W/b 16/12/24
Christmas Party
Wow, it is hard to believe it is the end of term already! Just a few months ago, we were starting Year 3 and now here we are with a full term done! It has been full of lots of fun activities and we have been very busy. So, on Thursday, we got the chance to celebrate with our Christmas party! In the morning, we started off by watching a chocolate nativity video, showing the story of the nativity using different chocolate bars and sweets. Then, we had a very fun Christmas quiz, with lots of different topics relating to Christmas and the year that has passed! Our quiz was interrupted so that we could hear a story, "The Night Before Christmas", read by Santa himself!
After lunch, we tallied up the scores from the quiz and everyone got a big round of applause for the amazing effort we put in. Then, we played a game of corners where we were dancing to some Christmas music until it stopped and we had to pick a corner, whichever corner was picked the people were out! We played until we had one person left, and they got a prize. Then, we played pass the parcel, where lots of us got candy canes, but only one person could get the selection box inside! Thankfully, we all got a selection box in the end.
Then we had a game of musical statues that seemed to go on forever, it was so hard to catch anybody out! Eventually though, again, there was only one winner who also got a prize. The next prize was given for a colouring competition, but again it was so difficult to choose, we had to give out two prizes! Finally, we had some time to relax, we each had a cupcake and some juice. After all of that, it was time to go home, what a lovely afternoon!
I would like to extend my thanks to all children and parents for their support throughout this term. It has been a pleasure getting to know you all and starting our journey together. I hope you all have a lovely holiday and a relaxing break, and we will see you all again on the 6th January 2025.
Merry Christmas!
W/b 9/12/24
African Art
On Tuesday we took part in an African textile art workshop. We listened to a story called The Spider Weaver, all about how two boys named Kofi and Yaw who live in an Ashanti town in Ghana. They were expert weavers. These boys wove a simple cloth named nwen-ntoma and everyone, from the King to the poorest child wore it. Late one night, Kofi and Yaw were returning home from walk in the great Ashanti forest, where they came across what they described as a small miracle. In front of their eyes was the most beautiful, intricate spider’s web. They had never seen such a wondrous design before. It had been woven with a single unbroken thread, finer than any strand of human hair. The boys were distraught when they tried to take the web home, but the web collapsed, sticking to their fingers.
The next morning, they eagerly made their back into the forest in search of another extraordinary web. Sure enough, in front of them, were the beginnings of a new masterpiece. Once it was completed, the boys were desperate to take the web home, but did not want to destroy the spider’s home a second time. They were about to leave when the spider looked directly at them and began a weaving dance. Dip, twist turn and glide! The spider made her way across and back over the web. She moved like a woman dancing, regal and very graceful. What a wonderful teacher she had been!
With great joy, they returned to their village. Inspired by the spider’s weaving dance, they copied the patterns into black and white thread. Eventually they started to weave different colours into these patterns. They named these cloths the ken-te-nwen-ntoma, commonly known as thee ken-te cloth. Soon the two weavers were well known all across Ghana. They created designs and patterns that are still worn throughout the world today. We took inspiration from this story and created our own ken-te cloth designs. We used pieces of card, but followed the weaving motion the boys learned from the spider.
Take a look at the photos below of us creating our ken-te cloth designs.
6/12/24
Stone-Age Art
This half term in our Art lessons, we have been looking at Stone-Age art. At first, we were exploring what art looked like in the stone age and how people made it. We realised that people did not have paper, pencils or paintbrushes the way we do today. So we thought about how people might have made art on their cave walls. Then, we looked at what they drew. We noticed that most of the cave drawings were of some kind of animals, but they were not particularly detailed. We sketched our outlines of the animals that we wanted to draw very lightly, then went over them in thicker pencil to make nice bold lines.
The next week, we looked more at the equipment that people would have used to make their cave paintings. We discovered that they would have used something called charcoal, which is really wood which has been burnt. Luckily for us, we had some charcoal in school, we even had some charcoal pencils! We sketched our animal drawings onto A3 paper, scaling them up and keeping things in proportion. After sketching them, we drew over them with some charcoal to make the lines really thick and bold. We then added some more detail and even used smudging techniques!
This week, we have been taking a closer look at how people may have got different colours into their cave paintings. So, we got some spices, turmeric, paprika, nutmeg and cinnamon, and mixed them with some water to make a paint. Then, we used paintbrushes to create our own pictures in our sketch books! We were very lucky that we had paintbrushes, as people in the Stone-Age would have had to use their fingers, and this was already a messy job! Making Stone-Age Art has been so much fun!
