This week, Class 5 have been a little bit ‘quackers’ as we made our duck mascot for Children in Need day. We had lots of ideas for the team name for our class, but settled on ‘Class 5 Quackers.’ The children cut out the duck shape and painted it’s body and wings and did an amazing job, too!

That’s not the only Children in Need activities we’ve been doing. We had a colouring competition in class and, also, baked a cake in the shape of Pudsey. The standard for the colouring competition was very high! In fact, it was so good, there had to be two winners as it was impossible to choose just one! The Pudsey cake was amazing; the children did a brilliant job of baking it and icing it and it definitely tasted lovely, too!

As well as Children in Need work, we continued doing lots of number work in maths and, in English, began our work for The Linking Project.

The Linking Project joins schools from different areas together to explore identity, celebrate diversity, promote community and champion equality. Our class has been linked with Belford First School. In English, we have been writing an ‘All About Me’ poster that we can send to their school so, before we meet the Belford children in January, they can learn a little bit about us.

In design and technology we have been making dragons that ‘breathe’ fire. These aren’t quite finished yet so you’ll have to wait to see the end results! So far, they are looking great!

Class 5 made it through our first week back. We were all quite tired after our week-long break but, we powered through and have been up to lots of exciting things!

In design and technology this half term we are doing bread making. This week, we baked delicious 50/50 garlic and herb bread buns, which we ate during snack. We had to do lots of measuring and kneading, but it was worth it as the bread buns were beautiful!

In maths, we have been adding one using a number track and then just our brains! It’s been hard work, but most of us have mastered it, which is fab.

In science, we started a new topic all about gases. We carried out two investigations this week: ‘Dancing Raisins’ and ‘Bubbling Witches’ Brew.’ For the former, we added a few raisins to a glass of lemonade and, after a few minutes, they appeared to ‘dance’ as they bobbed up and down in the glass. This was because pockets of gas had stuck to the raisins to make them float; as the raisins rose to the surface, the bubbles popped and the raisins sank!

We have been doing a lot of art work this week. We painted sunsets ready to create silhouette pictures for the Remembrance Day assembly on Monday. We also had to make a duck mascot for Children in Need. As well as that, we have started work on making a dragon finger puppet! Suffice to say, it’s been paint-tastic in our room!

In between all this, we even managed to squash in some Cosmic Yoga, phonics and RE. It’s been a very busy week indeed!

Class 5 had an unusual start to the week as we visited Warkworth Castle in Northumberland on Monday.

Monday was very cold day and we found it was even chiller at the coast! However, we all enjoyed looking around the different rooms in the castle keep and getting an idea of what it was like to live there. Whilst there, we listened to a sensory story that guided us through the different parts of castle. It was very interesting learning about the different rooms and exploring artefacts associated with each one, such as parchment, a sewing needle and a pewter spoon. One bit we weren’t so keen on was when we learned about the toilets as there was a smelling cube there to give us an idea of what they smelled like – URGH!

We have done lots of work around Halloween this week, too. We learned that it was Celtic tradition and that many of the things we do at Halloween have been around for hundreds of years. The Celts used to wear scary costumes and carve jack-o-lanterns to scare away evil spirits and ghost, who the believed had crossed into our world!

In the spirit of Halloween, we carved an enormous pumpkin and explored all the insides. The seeds were rather slimy and not all of us liked touching them, but some of us loved it!

On Wednesday, we had a little Halloween party in class. We decorated the classroom with Halloween balloons, bats and pumpkins that we had painted and designed ourselves. We all dressed up in ghastly outfits then ate Monster Munch and spooky Halloween sweets, played games like musical statues and danced to Halloween hits. It was a great afternoon!

Obviously, in among all this, we have managed to squash in some English, maths and art work! We have definitely earned our half-term break!

Have a great holiday, everyone!

This week, our class has had its attention focused on money in maths! We’ve been buying snacks from a class snack shop after being given a budget of 3p to spend. This has given us some tough decisions to make, “Do I blow my 3p on a chocolate biscuit and have to drink water, or do I buy juice and fruit instead?”

As well as the snack shop, some of us visited the local Asda to buy snacks for class. We were each given an item to find in the store and some money to buy it with. It was quite tricky to find some of the items, but we managed to get everything we needed in the end. As well as ‘normal’ snacks, we also bought some Halloween treats for next week…YUM!

In maths lessons, we have also been learning about money. Some of us had a role-play cafe with a menu and prices to think about, while others played a coin-collecting game.

Obviously, it’s not ALL been about money this week. In topic, we learned about the parts of a castle in readiness for our visit to Warkworth Castle on Monday.

We’ve also done phonics work, Cosmic Yoga, fine motor work and also developed our play and sharing skills by playing turn-taking games.

All in all, it’s been a very busy week, but we’re looking forward to having some delicious snacks for the next few weeks!

This week, class 5 have been getting very arty-clarty! There has been so many things to make for all sorts of occasions…even Christmas!

