This half term our topic is ‘How living things go’. We have been very busy planting lots of different seeds. We are looking forward to watching them grow!
This half term we are exploring the theme of minibeasts. Take a look at our new Creepy Crawly Corner! We will be learning lots of interesting facts about minibeasts, learning how to take care of them and observing them very closely.
Rob from Zoo Lab came to Nursery and he brought some special visitors with him. He told us lots of facts about them and we got to hold every one. Look how brave we were! Which one is your favourite?
To end our topic ‘Animals including Humans’ Year 3 undertook an investigation to see how the human skeleton supports movement. The femur is the longest, strongest and heaviest bone in your body. We began to wonder… can people with longer femurs jump further?
To start our investigation we had to think carefully about how we would keep the test fair. We measured each person’s femur accurately and then measured how far they jumped. Once we had carefully recorded our results we came back inside to analyse them. We found that people with longer femurs do not always jump further!
In Science Year 1 have been learning about the seasons.
Today we walked to our local park to look for the signs of Spring.
We saw daffodils, blossom, birds and their nests and buds.
Year 4’s latest science topic was all about sound. We’ve discovered that sounds are produced by an object vibrating.
Did you know that bigger vibrations produce louder sounds whereas smaller vibrations produce quieter sounds? Did you also know that faster vibrations produced higher pitched sounds.
We then used this knowledge to design and make our own musical instruments!
This morning we have 9 little chicks!
Year 5 have been testing electrical conductors to find out which material conducted electricity the best. We tested foil cake tins, brass butterfly pins, metal paper clips, one penny coin and a stainless steel spoon. After lots of discussion, we decided the foil cake tin was the most efficient and made our bulb shine the brightest.
Today Living Eggs have arrived in Nursery. Over the next two weeks, we will watch the eggs hatch. We are all very excited to meet our baby chicks! 
The Harton Primary Puzzlers attended The Word for their regional Lego League competition – going up against other schools (both primary and secondary) from South Tyneside, Teesside and Durham.
The children took part in 3 robot games, a team work task and delivered a presentation to share their innovation idea to a panel of judges.
Their project was praised by the judges as being incredible, with little to no improvement they could suggest. Our innovation project was the ‘Skipatron 5000’ – a skipping rope that generates electricity, allowing us to use the kinetic energy of the children on a school yard to charge a device, and take pressure off the National Grid. We devised and developed this product with the help of Suez TeesValley, Equinor, Skipping School and SeaJacks.
Winner of the Skips, with 44 skips.
We used our prototype – built with the help of our friend Danny, from SeaJacks – to hold a skipping competition in the pit. The person with the highest score won a bag of Skips. Children from every other team attending had a go. Even Mrs Ratcliffe joined in.
The robot games were tense, but enjoyable. The 2 robot teams worked very hard to start the robot in the correct place every time, in order to hit the mission in the correct place.
Getting ready to start
Telling Mr Forster to calm down.
Getting ready
After lunch, the children were told they were one of the top 4 teams in the robot game, and would have 2 more attempts to make it to the finals. With a score of 195, they progressed to the finals – another 3 runs to try and score the highest amount of points to win.
Some children were not impressed with the teachers’ enthusiasm.
Showing that it is not all about winning, after their last game the children (lead by Jacob) asked the judges to wait before calculating their score to walk around the table and shake the hands of the opposing team – showing incredible sportsmanship, teamwork and character. In the finals, the children repeated their high score of 195, but were just beaten with 205 points from the opposing team (the highest score of the day).
The day ended with the award ceremony – and taking into account the Core Values, the presentation and the robot game – the Harton Primary Puzzlers were awarded the Championship trophy!
They will once again proudly represent South Tyneside in the national competition in Harrogate in April.