W/b 25/11/24
Roving Bookshop
On Tuesday of this week, we were lucky enough to have a Roving Bookshop come into our school! We love reading in Year 3, so this was fantastic for us to get to look at a wide selection of books. We were given time to explore the stalls that had been put up to display the books and look at all kinds of different books, including poetry, adventure books and many many more. There were even some really famous books, like Harry Potter, and books from famous authors, like Roald Dahl!
Some of us bought some books that we took home at the end of the day, but we also had another job. We wanted to replenish our class library with some new, exciting books, so we were able to choose some books to go in our classroom as well! This means that these books can be read by many of us and we are excited to see the our new selection and start reading!
Year 3 Neighbourhood Life Enterprise Day
W/b 18/11/24
On Tuesday 19th November, Year 3 took part in a ‘Neighbourhood Life’ workshop; and we had SO much fun! We discussed what a neighbourhood is and some of the amenities and facilities you might find in a neighbourhood for example, a school, café and shops. Throughout the day, we had to work in teams and show good communication skills, team work and resilience. For our first task, each group were given a budget of £150,000 to spend on materials to build their house. They had to ensure all their money was spent by the end of the task, without going over budget. They also had to make sure that their house was watertight, it had a front door, the bricks all ran the same way and they had enough natural light. Then, we discussed which tradespeople are necessary to build a house and the order in which they would be required. To finish our morning, we learned about Government and Non-Government workers and the difference between the two. Including, how Government workers are all of equal importance, depend on one another and they play a vital role in how society works.
We had a very exciting afternoon, planning to save a struggling café. We had to think of ideas which would help the café attract more business. We worked in teams to come up with a business idea. We had to create a poster displaying our product, its name, a slogan, the ingredients, the cost, where the product could be purchased and any special offers. We then presented our ideas in front of the class, using our Oracy skills. To finish, we took part in a ‘blind vote’ and decided on which product would best help the café.
It was such a great day where we were able to explore ideas, work as a team and build on our speaking and listening skills.
Northern and Southern Europe
W/b 11/11/2024
Guided Reading - Our Tower
This year in our Guided Reading lessons, we have been exploring lots of different types of books. At the start of the year, we were reading 'The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon' by Mini Grey. This used some characters from a famous nursery rhyme to create an interesting story with lots of twists and turns, ultimately leading to long lost friends reuniting at the end.
Then, we read Extra Yarn. This book was about a little girl who found a never-ending box of yarn, which she used to knit for everyone she knows. After that she knitted for all of the animals and even some objects! Word quickly spread of her amazing box of yarn, leading to someone offering lots of money for it, but Annabelle would not sell. We were all very surprised at the ending of this book!
This week, we have started our latest book, 'Our Tower' by Joseph Coelho and Richard Johnston. Although we are only just starting to learn about this book, we have our suspicions that it may have some magic elements to it and we are very interested to find out more!
W/b 4/11/24
PSHE - Celebrating Differences
After a lovely half term break, we have come back refreshed and showing a great attitude this week. We have started our new PSHE topic, which is 'Celebrating Differences'. We started by talking about families and what family means to us. We shared who we considered to be part of our family and talked about why we consider them to be family.
Then, we talked about different types of families and how people can have lots of different types of families. We sorted some pictures into whether or not we thought they showed a family or not, which prompted some debate about animals and whether they are part of families or not. Finally, we all drew pictures of our own families and looked at how they are the same, as well as differences between them!
W/b 21/10/24
RE - Hinduism
It has been a busy last week to a busy half term for all of us in Southern Europe! In RE this half term, we have been learning about Diwali and wondering if celebrating Diwali with family and in the community would bring a sense of belonging to a Hindu child. To answer this question, we had to do some investigating about what makes the 'Festival of Lights' so special.
First, we learned about the fascinating story of Rama and Sita. This explains how the great warrior, Rama, and his wife, Sita were banished from their land, leading to Sita getting taken by Ravana! We learned how Rama was able to track her down (with some help) and save his wife. When people heard of their extraordinary adventure, they lit lamps to guide them on their way home. This is one of the reasons we learned that Diwali is called the Festival of Lights!
Then, we learned how Hindu people would celebrate Diwali and how it marks the beginning of a new year. We were able to discuss what would be fun and exciting it would be to celebrate in this way, with family and friends all around us. Then, we discussed if it would be the same without our family and friends and how our community can contribute to our sense of belonging.
