In our Topic lessons, we have completed our Misty Mountain, Winding River unit of work where we have learnt about the different altitudinal zones found on a mountain, the water cycle and how the world’s habitats are changing around us. The children particularly enjoyed their lesson about contour lines where they were able to use a range of coloured card to create their own contour maps in their books. All of this new knowledge has inspired some lovely written work from Cedars where we have created an information leaflet for a mountaineer as well as a podcast script between a host and an ecologist.

As part of our Art work this half term, we have been learning about animals in art. We took part in a sketching masterclass where we learnt to accurately draw a horse, dog and puffin by using circles to guide the proportions of their bodies. This unit ending with the children using clay to create their own Bankura horse. We learnt about the importance of these creatures in West Bengali art work and how they represent energy, strength and loyalty. The children worked hard, carefully following the instructions to create their Bankura horses which gained many compliments whenever someone entered the classroom.

Cedars recently went on a trip to Hazard Alley where the children were faced with real life situations which could put themselves or others in danger. They enjoyed learning how to keep themselves safe and practised making phone calls to 999 and correctly giving all of the information needed to the dispatcher. It was particularly fun learning the recovery position and working in partners to practise how to do this correctly.

In our Topic lessons, we have completed the first half of our Misty Mountain, Winding River lessons where we have learnt about a range of rivers found around the world. We have thought about how a river can make changes to the landscape as it makes its way from the mountains to the sea. The children have also looked at the different types of mountains and how these are formed. At the start of the term, we had a visitor from Anglia Water come in to run a series of workshops with the class. The children had the opportunity to learn about the importance of water, how to save water and how our water is treated to make it safe to reuse. Here are some quotes from the children about their favourite parts of our topic day:

‘learning how much water is needed to make a mobile phone’

‘making the sewage soup’

‘cleaning the paint pots with as little water as possible’

‘getting wet when we did our water audit’

Cedars have also been busy learning the clarinet this half term and are getting more confident with playing the G, F, E and D notes correctly. The children are enjoying learning the different finger patterns and rhythms needed to play along to the music. Everyone is now able to independently get their clarinets put together with all four parts in the right place and facing the correct way. 

During this half term, Cedars have completed their Through The Ages unit of work where we learnt about life in Iron Age Britain. After learning about hillforts, the children had the opportunity to design their own Celtic homes and villages. We also used our inference skills to read a passage of text about a Celtic warrior before using evidence from this to draw what we thought they would look like. It wasn’t until we had finished these that we were able to look at a warrior and evaluate how closely our pictures resembled them.

We have now moved on to learn about Earth and the different layers that form our home planet. The children have then used this to inspire an imaginary piece of writing. Their task was to create a diary entry about a journey to the centre of the Earth talking about what they could see as they travelled through the different layers. They were challenged to also use as many of the writing techniques they have learnt in SPaG as they could.

In our Art lessons, Cedars have been busy learning about the Beaker Folk that came to Britain at the end of the Stone Age. This unit of work started with the class completing some observational drawings of Bell Beaker pottery. The children had to use shading to try to create a 3-dimensional effect and were not allowed to use any colour to help with this. We have also been using clay to make pots inspired by this group of people. The children had fun foraging for natural materials in the playground to imprint onto their pinch pots.