What a fantastic week we've had to finish off this half term!

Following on from our 'Amazing Africa' whole school theme last week and our book, Fatou Fetch the Water, this week the children have had a go at making African-style masks using air-drying clay.  They began by rolling out a piece of clay for the face, then added features such as nose, mouth, lips and eyebrows. After that, they made holes around the edge which will be used to create hair or beards using raffia. Once the clay had dried a little, the children were able to paint them carefully and they've now been set aside to dry completely . We'll be finishing them off and creating a display of their handiwork straight after half term. They also learned about the sort of colourful repeating patterns found in African textiles and had a go at recreating their own versions which will also form part of our display. Exciting stuff!

In English, they've started writing instructions about how to make one of these masks while in maths, Year 1s have continued their work on subtraction within 20 while Year 2s have begun division.

This was our final week of using BeeBots in Computing, and the children were again challenged to create their own algorithms and debug them where necessary. In topic, they've been finding out about some of the islands which can be found around the UK coastline.

It has been Children's Mental Health week this  and the theme is, My Voice Matters.  Every day we have talked about different aspects of feeling good in ourselves and we have focussed on listening and sharing our ideas.  The children played some great listening games to remind them of good listening and then they made their own spiral picture thinking about the things that matter to them, from things close to home like parents and friends and then moving to more general things such as animals and the environment.  We talked about how good it is to talk and listen and to have our ideas, thoughts and worries listened to.

Finally, on Thursday the children took part in the Festival of Dance where Hawthorn class performed the Galopede, they were fantastic and performed their dance with great enthusiasm!