Listen, Think, Learn & Enjoy...

Year 4

Summer Term

Hopefully you all received the letter last week explaining about the children’s Summer Wish List. If you haven’t please follow this link or pop into the office and collect one.

Our fun started on Thursday when we ticked the first thing off our list by having a PE and Sport day. The children took part in a selection of activities and events including Rocket Ball, a fitness class and even a bit of Zumba!

We have also started our Daily Mile and now have 5 miles under our belt. The children have really embraced the challenge and are so keen to start it every morning.

African Drums

This term, Mrs Graham from the Hampshire Music Service has been teaching us how to play African drums. We have played drums of different sizes and learnt about the different sounds they can make. We have learnt to play different tunes and have written our own pieces of music to tell stories. We have all enjoyed having a go at playing the djembes which you get to sit on!

In History this term, we have been learning about the Ancient Egyptians. This has been our favourite topic so far as it is so interesting. We have learnt about the different jobs people had in Ancient Egypt and most of us decided we would have wanted to be the pharaoh and rule over everyone although a few of us wanted to be scribes. We did some art work using collage skills. We practiced sketching Tutankhamun’s famous death mask and then collaged this. It took a very long time and lots of tissue paper. In Ancient Egypt they used to mummify dead bodies to help them on their journey into the afterlife. Some of us had great fun when we tried to mummify each other with toilet roll – it was a lot harder than it seemed but a memory we will remember forever!

We have had a slight change to our weekly timetable this term. The children will now have Outdoor Classroom and PSHE on a Wednesday afternoon rather than a Thursday morning and our second PE lesson will now be every other Thursday afternoon.

We hope you all enjoyed our drumming concert as much as we did!

Autumn Term Update

Autumn Term

In Year Four we have been learning to play the ukulele. We have had a lot of lessons from Mrs Graham from the Hampshire Music Service and have had a lot of fun learning the chords and lots of different songs. We had a concert to share what we have learnt with our parents where we shared lots of songs including a few Christmas tunes.

We have also been learning about volcanoes in our Geography topic. We have explored how volcanoes are formed, why they erupt and the effect they can have on the people that live nearby. Did you know that there is an area in the Pacific Ocean with over 150 volcanoes that is called the Ring of Fire? The volcanoes in this area are not all active but several of them do still erupt. A volcano in Bali called Mount Agung has erupted very recently.

Our English work this term has been focused on dragons. First, we learnt a story about a dragon called Smok and a cobbler called Krak and used this to help us write our own defeating the monster stories. After that, we found out about a dragon that had been spotted in the local area. We wrote a set of instructions for Miss Tester to trap the dragon. This was a success and the dragon has been sent to a zoo in Romania. We have also sent a set of instructions to Romania to help the zookeepers care for the dragon.

We wish you all a merry Christmas and a happy, healthy New Year.

Welcome to Year 4

Wow! We are already coming to the end of week two and the Summer holiday seems a long time ago. We’ve had a great time getting to know your children and they’ve all settled well and made a fantastic start to the year.

We have been very busy starting all our new units of work. In Science we are looking at States of Matter and the children had great fun with an experiment trying to find a way of getting an alien (jelly baby) out of a hailstone.

Over the summer the year group were sent postcards from people holidaying all around the world, they have had cards from Abu Dhabi, Australia, Mexico and even Iceland. They’ve then enjoyed using Atlases to locate all the countries and will go on to explore some of them in more detail.

In English we have been reading a book called the Clockwork Dragon and next week we are going to be starting our first Talk for Writing unit based on a dragon story. To ‘hook’ the children into our unit we had a very manic morning planning and making ‘Junk Dragons’.

We are also excited to let you know that this term your children are having a weekly music lesson with a qualified music teacher who will be teaching them how to play the Ukulele. We will then be holding a concert on Wednesday 6^th December at 10am for you to come and here what they have learnt.

Another date for your calendar is Tuesday 14^th November when we will be taking the children to the cinema to see Boss Baby.

We are all really impressed with the way the children have settled into Year 4 and the enthusiasm they have shown so far, we are looking forward to a great year ahead.