In our art lessons, we made fantastic dragon masks – this was to tie in with our humanities topic ‘Life in a Castle.’ To make the dragons, we had to use our fine motor skills. We used the tip of our finger dipped in paint to give the dragon the effect of scales then we practiced our cutting skills to give the dragon eyes, nostrils, horns, flames and cheek spikes. The end results are brilliant!

Although it isn’t quite the season to be jolly (yet!) we also had to think about Christmas as we made our entries for the annual Christmas Card competition. Obviously, we cannot reveal our design but we can tell you that there was glitter involved…it’d be wrong not to use it!

In among all the glitter, paint and cutting, we found time to learn about carbohydrates in science. We got to explore lots of different carbs, using them to create pictures. Everyone worked very hard and did some very creative things!

In PE, we continued our athletics work. This week, we did a sprint relay race using a baton, a hurdles race and the discus. The sprinting relay was very tiring, but we all did really well!

Have a lovely weekend!

It has been so busy in Year 5 this week!

We really got into the spirit of autumn as it was our harvest festival this week. In class, we practiced all the songs with gusto and we sounded fantastic!

As well as singing about autumn, we also did some beautiful paintings of autumn trees. The trunk of the tree was made by drawing around our hand and forearm then we used sponges and three different colours of paint (yellow, orange and red) to give the effect of autumn leaves. The paintings all look fantastic and we are very excited to take them home to show our families!

We baked some bread for the annual Hadrian Harvest Bake-Off. Although ours was not the winning entry, our garlic and cheese loaf was praised by the judges for it’s lightness and good taste. We all had some of our bread at snack time and we have to agree that it tasted very good! So good, in fact, that we had some more for snack the next day! Just as well we baked extra!

In  topic, we have continued learning about life in a castle.This week we learned all about the things that Medieval kings and queens might have eaten at a banquet. Most of it, we all agreed, was fairly gross… hare in hare-blood sauce, roast peacock and roast hedgehog definitely aren’t things we’d like to try and time soon.

In maths, we have continued to focus on money. Some of us were given a budget to spend at a pop-up shop in school. It was hard trying not to overspend!

Have a great weekend!

We’ve come to the end of our third week in Year 5. Everyone has really settled into their new class now and we’ve doing lots of learning!

In science, our topic is ‘Healthy Eating’ so we have begun to learn about eating a balanced diet and the food groups that compose this. So far, we’ve focused on fruits and vegetables, or the ‘fibre’ group. So far, as part of our learning, we have explored different fruits and vegetables, labelled diagrams, made fruit collages and printed pictures with fruits and veg!

We began our ‘Castles’ topic in humanities. We have learned how castles protected themselves and that each family who lived in a castle had a coat of arms. We designed our own coat of arms and tried to make them look scary to frighten off enemies – just like they did in Medieval times!

In maths, we’ve been all about the money! So far, we have been learning to recognise 1p and 2p coins, using them to make different amounts and using coins in role-play activities.

Our text in English is ‘The Knight Who Wouldn’t Fight’ and we’ve been using it to do sequencing and learn about adjectives. The adjectives were quite tricky, but we managed to think of some excellent ones to describe the troll, dragon, griffin and mouse in the book.

Have a great weekend and a well-earned rest!

A very warm welcome back to school, one and all!

We have had a lovely first week back in Year 5 although, We must confess, we’ve not done too much work this week, although we have been incredibly busy!

Obviously, we have all been getting to know each other and learning our new class routines. As well as that, we have worked on our motor-skills by using Play-Doh and doing rebound. We’ve been developing our social skills by sharing toys and helping others, using our maths brains to solve jigsaw puzzles and construct towers with bricks and improving our listening and comprehension skills during story time.

Everyone has settled into class brilliantly and (rather oddly, some may say) lots of the children said they were glad to be back at school! A good omen for the year!

We are all looking forward to a happy, fun and successful year together!

On Tuesday 2^nd July, 5B met up with our friends from Belford School – and what a lovely time we had with them!

We met on the green beside Bamburgh Castle and enjoyed an early lunch, taking in the scenery as we ate. Thankfully, no seagulls were loitering around hoping to steal our sandwiches like they were last year!

After we had eaten, it was off to the beach! We all walked together over the sand dunes and found a spot to settle then it was shoes and socks off, trousers rolled up and we were off…

Everyone played together, digging holes in the sand, building sand castles, playing chase, kicking a football about and burying their feet…and each other! It didn’t matter that it was overcast and there was a chilly wind blowing for most of the day – we were all having too much fun together!

The sun did come out shortly before 5B had to return to school. After saying our farewells, we left our Belford friends enjoying the sunshine, sea and sand and made our way back to the minibus.

The sea air was obviously very tiring as six of us fell asleep for the whole journey home, although not the grown-ups!

We cannot wait to see our friends from Belford again in the autumn term as part of The Linking Project. Thank you for a wonderful day, Belford friends!