So long and thanks for everything!

I wanted to send a message through the blog to thank all our parents for their support this year. You have been great and have supported your own children and the rest of the class in many ways. Thank you for your comments on the blogs, the time you spend reading with your children and all the great things you bring in to school. On a personal note thank you for the lovely cards and presents you have sent in for myself, Mrs Miles and Miss Bailey. You have made us feel really special. I will miss you and most of all your lovely children!
Best Wishes for the future,
Mrs Goto

Beach Trip

Year 5 visited West Wittering Beach as part of their work related to the topic 'Coasts'.
The children learnt about coastal management and met the beach lifeguards. The children were told about the daily routines of the lifeguards and how to stay safe on the beach.

It was a fun day and the children had the opportunity to have a paddle in the sea and have a sand sculpture competition.

It was time to meet the lifeguards. They gave us a run through their responsibilities as lifeguards and told us how to stay safe at the beach. After the lifeguard talk, we went back to have lunch. Mrs Darling-Chalke kindly bought us a Strawberry Cornetto ice cream each. Then we headed back down to the beach for a sand sculpturing competition. Everyone got into groups or 1’s and built a sand sculpture. They were all very good. We had: volcanoes, castles, turtles, snakes, fish and forts.   (By Louis/Harvey) 

    

The Reception children have today been asked to tell me one of the rhymes at random from the rhymetime challenge we have been doing. If they were able to recite the rhyme independently they recieved their rhyme challenge certificate. We will give out certificates to younger children today at our rhymetime session. If your yournger child usually attends our sessions and has been practicing their rhymes but is not able to attend today please pop in and see us before the end of term and we will make sure you get one of our lovely certificate.

Our Farm Visit Display

We have all worked very hard in year one over the past two weeks.  We have been busy creating writing, art work and 3D models showing everything we learned from our farm visit!

Animations

Some of the children have been making stop frame animations on the computers and ipads. (You will need flash to view these, so they will not work within the standard browsers on iPads and other iOS devices ).

Spinnaker Tower Trip 2013

Early one morning, in the midst of a heatwave, 28 children and a gang of adults woke to a gloomy sky. Tingling with excitement they sprung out of bed, ready to conquer any fears they may have. Heights, the heat, 28 children, coach journeys, packed lunches.....walking!!?

Arriving at school in good time, they were registered, toileted and briefed ready for a days adventure...Followed by the children's briefing.

0915 aboard the coach to ABBA (or the soundtrack to Mama Mia) all the way to Portsmouth with Mr Cownie filling them with little gems of precious knowledge "if you look to your left you will see the Eastbound carriage of the M27 and if you look to the right...the Westbound"

And then, they arrived. 

Burger King staff had never been so afraid

Or so they thought. No, we headed into the Tower and the children waited extremely patiently to travel up to the viewing deck, only to be met by a clear blue sky and a truly amazing, panoramic view of Old Portsmouth and the numerous docks & marina's.

The view amazing, the excitement palpable, the smell...cheesy! Feet and socks galore as the children (and some adults) set about conquering their fear of heights. The bravery and courage shown by some was truly inspiring and it was a real pleasure for all to see these individuals tackle them.

Don't look down!

Mr Cownie very kindly took all of the children up to the second viewing deck where he filled our heads with further knowledge of what was what and how it came to be. The bit about Spice Island was a bit er....eye opening.

We were incredibly lucky to have had a special visiter while up the tower. Nadir's mum dropped by and gave us a all a fly by in her bright yellow microlight. (photo's of all our faces stuck up against the windows to follow)

By this time, the grumbly tummies started rumble and we set off following the Millennium trail round to the Round Tower for a spot of lunch and well earned coffee for the grown ups.

Then, it was a further walk past the square tower, past the beach, past the funfair at Clarence Pier, past the ice cream shop and onto the coach for the trip back to school.

Once back we all had a well earned ice lolly (saving one for Mr Hayman who has a particular weakness for Fabs) and the announcement of the pairs challenge of the day.  The children were sent to find out different pieces of information relating to the tower and Portsmouth. The hard working winners were Harry & Nick who both won a fully rigged Pirate ship (although Mr Keenan thinks he was the one pirated when getting them).

All in all a truly fantastic day. The children did themselves and the school proud with their behaviour in the face of such adverse weather, walking and dizzying heights.

It does of course go with out saying that the parent helpers were of great help on the day. Both Mr Keenan and year 4 would like to offer our thanks to Sian, Robyn, Evie, Jacob and Rebecca's mums and dads for giving up their days to help us have such a great day.

We have been swamped with photo graphs, all of which could possibly have been used to show off our great day. Here's a couple more.

EDITED TO ADD

Photo's taken by Nadirs' mum from the outside of the tower!!

One potato, two potato, three potato, four

The Year R children and Mr C. have been busy growing potatoes over the last few weeks. Last week Mr C. came and helped the children dig the potatoes up. We had a huge harvest! Today Mrs S. worked with the children to make potato salad that the children tasted and shared with children in other year groups. Thank you so much to Mrs S and Mr C you are brilliant!

Farm work

We were all very busy in year one on Friday creating work for our farm display!



We were experimenting with sugar paper to create a sun for the sky.

We had fun using different fluffy materials to create clouds!

We were very busy painting straws which will be used to create a fence for the farm animals.

We thought back to our previous work on minibeasts and created some drawings of these to put into the grass on our farm display.

Butterflies!

As you may know, in year one we have been growing our own butterflies.  We watched them turn from baby caterpillars into large caterpillars. They then made their cocoons and emerged last week as butterflies. On Friday we went down to the pond to set them free!

Adventure outside

Lots of children have enjoyed learning outside today despite the rain.They have been taking photographs, collecting rain water, building dens and creating space cement for the construction of their spacecamp. The children were talking with each other and describing what they were doing. They were giving each other instructions and as you can see several of the children were documenting what was going on through pictures and drawings.

Our textured picture of an island

The children have been working hard with Mrs S today on their textured picture. A few weeks ago they talked about their project and decided they wanted to make. They decided on an island and have been workingon it ever since. Thanks for all your help Mrs. S.

This post was written on Monday 1st July but was not published due to a technical problem - sorry about the delay.