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.

For the last two weeks our indoor PE has been practising speed stacking skills. We were all very excited when the cups were brought out and then we realised that actually there is a lot of skill involved in stacking cups! We have had to work on our hand eye coordination and follow a precise set of rules. We have practised a 3 stack, a 6 stack and a 3-6-3 stack. Next week we will be setting ourselves challenges to improve our coordination, speed and precision.

We have been investigating materials and practising our stitching in Laburnum. At times it has been tricky to thread a needle and navigate the material to ensure the cotton doesn't become tangled. However, we have been successful this week in stitching two small pieces of fabric to make a finger puppet and we feel very proud of ourselves. Ask us what we are working towards making!

Larch class have started learning to play the violins as part of our Music curriculum. Our first lesson was spent learning some information about violins as well as practising removing the violin from the case and holding them correctly. We also began creating sound by plucking the strings. The children learnt the special name for this type of playing is pizzicato. 

This week, we learnt a short piece of music called Willow's Waltz and were even able to perform for some adults from Year 4. We can't wait for next week to play even more wonderful music! 

This week we ended the term with a celebration of Laburnum's hard work, perseverance and growth mindset. They have been learning the violin since September and have had 11 lessons in total. On Tuesday, they all amazed their grown ups with several pieces. The children showed off their skills with keeping in time, playing rhythms and even reading musical notation, as they pizzicatoed and bowed their way through practise pieces, a waltz and pop songs. Thank you to all those who were able to join us and share in our pride, and thank you to those who joined in the fun with us at the end! 

This term we have been learning what it means to have a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset. We have been trying really hard to stay positive when we are finding something tricky and have endeavoured to remember the importance of the word 'yet' when feeling like we can't succeed. Last week we invited our grown ups in to share some challenges with us from drawing, to balancing; from creating patterns to repeating tongue twisters. We had great fun helping each other to stay positive and giving tips for success. Thank you to everyone who was able to join us.

This week in Laburnum we investigated states of matter. We had already learned about solids retaining their shape, liquids moving to fill the container they were in and gases spreading out as far as they could go. We knew how all matter was made up of particles and how these particles stuck together in a solid, liked to move in between each other in a liquid, and wanted to be as far apart from each other as they could in a gas. We thought we had mastered our knowledge - until Mrs Herron presented us with substances that didn't quite fit the criteria! How could something that was hard when we hit, it flow through our fingers when we picked it up? How could something that could be poured, suddenly be floating in front of us? And where did all the water disappear to when we put a sponge in the bowl? It really got us thinking and we had some great discussions. Ask us what we found out!

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the MTC parent and child workshop!

We hope you found it informative and helpful with supporting your child with their times tables. It was lovely to talk to so many of you about your child's progress and we hope you found it useful to share some different activities together.

Good afternoon and happy half term Year 4!

We have set up a times tables challenge over on TTRockstars! To earn points for the challenge, you need to answer questions correctly on any part of the website. This is also a good chance to practise any times tables you need support on. This is open from TODAY until Sunday 29th at 4:00pm. 

The class with the most points will earn a treat for the first week back. 

Rock on and get practising!