We had so much fun doing our Santa Dash today! Everyone was in such good spirits and loved the festive music that accompanied the run!

We are enjoying having a PE coach, Laura, in to teach our Gymnastics this term. Our focus has been around balancing. We have previously been practising balancing by ourselves but in today’s session we buddied up and had a go at doing balances with a partner. Some of these balances were a bit tricky but with some support, we all managed to complete a range of balances. We are looking forward to putting our balances into a sequence to perform later on this term.

We had a lot of fun baking our own bread rolls a couple of weeks ago although it did not quite go to plan. We were impressed by how much our dough rose when we left it to prove. Nevertheless, when we put them in the oven, some of the bread rolls got a bit burnt. The ones that were successful came out beautifully and we enjoyed tasting these ones. In today’s session, we evaluated what we have learnt about bread over the past few weeks. We have been investigating the difference between brown and white bread. Most of us think that white bread tastes delicious and we like the light, fluffy texture however it is not always as nutritional as brown bread and can lack fibre. 

In the middle of our English lesson, we discovered a mysterious box with a blue crystal inside! None of us had brought it in and no staff knew anything about it! We talked about what it might be, where it could have come from and who it might belong to. We decided to make ‘Found’ posters to try and find its owner. While we were busy doing this, we got an email from Miss Laflin which told us the police were looking for the rock because it had been stolen! We took a vote and decided we would hide the rock (hehe!) and then hide ourselves in case anyone came looking. We hid under tables, behind the flipchart, anywhere we could find! When we thought no one was coming, we came out of hiding and talked about how it felt to be in that situation. It was cramped in our hiding spots and lots of us found it tense! It made us anxious and our hearts beat faster. Our English learning is going to be about writing an adventure story with a finding plot. We think this experience will come in useful!

This term in DT, we are focusing on ‘Food and Nutrition’. For our first session we compared fresh food with processed food. This also involved discussing what ultra processed food is. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of eating fresh and processed foods. We then taste tested a few different types of bread, including ready made loaves of bread from a supermarket bakery as well as more mass produced loaves. We discussed the different taste, texture and appearance of these different breads. Next session, we are going to look more closely at what ingredients are in the different loaves and then make our own bread rolls (which we are all VERY excited about!)

We have been learning to sing Mamma Mia (and we sound pretty amazing)! Today, we played chime bars along to the music. We worked brilliantly in pairs, practising different parts and even tried it with some of us singing along. We are looking forward to practising again!

During our PE unit this term, we have been improving our footwork and one leg balances through focused skill development sessions, healthy competition, cooperative games and group Personal Best challenges. We have particularly enjoyed practising standing on one leg whilst trying to keep a balloon afloat and collecting cones at the same time. This has enhanced our balancing skills and coordination!

We learnt about Carl Linnaeus’ method of classification called taxonomy. We used a classification key to identify liquorice sweets. We then applied our understanding to create a classification key to identify four mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians or fish of our choice. 

We loved having a rugby session with a coach from Wymondham Rugby Club! We enjoyed practising our skills and showed a fantastic attitude throughout. We definitely didn’t mind getting muddy! We hope to do it again sometime!

We have loved starting our drawing unit of work by completing our own still life drawings. We have been looking at the artist, Giorgio Morandi, for inspiration. We got a bit messy when using the charcoal but found it was a very useful medium for creating shadow and for making our drawings more three-dimensional.