Variety Christmas Pantomime

  
Today we have had an amazing time at Sheffield City Hall at the Christmas Pantomime and Party. We were invited by the charity Variety and we had been looking forward to it all week. 

  
We left school and caught the tram to City Hall. We love catching the tram on our trips as it gives us chance to see parts of Sheffield that we wouldn’t normally see. On the way we saw Ponds Forge (the swimming pool), lots of shops and the Cathedral. Our final stop was City Hall – We had arrived.

The pantomime was Dick Whittington and we thought it was brill. We got to dance, sing along  and help the characters if they got stuck. One of our favourite parts was shouting, ‘He’s behind you!’
  
   
Then it was lunch time. We had pizza, chicken nuggets and chips. What a delicious treat!  

In the afternoons, it was time for the party. Even Miss Varley got up on the stage to dance and show us some dance moves. A special visitor arrived in the middle of our dancing… It was SANTA!

  
Finally the party finished, we got our coats on and got the tram back to school. Every child was given a present from Santa and we loved them.

Thank you so much Variety for letting us come. It was the best trip ever!

Christmas Dates…

Here are some important dates for your diary.

If you need more information, please speak to Miss Varley.

FS and KS1 Christmas Workshop – Friday 2nd December 8.35am-9.30am in classrooms.

Come and join us to make some Christmas crafts with your child.

Y2 Christmas Nativity Performance – Friday 9th December at 9.30am in the hall.

Year 1 and Year 2 Christmas Party and Disco – Monday 12th December in the afternoon.

We will let you know closer to the time what we would like you to bring in for the party and disco.

Christmas Dinner– Wednesday 7th December

100% Attendance Disco – Thursday 15th December 4pm – 5pm

Last Day of School – Friday 16th December 2016

Back to School – Tuesday 3rd January 2017

Best Attendance

Well done to everyone in Pearl Class for winning Best Attendance this week in KS1.

Remember every day at school helps us to be the very best learners that we can be. 

Mathematician of the Week

Fantastic effort this week by our mathematician of the week in Pearl class. She has been able to complete her column subtraction number sentences independently using dienes and then regrouping without the dienes. Well done!

Music in Pearl Class

We have been learning about two important words in music. They are pulse and rhythm.

The pulse is the beat in a piece of music. The tempo of a piece of music is the speed of the underlying beat.

Rhythm is the beat of music; the regular pattern of long and short notes.

To help us to warm up before starting our music lesson, we played Sticky Hands and Quiz, Quiz, Trade with different rhythms on pieces of paper.

We had to move around the room to a piece of music and when the music stops, we have to hold hands with the person standing closest to us. One person went first to clap their rhythm and then the other person went after. We had to listen carefully to make sure that the rhythms were being played correctly. Then we had to congratulate each other and swap rhythms before the music started again.

We are using Charanga to help to learn more about music and we like using the ‘blob’ grids to help us to practise different rhythms.

After we had practised as a group, we split into smaller groups to go and create our own rhythms. Everybody took it in turns to be the conductor so that no-one lost their place in the music and we worked together to make sure that no-one was going top fast or too slow.

Then it was time to perform our masterpieces to the rest of the class. We think we’ve done a super job! Well done Pearl class. 🙂

What an emergency!

Today we had a very important job to do. We got a call from our friend Ted who said that he had an emergency. He had been busy playing in the garden when it started to rain and he got really wet.

We wanted to come up with something that would help Ted from getting wet in the future.

We wanted to try and find the best material we could to make an umbrella for Ted. We had clingfilm, tin foil, cotton wool, paper towels, tissue paper, felt and plastic bags to choose from.

We tried to be scientists and predicted which material would be the most suitable for the job.

Then the fun started and we got to test out our ideas.

We used pipettes or syringes to help us to measure the water we used each time to help to keep it a fair test. We made sure that the only thing we changed was the material that we tested.

After we had collected our results, we came back together as a class to discuss what we had found.

Here are our findings:

If a material didn’t let the water in, then that material was waterproof. Suitable materials would be cling film, plastic bag or tin foil as they didn’t let the water through and Ted stayed dry. After a little more discussion, we thought that tin foil wasn’t a good material to use in the rain, in case the thunder and lightning came as tin foil is made from metal and we would get electrocuted if the lightning hit the umbrella.

If a material did let water through, then that material wasn’t waterproof. Unsuitable materials were tissue paper, paper towels, cotton wool and felt as they all let the water through and Ted got really wet. Some of these materials tore and made a hole because they weren’t very strong.

A visit from the dentist

This week, we have had a visit from the Park Hill dentists. They came in linked with our healthy living week we had before the half term holidays.

  
They told us lots of information about what kinds of foods were good for our teeth and we learnt some facts about our teeth as well. We didn’t know that we had 20 milk teeth as children.

  

We know the difference between healthy food and sugary food. We talked about what would happen to our teeth if we didn’t brush them and we didn’t like this picture at all. Your teeth will start to rot because of the sugar and it will slowly start to erase the enamel on your teeth. Enamel protects out teeth from sugar so we need to clean them regularly. 

 
We had a go at practising brushing our teeth for 2 minutes, making sure we brushed the teeth at the front, back and sides.
As a special treat, everyone got to take home a new toothbrush, toothpaste, a 2 minute timer, pencil, rubber and ruler. 

Thank you Park Hill for coming to visit us. We really enjoyed your visit.

How to continue the learning at home:

• Talk to your child about the importance of brushing their teeth at least twice a day.
• Visit a dentist every 6 months for a check up.
• Use the timer to brush their teeth for 2 minutes.

Children in Need 2016

Today was Children in Need and at school, we have raised money by having a non-uniform day and some of us dressed in yellow or spotty clothes. We bought wristbands and key rings and we had a bake sale at the end of the day.

Thank you to all of our children and parents for such a fantastic effort and raising money for such a worthwhile cause.

You all looked fantastic today. Miss Varley and Miss Morris were very proud of you all.

The Chimpanzees of Happytown

Over the last two weeks, we have been reading the story ‘The Chimpanzees of Happytown’ by Giles Andreae.

‘Chutney was a traveller, who had travelled far and wide. He arrived in Drabsville with a box, which had a seed inside.’

On Monday, we jumped on the tram and went down to the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield to watch a live performance by Music in the Round.

We had already learnt the songs at school with Miss Varley so that we were ready for the concert by watching Polly, to learn the words and actions. Click here to watch the video on YouTube.

We had so much fun and it was amazing to hear instruments being played live. The group playing the music were called Ensemble 360 and they played lots of different instruments, some we had never seen or heard before. They were the violin, viola, cello, double bass, piano, flute, clarinet, oboe, bassoon and French horn. They played different pieces of music to help set the mood. The Jungle Book piece was our favourite because we could pretend to be monkeys to warm up our voices.

Ready for the concert!

We are putting up a joint display with FS1, FS2 and Y1 on the corridor. Keep your eyes peeled for when it has been finished.

How to continue to learning at home:

• Ask your child to tell you the story of the Chimpanzees of Happytown.
• Watch the video through the link above.
• Go to the family concert later in the year. See the Sheffield Theatres website for more detail.

Mathematician of the Week

Well done to our Mathematician of the Week in Pearl class today.

You are hard working, you have beautiful presentation in your maths books and you try hard to explain how you found your answer to an adult. 🙂