Today we jumped back into the medieval times! We learnt all about Knights and even tried on some of their special armour. Reception explored the people who lived in the castle and had lots of fun making their own gingerbread with pitta breads, honey and ginger.
In computing this year, we explored different podcasts and even made our own! Y4E had learned loads of interesting facts about the Anglo-Saxons in history so they decided to write and record podcasts based around this theme. We hope you enjoy them!
This half term, Year 4 have been learning all about the Vikings. We explored different sources to find out if Vikings were really as awful as some people perceive them. We loved our visit from Tanya, who told us all about the lives of people living during the Viking period. We also did a lot of work comparing Vikings and Anglo-Saxons.
This half term we have been learning about the toys Victorian children would play with, the materials they were made from. We compared these with our favourite toys and looked at the materials they are made from.
As part of our topic we visited the Discovery Museum in Newcastle, we were very excited!
Once we arrived we had a lesson with Amy. She had lots of old toys hidden and we guessed what we though they were… a train, a porcelain doll, tea set and a dog-bear (was it a dog or a bear, we weren’t sure either!)
Then we had time to explore the museum and lunch!
We had a fantastic time!
This week, we had a special visitor from Beamish who came into Year 3 to tell us all about the artist Norman Cornish. Norman Cornish was a miner from Spennymoor as well as an artist. We focused on Normal Cornish because Beamish are building a new 1950’s town and Norman’s studio will be part of that. This year will mark the hundredth anniversary of Norman’s birth. In the session, we looked closely at his artwork and then had our own turn at sketching and shading observational drawings. We learnt many new artistic skills such as cross hatching to help add more textures to our drawings. At the end of the session, we looked and handled many artefacts from Beamish such as the miners lamps. We thoroughly enjoyed the session and are looking forward to our upcoming to trip to Beamish where we will get the chance to visit the pit village, 1950 Front Street and carry out some sketching on locations similar to those in Norman Cornish’s sketches.
We were thrilled to have ‘That History Bloke’ visit us to help us learn more about the Romans. Richard taught us what life would be like in the Roman period and in the Roman Army. We had to march like Roman soldiers and follow the instructions in Latin!
We looked handled some artefacts from those times and made deductions about what we thought they could have been used for! We learnt lots of new facts about the Romans.
Our final task was to write on name in Latin using ink. It was trickier than using our pencils but we all did amazing!
A huge ‘Well Done’ to our Year 5 pupils who took part in our History club this half term!
We look forward to running the club with Year 4 pupils in the Spring term.
This week was our final week of History club. We looked at Christmas in the past and made our own Victorian cornucopias.
Year 2 had a brilliant time at Beamish as part of their coalmining topic in History. They learned about life as a coalminer and how living conditions were very different then, they were shocked to find out you had to go outside to the toilet and grandparents slept in a cupboard in the living room!
They took a ‘shift’ down in the coal mine to experience how it would’ve been for many children to work in the cold, dark and damp conditions.
Finally, the children went back in time and took part in a Victorian school lesson. They had to stand when speaking to the teacher and call her ma’am. Everyone had an amazing time.
This week we have been looking at the Ancient Egyptians. We talked about Howard Carter and his amazing discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb. We then turned each other into mummies and then used clay to make scarab beetles.
