Laburnum have had an exciting end to the Spring Term! 

Earlier in the week we invited our adults to join us for a Rise of the Robots activity afternoon. We tried to recreate robot art, construct robotic figures and make a moving vehicle. It was definitely an afternoon where we showed off our skills and continued to practise our growth mindset when the construction was a bit tricky.

Then today, 8 of Laburnum class represented Fairlands in the local year 3 and 4 speed stacking festival. The children took part in individual and relay events with different stacking formations. They demonstrated skill, determination and teamwork, and their efforts paid off with them bringing home fourth overall, 3rd fastest boy, 1st place girls team and the Honesty Award! An amazing achievement!

We had a fantastic World Book Day in Lime class! As well as the usual swimming and maths fun, we took part in a tricky quiz, were introduced to Miss Shields' favourite book and responded through art.

In the book, the character goes on a journey to be independent and find his own way in life, but first, he has to travel through many wild and strange lands. We drew some paths and used our own wild imaginations and the inspiration of Dr Seuss to create four new worlds for us to pass through. Some of our worlds included: furry trees, rainbow mountains, upside-down houses, mythical monsters and collasal statues!

Dream big and surround yourself with those who will help you to achieve. 

That was the message we got from our class book 'Geronimo' today. Geronimo was a penguin whose dream it was to fly and he tried many inventive ways to achieve that dream. We thought about our big dreams and how we might try to achieve them, or what it might be like living in our dreams. We used photos of ourselves in our World Book Day outfits to illustrate our Big Dreams and the joy we would feel 'living the dream'.

As part of our WOW day this week, we created Viking brooches. We looked at some images and created designs in our books. We then (carefully!) used the hot glue gun to create our designs. When it had cooled, we wrapped it with tin foil and applied pressure to see the pattern through the foil. We then added some metallic paint to give it an old and rusted look.  We attached a pin to the back so we can wear our brooches like a real Viking! 

Vikings used runes to record things. These were symbols to represent sounds in words (or letters as we call them). Runes were usually carved into large stones and could be to mark territory, to provide information, to boast about their success or as a memorial to a great fallen warrior. We designed our own stone using simple images and rune symbols, and used graphite pencils and chalks to bring our designs to life.

The Vikings were skilled ship builders and travelled great distances over great seas and oceans to start homes (and raid riches) in new lands. We became skilled builders during our WOW day and built our own Longships. We had to follow instructions to cut, fold and fix card shapes to create our ships. It was quite tricky at times as we had to make sure we were careful not to cut off the flaps and that we folded the card along the correct lines. It was the perfect task to practise our growth mindset and resilience strategies!

Today is our Viking WOW day.

Keep checking our blog posts to find out what we got up to during the day.

Today we have been thinking carefully about how we act online. The theme of this year's Safer Internet Day is 'change' so we decided to make posters to promote changing behaviour.

We also watched a BBC alive assembly which taught us all about changing technology and the positive and negative sides to AI.

Challenge us to explain the ways we use technology and how we scan stay safe. Some of us brought home our activity sheets so you might want to complete these with us!

Last week, 10 fruit trees were donated to the school and the task of planting them fell to six Year 4 children. The chosen children met with Mr Sharp, our site manager, to find out what they needed to do and to plan where the trees would go. A spot in the nature area at the top of the upper playground was chosen and they spent the morning working as a team to dig plant, fill in and water the saplings, which included a variety of apple, pear, plum and cherry trees. For the next month, these children will also maintain the newly planted orchard by watering the trees twice a week.  We are very excited to watch these trees grow and cannot wait until they produce some fruit for us to enjoy!

In PE this half term, we have been practicing stretches and balances. First, we looked at the different types of balances and how they would use the different parts of our bodies. Then we created sequences of poses that flowed smoothly into each other. This week, we have looked at working in pairs to mirror each other's movements and worked as a unit to create shapes. We are starting to set our movements to music and create feelings that reflect the style of music we are listening to.