazing experience that really brought our story to life!  Thank you Mrs Hindle.

This half term in PE we have been focusing on bat and ball skills. The children have practised balancing a bean bag or ball on a tennis racket and then hitting it upwards and forwards. They then moved onto cricket bats and learnt how to control and hit a ball using a bat. They practised throwing the ball to each other and stopping or hitting it using a racket or bat. We have continued to work on our strength and balance with OT exercises and yoga.

This week in Denmark Class we have been focusing on money in our maths lessons. This is a tricky concept but the children have really impressed us with their work. Today the year one children explored how to make a given total using 1p, 2p and 5p coins. Using numicon, the children discovered many different ways to make 10p and created a poster of their learning. The year twos were finding the total of a selection of coins from 1p to 50p. They used base ten resources to support them to add together the coins and find the total and then matched the cards together. Great maths work Denmark Class!

In science this week we learnt about our senses. We identified the five senses and the parts of the body linked to each sense. We used mirrors to find the taste buds on our tongues and then we used all of our senses to make and eat popcorn. The children came up with some words to describe the experience linked to each sense:

Sight- “yellow” “white”

Taste- “delicious” “salty”

Smell- “smoky” “like toast” 

Hearing- “popping”

Touch- “smooth” “crumbly” “hard”

Great thinking and talking, Denmark Class!

To get us excited about British Science Week, we had a visit from the scientist Dr Hartley who helped us learn about the famous paleontologist Mary Anning. This is a topic the children have been learning about in History and they were very excited to find out more and take part in the interactive workshop. 

In RE, Denmark Class have been learning about the Jewish celebration of Shabbat. The children were fascinated to find out how Jewish people maintain a day of rest each week and all of the things that can and cannot be done during Shabbat. To end our learning, we baked our own Challah bread to share together.

For talk for writing this half term, we have been listening to the story of Handa’s surprise.  Our class received a letter asking for their help!  Fruit went missing around our school and they needed our help to find them.  We went on a journey around our school and managed to find them all – phew!  We also had the opportunity to draw different pieces of fruit using pastels and studying what they look like on the inside and out.  We had lots of fun tasting the different fruits and coming up with adjectives to describe them.