Week beginning 23rd October 2023
What a busy last week of term!
We have really enjoyed Awe and Wonder week- especially our Awe and Wonder Science! We looked at the work of Dr Ramen; a Hindu scientist who discovered "the Ramen effect". It is really complicated to explain, but it involves how light is dispersed by molecules. To demonstrate this, we shone sunlight through glass prisms and created rainbows! We discovered that the prism dispersed the white light into all the colours that it is made of! That was so much fun!
On Wednesday, we retold the story of Rama and Sita in our own words. Mrs Carr was SUPER impressed with our writing- we used fronted adverbials and ambitious adjectives! Her favourite line was from Hebe, who wrote: "The bridge stretched over the stormy, azure sea". WOW!
On Thursday, we wrote very special letters! We have already written to Mrs Howells about rubbers so we decided to write to School Council about some suggestions we had to improve the school. Ms Gardiner gave us some special headed paper and Mrs Carr let us present our lessons to Mrs Jenkins- who runs School Council. We made sure our writing was the best we can be, and we hope School Council consider our ideas. Mrs Jenkins said we will have a response in a couple of weeks after half term, so we have our fingers crossed!
On Friday, we had a go at weaving. Inspired by last week's trip, and using the wool they gave us, we were practicing what we learned at Woodchester house. We made our own looms out of string and sticks, and we aimed to create our own bookmarks. You'll have to wait until after half term to see if we were successful!
Have a wonderful half term, see you in Autumn 2!
Trip report 20th October 2023
Today we had a mini trip to Woodchester House. This is a private estate, and the estate Manager (Tom) very kindly let us visit the estate sheep!
We arrived in the pouring rain, but luckily went into the warm barn where there were lots of ewes (girl sheep!) waiting to meet us! Tom told us about the history of Wool and Sarah (his wife) told us about how wool was sustainable. We got to feed the sheep- there was one who REALLY loved the food and tried to climb the fence! There was also a very quiet sheep who let us scratch her back- she would wag her tail if she liked it!
Sarah showed us how a spinning wheel worked, and how to do weaving. The weaving was our favourite and we asked Mrs Carr if we could do some weaving at school!
Sarah and Tom very kindly gave us some skeins of yarn (we twisted them ourselves!) so we are going to use that to weave things and knit with. We also have been invited back in the Spring to see the lambing!
Overall, it was an amazing trip and we loved seeing the sheep!
Thank you to Hebe's Mum, Marmaduke's Mum, Edward's Dad and Kian's Mum for driving us there and staying in the wet weather to share the trip with us! We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did!
Week beginning 9th October
We wanted to update you on our REACH project this term: British Wool Month!
Over the last few weeks, we have been looking at the sustainability of wool, how using wool helps us in our quest to be Stewards of the Earth as well as standing in solidarity with hard working farmers. We have touched wool, looked at wool really carefully and last Friday (after the blog came out!) we had a go at knitting. This was a skill we really struggled with and we are aiming to practice our skills more today. Our aim is to make a small blanket for our reading area!
Next week we are hoping to go on a sheep inspired trip and finish up our knitting! We also have our harvest festival so we hope to see you there! Lots to look forward to!
In the spirit of this, we would like to share a short prayer with you:
Dear Lord,
We thank you for farmers who work tirelessly to put food on our table,
Thank you for sheep farmers who tend their flocks and provide materials for us,
Thank you for the seasons and the countryside, that is your wonderful creation and that farmers need to survive.
We live in such a wonderful world, help us look after it.
Amen
Week beginning 2nd October
This week has been SO fun!
We started off the week feeling pretty excited about the week ahead. In Geography, we did some orienteering which was brilliant! We had old maps of the school and we discovered things that were the same and things that had changed by looking for various points on the map.
On Wednesday and Thursday we had our National finals for our times tables. We came 9th out of a huge field of schools (most much bigger than us!) so we are feeling super proud of ourselves!
Thursday was also National Poetry day and we enjoyed listening to Michael Rosen reading "On the Move again"- a poem about Refugees. We analysed the poem too and then explored some other poems in our class poetry book.
Thursday was ALSO (yes- Thursday was super busy!) the day we did an activity about Saint Therese of Lisieux. We reflected on her motto "Love Jesus and make Jesus loved". We wrote down ideas about how we would live by that motto.
How will you love Jesus and make Jesus loved?
Week beginning 25th September
What an amazing week we have had!
For 3 days, we had our first Times table tournament. We were against 12 other schools in Gloucestershire to qualify for the National Finals. We had to get as many times tables correct as we could to score points. We managed 5000 correct answers in 3 days and finished.....
FIRST!!
We are in the National Finals next week on Wednesday and Thursday. It has already made a huge difference to our times tables knowledge and we are excited to do our best.
We really enjoyed our first whole school Mass on Thursday. The new Father Philip really engaged with us all and we found his homily really interesting. We enjoyed singing our hymns and celebrating the start of the new academic year.
Wish us luck in the National Finals next week, we will let you know how we get on!
Week beginning 18th September
Another busy week for St George's class!
We have been finishing up our work on newspapers, and have moved onto setting the scene paragraphs. This will help us upscale our word choices! In maths, we have been blowing Mrs Carr away with our number knowledge. All of us got onto the deepen it three days in a row! We really understand our place value!
In Geography, we got to pick a climate zone and then research the countries that were in that zone. We found this really interesting and learned loads of key facts.
We have also been using a new program to help us with our times tables. Next week, we have our first times table tournament!! We just need to do a Times table check style game a few times and the more correct answers we get, the more points! We are in a little league with other schools across Gloucestershire so we are excited to show them how good our times tables are!
Week beginning 11th September
Woohoo! We have done our first full week of Year 4! It has been so busy, with so much learning!
We have been learning about classification in Science, and we were sorting buttons to help us. We have been writing newspaper articles. We have been reading and writing a range of four digit numbers. We have been learning about climate zones in Geography. So much learning!
A highlight of our week was helping the Carmen society load our unused furniture to go to a new school in Ukraine. We reflected on how we were helping people less fortunate and how this links with Catholic Social Teaching.
Finally, we wrote our class prayers. We had a theme each and we wrote a prayer about each theme.
Here's our Year 4 prayer (by Hebe, Olive and Millie):
Dear Heavenly Father,
Please lead Year 4 throughout the year so we can be the best that we can be and shine through.
Guide us through our lives and please help us to be loving, kind and caring.
Please make sure we are loving to everyone around us so we can be loving people.
We will follow in Jesus' footsteps forever and ever.
Lead us to be the people we want to be.
We will pray throughout our lives.
Amen
Week beginning 4th September
Welcome to Year 4!
Each week, the children and I will be writing a weekly blog post to keep you updated with the wonderful world of St George's class! We hope you enjoy following our journey over the academic year.
The first week of a new school year is always very exciting (and a little bit nerve-wracking too!) The children have settled really well into the routines and expectations of Year 4 already and have really impressed me with their resilience, confidence, high expectations and the virtue of love.
It has been SO hot this week, and we have all done so well to keep cool! Learning hasn't been affected and we have hit the ground running to make sure not a single minute is wasted. We have started our work on newspapers in Literacy, started exploring climate zones in Geography and had some brilliant discussions about Creation and being made in God's image.
At the end of the week, we had inflatable football which was so much fun! Mrs Daly also took the class gardening and we tried some tomatoes from the school garden. Thank you Edward and Finlay for finding and picking them!
Have a restful weekend and we can't wait for the first FULL week of Year 4!!