Christmas Fun!

We have had a lovely last day of school today wearing our Christmas jumpers and watching Aladdin! Thank you to the PTA for arranging and paying for this Christmas treat.

We all looked very festive in our Christmas jumpers - even the teachers! 

Thanks to your support, the children have made a great start to school and had a very successful term.  

Thank you for all your generous gifts.  We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

The Year R Team

Christmas Lunch!

Today we enjoyed a most delicious Christmas Lunch! 

We joined the rest of Key Stage One in the hall to eat and even got to listen to Christmas music!

To make sure we entered into the party spirit we even made Christmas hats.  We carefully cut out different Christmas shapes to stick on our hats.  We looked great! 

We will keep the hats in school ready to wear for our Christmas party next week. 

Enter the Crime Scene...

This week, as part of our Junior PCSO training, we have been investigating crime scenes.

We returned to the classroom after lunch to discover that there had been a burglary! Luckily, the Crime Scene Investigator was on hand to prepare the scene for us to investigate.

Even the Christmas tree had been taped up!

First, we learnt how a crime scene is investigated when there has been an incident - it was fascinating to find out all the steps that have to be taken before the CSI team even get there!

In order to be allowed access to the crime scene, we had to put on hats, gloves and masks in order to avoid contaminating the crime scene with our DNA.

The classroom was an absolute mess! We had to search for swabs so that we could swab the crime scene to build up a bank of evidence.

Once we found a swab, we swabbed the crime scene and had to record where our swab was found.

 After our crime scene had been fully investigated, we shared some of the descriptions which stated where our swab was found. It was really important to be clear and concise with our descriptions so that the evidence could be easily located in the room.

"I loved finding the evidence! I was surprised about how tricky it was to find and about how detailed our descriptions needed to be. It was even trickier to write with gloves on!"

Our afternoon didn't end there! We then met Millie, who does some crime scene investigating of her own. Millie, who is a Fire dog, works with the fire service to locate the source of a fire. There aren't many Fire and Rescue dogs so it was a real treat to be able to meet her (See @HantsFireDogs on twitter for more pictures and news!).

Millie has to wear protective boots to ensure she doesn't tread on anything dangerous!

We hid a tiny sample of diesel and a sample of petrol in the courtyard making sure it wasn't visible!

 Did you know humans have 5 million scent receptors in their noses which help us to smell? Amazingly, dogs can have up to 300 million! It was incredible watching Millie who was able to sniff out a tiny sample of petrol within minutes.

This one was a bit trickier to find, but she got there in the end!

Millie was quite a soppy dog who definitely enjoyed a cuddle at the end. However, I'm not sure who enjoyed it more...!

A huge thankyou to the visitors we had in this week - the children certainly had an experience that they won't forget in a hurry!

Boat race!

Once again, we've been very busy programming our own computer games.

Can you use the mouse to guide the boat around the maze? Watch out for walls and obstacles!

What works well? What could be improved?

Being creative with cams!

This week, we will be creating our own moving time machines! Before we start to make our machines, we've been looking at different cam mechanisms to see how they work and what the different parts are called. You can explore how the shape of the cam affects the movement below...

We then used cardboard, split pins and straw to make our own simple cam. We tested it to see if it worked and to see which movement it created. We discovered that rounded corners and gradual slopes worked best!

Meet Zak, the Search and Rescue dog!

As part of our Junior PCSO training, Year Six were lucky enough to meet Zak this week! Zak, who is a search and resuce dog, demonstrated how quickly he can find a missing person. It was incredible to watch!

 

First, we learned about all the different scenarios that search and rescue dogs would be used in.



When Zak isn't wearing his harness, he is in 'play mode' and therefore just a normal pet dog.

However, when Zak's harness is attached, he focuses and is now in 'work' mode.

GO! Zak sprinted off to find the nearest human scent.

Amazingly, he quickly found Emma, our PCSO, who was hidden deep within the bushes!

 

After we met Zak, we had the opportunitiy to learn about (and try on!) different parts of the Police and PCSO uniform

 



Some of us looked very professional with all of the gear on!

Some of the hats were slightly too big...

 



Finally, here is a very official looking policeman pointing out the charter we have agreed to follow as Junior PCSOs!