The Marvellous Maya!

17th May 2022S Lovatt

We were lucky in Year 5 to have a drama workshop all about the Maya, which is our current History topic. We started with some true or false questions, then created freeze frames of different parts of Maya life.

Here we are acting out Pok-A-Tok (a Maya ball game where the players could not hit the ball with their hands, and the objective was to get the ball through a stone hoop at the end of the playing field.)

The Maya built many temples and painted them red, although we can’t see the red colour any more.

The Maya had a hierarchy in their society: slaves were at the bottom, followed by farmers, warriors, astronomers, priests and finally the king (known as the ajaw).

To finish off our workshop, we acted out the Maya creation story.

The two creator gods were able to think of anything they wanted, and it would appear. So they thought up trees and mountains. Then they realised they needed something that would praise them, so they thought of animals.

However, they realised the animals couldn’t speak to praise them, so they made people out of clay. But the clay people just crumbled to the ground.

The gods then decided they needed the people to be stronger and harder, so they made men from wood.

These men could not speak to praise the gods, so they destroyed them. Finally they made men from corn paste. These men could speak and praise the gods, but they could see too much so the gods removed some of their vision. They didn’t want the humans to be as powerful as them.

We had so much fun and tried so hard with our acting!

 

 

 

Year 3 Drumming

13th May 2022Miss A Samuels

Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed their music session with Mr Winter this week. The children used the djembe drums to practise both the base tone and slap tone. We all worked extremely hard to keep in time to the rhythm- it sounded fantastic! Well done Year 3- we are looking forward to our upcoming music session next week!

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Sunflowers

8th May 2022Miss A Samuels

Reception have been thoroughly enjoying their new topic of ‘How living things grow’. After planting their own sunflower seeds, they decided to create their own sunflower paintings. The children began exploring the work of Vincent Van Gogh and focused on one of his most famous pieces of artwork known as ‘Sunflowers’. They then create their own sunflower painting inspired by Vincent Van Gogh. Reception used a range of colours and shapes within their paintings to create their beautiful masterpieces. Take a look at their fantastic artwork!

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Year 3 Beamish Trip!

3rd May 2022Miss A Samuels

Year 3 had so much fun at Beamish! We enjoyed visiting the new 1950’s Front Street where we explored Norman Cornish’s house. Inside of Norman Cornish’s house, we did some observational sketching of what we could see. We also explored the history of the 1900’s village and pit village- some of us even got the chance to go down the coalmine and experience how it would have been for children to work in the cold, dark and damp conditions. To finish the day, we visited the Victorian school and discussed the differences in school life compared to ours today. We even had a try at using the metal hoops and sticks in the school playground- it was super tricky!

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Minibeasts!

3rd May 2022Miss A Samuels

Nursery have been working so hard on their artwork! Their topic for this half term is Minibeasts and they been learning about which animals are classified as Minibeasts. The children have then created their own Minibeast artwork including ladybirds, tadpoles, caterpillars, spiders and butterflies! The children have enjoyed exploring with a range of colours and using different shapes to create these fantastic Minibeasts masterpieces. Take a look at Nursery’s beautiful artwork!

Under Our Feet

29th April 2022J Devlin

Y3 had so much for today looking at the different layers of the Earth. We created our own Earth to show all of the layers. We created the inner core then covered it with the Earths outer core, mantle then finally the Earth’s crust. We then compared the layers of the Earth to a peach. We looked at the inside of a peach and imagined the peach’s stone was the Earth’s core, the surrounding soft bit of the peach is like the Earth’s mantle filled with magna and finally the skin is like the Earth’s crust.

Musician of the Term- Ethel Smyth

28th April 2022Miss A Samuels

This terms Musician of the Term is Ethel Smyth (born in 1858 and died in 1944).

Who was she?

Ethel Smyth’s music consisted of masterpieces for the violin, horn and orchestra and her opera ‘The Wreckers’ was considered the most important English opera of the time. However, it was not until her 75th birthday in 1934, that her work was celebrated at the Royal Albert Hall in front of the Queen. Heartbreakingly, at this moment of long-overdue recognition, Smyth was completely deaf could hear neither her own music, nor the cheering of the crowds.

Interesting Facts!

