Year 1 Music

We have been linking our music lessons with our topic of the seaside.  Over the course of a series of lessons we have been using instruments in small groups and composing music that sounds like waves crashing, fish swimming and sharks hunting!

Scan the QR code to see one of these wonderful pieces of music being performed!

Year 1 Science - Mrs Grinling's Picnic Basket Cover

Year 1 Science

This week we have been continuing to look at materials.  We have been investigating materials that are stretchy.  We received a request from Mrs Grinling (The Lighthouse Keepers Lunch) if we could find her a stretchy material that covers her new picnic basket.  We looked at seven different materials including a plastic glove, kitchen cloth, latex glove, metal foil, Lycra, a bandage and polyester.  The children had to predict which material would be the best and then investigate by measuring how far each material stretched.  It seems that Mrs Grinling will have to use Lycra as her cover for the basket as this turned out to be the material with the most stretch and flexibility.

Sports day in Year 6!

It was their last sports day here at Windhill21 and the children certainly made the most of it! Lots of the Year 6 children volunteered to help out the younger children in the morning and their behaviour and kindness was commented on by both staff and parents. The first part of sports day involved various sporting activities before the sprints, long distance and relay took place. We were so impressed with the sportsmanship displayed by everyone. A special well done to all the flag bearers and the Head Pupils for conducting their speeches so well. 

Should we set zoo animals free?

Should we set zoo animals free?

This week in P4C Colchester Zoo wrote us a letter:

We discussed as a class what we thought the zoo should do. Children voted with their feet to choose if they thought the animals should be set free or if they should stay in the zoo.


Jaza: "I think animals should stay in their cages as they are safe in there."

Erin: "I think animals should be set free because they can't look after their babies who are in the wild."

The children used the sentence stems to help them articulate their ideas to their friends using good eye contact and gestures.

Next the children took turns to engage in a talk battle! One child was expressing their views on why animals should stay at the zoo whilst the other was saying why they should be set free!

Nursery sports day

Nursery Sports Day

 

Nursery ( AM and PM) had a fantastic time at sports day! They showed real determination and concentration during the egg and spoon race and were really well supported by the Year 6's who came along to the help. A fantastic first sports day for all. The Nursery children should be very proud of themselves as their teachers were!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reception Sports Day

Reception absolutely loved sports day today

Degas class really enjoyed the egg and spoon race and 

cheering on their teams!

Cassatt class really enjoyed the bean bag throwing and 

singing and dancing to George Ezra!

EYFS Garden Party!

The Early Years Garden Party

Today we celebrated our Animal topic by throwing a garden party!
Thank you so much to everyone who came to watch us perform our favourite animal songs.

Your very kind donations of cake and raffle prizes has enabled us to raise some money to go towards our EYFS garden.

We had such an amazing time celebrating with you today, all of the costumes were fantastic! So many different types of animals could be seen all over EYFS today.

Degas Class

Cassatt Class

Potter Class

Sales during the garden party and after school raised a grand total of: £442.34!

Thank you again for joining us, we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!

The Early Years Team

Year 2 Maths Workshop

On Monday, year 2 took part in a parent workshop. The children were able to show off their knowledge of the 5x table using different games that they really enjoy! It was great to show their parents how they are learning their times tables at school. Thanks to all the parents that came along!

Year 2 Colchester Castle!

We had a fantastic day at Colchester Castle yesterday! First we went on a hunt around the museum to complete a quiz all about castles. Then we had an activity session where we found out about what people wore, ate and used as medicine in medieval times. After lunch we went on a story tour to learn all about the castle and we even got to go up to the roof! The children were brilliantly behaved. Here are a few of the photos!

Rain dancing!

A rainy afternoon called an indoor PE lesson for Rousseau today. What better way to finish of a long Tuesday than to dance along to the Zumba programme! The children love dancing to familiar songs and following the instructions by the dancers on the screen.

How sounds are made

Today in Year 4, we investigated how sounds were made.After looking at: rice on a drum, elastic bands on a hollow box, tuning forks, musical instruments and ping pong balls; we discovered that sounds are created by objects vibrating. We then had some fun looking at these experiments and capturing them on the Slow motion camera to clearly see the vibrations.

Year 5 Graffiti day.

With a focus on the art element of graffiti, we were lucky enough to have a professional graffiti artist visit us in school and show us the techniques for creating our own graffiti boards. 
We layered a background in colours of our choice then used stencils we created ourselves to add detail. Finally, Leon helped us to add the tag on top.
It was amazing! 
Then we watched as he created a year group throw up with us all adding to the layers in the background. This has definitely helped me to think about the creative elements of graffiti and street art.

Year 4 Newsletter

What an action packed fortnight in Year 4!  One of our most exciting projects was researching designing and making weaving looms as our DT project.  Not only did we make successful looms (just like the vikings) but we even all managed to use them to weave our own unique pieces of cloth!  In Science, we classified animal droppings (which were made of clay but appeared to life like that we were afraid to touch them!)  Last week was Life Bus week and Empathy Day. We had the privilege of celebrating diversity on the Life Bus and realising that it is okay to make different choices to our friends.  As part of Empathy day, we took part in a workshop where we considered what it was like to be in someone else's 'shoes'.  This work was carried on in class where we empathsised what is would be like to be an immigrant as we explored Shaun Tan's book, "The Arrival".  We also carried out a nurture project where we explored behaviours linked to emotions and came up with strategies to deal with our feelings.  This was all in addition to English and maths!  We look forward to more exciting projects as we weave our way through the rest of the term!

Daisy May's Farm

On Wednesday 12th June, all of the nursery children went on a trip to Daisy May's farm as part of their topic work about animals. The children had a brilliant time and had lots of hands on experience with the animals including milking the goats, collecting the eggs form the ducks and hens,  feeding the lambs and even grooming the ponies.

 

 

 

 

What a busy day! The children of course were very excited to go on the coach, have a packed lunch and play with the farm toys! The rain didn't seem dampen their enjoyment at all. A huge thank you to all the parents that came and made the trip possible- we couldn't have done it without you!!
 

Year 3 Update

We have been conquering time in maths this week, learning how to read an analogue clock to the minute. Although we have found this challenge, with regular practise at home and in school we will become masters of time! We have also been learning and practising a range of times tables games so that we can play these at home to help us practise! We look forward to sharing these with on Tuesday afternoon at the Year 3 parent workshop. 

We have become more aware of our bodies and our surroundings this week in PSHE. We have been given the task of creating a display to help show the school and our visitors how we keep safe in school including what, who and how we achieve this. It is really good to see how safe and confident the children feel in their school. We have also been on the Life Bus this week where we were able to help Harold with his homework, learning about the internal organs of the body and their functions. We have considered how our brain works and what it needs. This has helped us to realise how the things we do and how we feel can effect us on the inside. The children have been really reflective and we are proud of them all. 

Our topic adventures have continued this week as we have designed and made prototypes for our natural trail posts. The children had to saw wood themselves to build their posts. Their sensible and mature attitudes have allowed them to create some fantastic prototypes. 

Towns class have completed their music unit this week and have used percussion instruments to create a piece of music that represents an animal of their choice. They worked well in teams to plan their performances and record their compositions using symbols to represent how and when each instrument was played. This week was also the end to Done class's swimming lessons. Every child has made fantastic progress over the 5 weeks and have developed their water confidence and skills. Town's swimming lessons commence on Monday 17th June and Done will begin their music journey.