One of the ways that we learned that Hindu people celebrate Diwali is through Rangoli patterns, which are used to decorate their doorstep! We had a go at designing our own Rangoli patterns, which you can see below. It has been a fun, informative and busy start to the year and I think we are all well settled in Year 3 and ready for our next steps (after a lovely half term break!).
W/b 14/10/24
PE - Ball Skills
This half term, we have been learning ball skills in our PE lessons on a Wednesday afternoon. We started with dribbling and learning how to dribble using both our feet, used in games like football, and our hands, used in games like basketball and netball. This allowed us to look at types of dribbling and explore how it can can change from game to game.
The next weeks were spent developing our tracking skills. This meant looking at different ways of sending a receiving a ball. This included passing to a partner, again with both hands and feet, and being ready to receive he ball using our body position and, if we were catching, having big hands so we are ready. The skill was to track the ball so that it would arrive at our feet or land in our hands.
This week, we were putting our tracking skills together to play 'Catch Tennis'. In this game, two teams would stand on opposite sides of a set of cones, to represent a net, and we would send the ball to the other teams side, trying to get it to bounce twice. We have had so much fun learning and practicing all of these skills!
W/b 7/10/24
Making an eBook
Southern Europe have been using their technology skills to great effect this week! Over the past couple of weeks we have been learning about how to keep our bodies healthy in Science. We have been learning about the importance of exercise and having a balanced diet, which foods we should eat more of and which we should eat less of. In our Computing lessons, we have been learning about eBooks and have been able to look at some eBooks and notice some things that we like about them. Then, we started to design our own eBooks all about healthy eating!
This week, we have been using Story Maker to help us make them on our iPads. First, we made our cover pages where we had our titles and the name of the author with a picture of the eat well plate. Then we made pages for each of the different food groups, including some information about each of them, then we found some pictures that we could use to show these food groups before recording a voice over for each of the pages!
W/b 30/09/24
Stone Age Houses
This week in Southern Europe, we have been using clay and sticks to make models of stone age houses! Last week, we looked at the different types of houses that stone age people would have lived in and thought about how we would make one, using our books to create a design. This week, we brought in lots of sticks and got our clay to make into a dwelling. Some things did not go to plan when making them, but we were resilient and adapted our designs so we could make our models. Next week, we will be making sure they have stayed in their shape and editing them!
W/B 23/09/24
English
Over the past few weeks in English we have been learning the story of the Elf Road! This started when we saw a picture of a mysterious portal in school, so we started to learn about portals through this story. Then, we each planned our own story that we were going to write, using the Elf Road text to help us. This week, we have been very busy putting our ideas together to write our own stories including portals. We have gone to all kinds of different lands and seen many different creatures and items, some of us even brought something home with us in our stories, which grew into something amazing!
W/B 16/09/2024
Maths
There has been some fantastic maths this week in Southern Europe! We have been learning to add three addends together, as well as adding two addends which bridge 10! To help us do this, we have used a variety of methods:
- We have used counters and 10s frames to help us.
- We have partitioned one number using a part-part-whole model so we could use our number bonds to 10 and add the remaining number.
- We have partitioned both numbers into '5 and a bit' for example, 8 (5 and 3) + 7 (5 and 2) so we could add the fives together before adding whatever is left.
Using counters and 10s frames has really helped us to represent these numbers and see how we were making ten, then adding more to complete the sum. Well done Year 3!
W/B 09/09/2024
Tiny Tasters
We have had a fantastic week in Southern Europe class this week with many exciting things happening! We have done lots of work, we attended a very fun and exciting music workshop and we had a very special visit from Tiny Tasters! During this workshop we got to show our amazing culinary skills as we cut some pepper, cracked some eggs, seasoned our food and made some lovely Spanish Tortilla (or Tortilla de Patatas) to take home and try. This was a great experience for everyone and we are all so grateful to Mrs Marcangelo for her time and equipment so we could all take part!
W/B 02/09/2024
First Week Back
We have had a fantastic first week back at school! We have done lots of work about the continent of Southern Europe in Geography, we have done our own pictures in they style of Modigliani and described what would be in our 'dream' school and our 'nightmare' school. It has been a great first week for me (Mr Robinson) here at Emmaville, it was lovely to welcome all of your children to Year 3 and to see some of you on Wednesday after at our 'Meet the Teacher' afternoon! I'm sure this will be a fantastic year for all of us in Southern Europe!