  • Ethel Smyth was caught throwing a brick through a politician’s window during the Suffragette movement, resulting in her being put in Holloway prison for two months.
  • While she was there, she was seen leaning through the bars, conducting her March of the Women with a toothbrush to the inmates!
  • As well as being a musician, Smyth was also a suffragette who devoted herself to the cause for women’s rights for two years, giving up her music in order to focus on it completely.
  • Ethel Smyth enjoyed tennis, golf and riding bikes which was seen as very ‘unladylike’ back then.

Famous Songs:

  1. Variations on an Original Theme (Of an Exceedingly Dismal Nature) in D flat
  2. String Quintet in E, Op. 1
  3. Serenade in D
  4. Mass in D
  5. The Wreckers
  6. March of the Women
  7. The Boatswain’s Mate
  8. Concerto for Violin and Orchestra

Watch the videos linked below to listen to some of Ethel Smyth’s famous music pieces and find out more about who she was.

Warm and Cold Colours

4th March 2022Miss A Samuels

This week in Art, year 3 focused on mixing warm and cold colours. We discovered that red, yellow and blue colours are our primary colours and can not be made by mixing other colours. We focused on the artist Piet Mondrain, an artist who regularly used primary colours within his art work. We then created a Mondrain inspired painting- they were fabulous!

After this, we then created our own colour wheels. We learnt that secondary colours are made my mixing together primary colours. Take a look at our colour wheels- our secondary colours sit halfway between the two primary colours it is mixed from.

 

 

Musician of the Term- Nina Simone

28th February 2022Miss A Samuels

Our previous Musician of the Term was such a success! We all thoroughly enjoyed learning about ‘The Beatles’ and listening to some of their well-known songs. This term we will be focusing on the Musician ‘Nina Simone’.

Who was she?

Legendary performer Nina Simone was an American singer and songwriter who sang a mix of jazz, blues and folk music in the 1950s and 60s. Apart from creating original tracks, she also created cover versions of songs by famous musicians, such as Bob Dylan and our previous Musician of the Term ‘The Beatles.’ Her ability to make original songs sound completely different was unique to her style with many artists admitting they preferred her version of their own!

Fascinating Facts!

  • Nina was one of eight children, born into a poor family in North Carolina, USA.
  • After she was rejected from the Curtis Institute of Music, she gathered a job at Atlanta City, playing what her father called ‘The Devil’s Music’ and changed her name so that her parents would not find out.
  • She gathered a following of fans before receiving a record deal.
  • Nina Simone released over 40 albums during her decades-spanning career
  • Nina Simone never did get a number one selling single.

Famous Songs:

  1. I Loves You, Porgy 1959 – Originally written in 1935 by Anne Brown and Todd Duncan but she made her own successful version.
  2. My Baby Just Cares for Me, 1962 – Simone made financial mistakes in her early career, but this song featured on an advert in 1987 and her fortune was finally made.
  3. Mississippi Goddam, 1964 – This song was a cry for mercy, an angry voice of defiance and reason against the way black communities were being treated in America.
  4. Feeling Good, 1965 – This song used a big-band sound and is now one of her most famous.
  5. Why? (The King of Love is Dead), 1968 – Written by Simone’s bass player Gene Taylor and was about Martin Luther King and his death.
  6. I Ain’t Got No / I Got Life, 1968 – A joyous anthem which celebrated the things we all have and reached number 2 in the U.K. charts.
  7. I Put a Spell on You, 1969 – Originally written by Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, this song was a huge success and sounded very different from the original.
  8. To Be Young, Gifted and Black, 1970 – Written by Simone, this uplifting gospel song continued linking her music to the civil rights movement.
  9. Baltimore, 1978 – The critics loved this song but she was not fond.

Listen to one of Nina Simone’s most famous songs ‘Feeling Good’ below:

You can listen more of her music on Spotify, iTunes, Apple Music, Amazon Music and Youtube.

Superhero Cities

16th February 2022Ms A Emmerson

Take a look at our superhero cities. We are so proud of them! First we mixed black with our blue paint and it made the colour darker. Then we used squares and rectangles to create our tall and short buildings. Finally we added some superhero words. We came up with POW, BOOM, CRASH, SMASH and ZAP!

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