During our English lessons this week, whilst focusing on Beowulf, the children learnt about the progressive and perfect tenses along with planning their own characters for their story. Each child decided how they wanted to plan their character. Some decided to use their computing skills to combine pictures together; others drew their idea straight from their imagination. Once they had come up with a character idea, each child, created ambitious word banks and planned figurative language to support them when drafting their story. 

In our science lesson, the children learnt about separating mixtures. They filtered, sieved, evaporated, and used magnetic attraction to separate out a variety of mixtures.

As part of our art lesson this week, the children drew a preassessment piece of artwork which we can reflect back on at the end of our drawing topic to see whether we can notice any improvements in our mastery of drawing.   

During our RE lesson, the children learnt key vocabulary linked with Islam. They enjoyed using Seesaw to record their findings.

In PSHE, we continued our focus on relationships. The children thought about how everyone in class is connected and has things in common with each other. We tried to visually represent our connections in class by passing a ball of string between as many people as we could.  

Homework has been set on Mathletics and Spelling Shed. Please also remember to read regularly and that we have Times Table Rockstar logins.

Points to remember:

PE on Mondays and Fridays

SATs week- 13^th- 16^th May

Hello Everyone,

On Thursday afternoon this week, we enjoyed a visit to the church. In RE, we have been learning about sacred places and objects that help people to worship. We managed to find plenty of interesting things in the church, that helped us with our learning, such as the font, altar, pulpit and bell tower. We all had a turn walking to the top of the pulpit, just to see what it looks like from Rev Allen’s perspective. We drew pictures of these special places in the church, and talked about what they are used for. 

During our English lessons this week, we have innovated and written some fantastic stories about Little Red Riding Hood. They are very creative and imaginative. 

We have impressed the judges of our art competition this week, with our watercolour paintings of bluebells and sunflowers. They found it difficult to pick a winner and said that class 2 has some extremely impressive examples. Well done children, your hard work has produced some excellent results. 

Please continue to bring reading books back every day, and try to read daily at home. 

Have a lovely weekend!

The class 2 team.

.

Hello everyone,

It was great to see you all at our 'Family Friday' this week, we hope you all enjoyed the different activities! 

In maths our main focus this week was around verbal counting and patterns. We practiced counting forwards and backwards from different starting points as well as looking at a hundred square to identify, discuss and start to explain the patterns we noticed. We also used a set of number cards, put them in order and then played ‘Which one is missing?’ 

This week in English our learning has been based around the story 'Supertato'; clearly a firm favourite for the children! We have been labelling the characters and using adjectives to describe Evil Pea and Supertato. We also made our own 'super veggie' and wrote a description of what our 'super veggie' looks like and their superpowers.  

Our art learning this week saw us start to learn about two of our focus artists; Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. We looked at examples of their work, discussed what we noticed and then started to create our own inspired pieces.  We used photos and crayons to create a piece of art inspired by Andy Warhol where each child had four identical pictures of themselves that they coloured using crayons. The children will make this into a collage and we look forward to sharing these pieces with you. We also used pop art style dots to show colour without filling a space completely. We looked at Lichtenstein’s “Ben Day Dots” to create a piece inspired by his theory, we have made a good start on this and will continue with it next week. 

In RE we have been looking at ‘special places’. We visited our local church and discussed what we could see and why it is important for Christians.

As our story this week was Supertato, we have been exploring floating and sinking with fruits and vegetables. We learnt what a prediction is and made predictions first before testing the fruits and vegetables. We discussed why some float and why some sink, and why some of them floated first and then sank. We then explored floating and sinking with other objects.

We also went on a superhero rescue! A villain (Evil Pea) sent a note to the children explaining that he had taken 'Ted'. The children had a series of clues to follow which they hoped would lead them to Ted. The clues were solved accurately and when they found Ted on the PE shed they had one final question to answer about the focus text we have been using this week. Great superhero problem solving everyone! Well done!

We are going to have a themed weekly 'Show and Tell' which will be on a Thursday. The theme for next week is 'A favourite place you have visited'. We will ask the children to tell us about the item/photograph and ask them a couple of questions too. The children can bring in an item from the place they have visited or a photograph or you can email any photos to me at this address: rhorn@pelyntprimary.co.uk **Please note, if you are emailing me any photos to ensure that they are sent before 8:30am on Thursday so that they are ready to show on Thursday morning, many thanks.**

Points to remember....
- As the weather warms up please ensure your child brings a drinks bottle to school each day filled with water.
- Please ensure sun cream is applied before school; we are unable to apply sun cream at school.
- Please ensure your child brings a sunhat to school. 
- Below we have attached some optional homework activities, based around our learning about Superheroes this term. The children can do as many of the activities as they wish. Please do take photos or bring the homework activities to school so we can give them house points for their amazing work! You will also be sent a copy of these home on Monday.

Class 1 Team

Hello Everyone!

Welcome to the Summer Term!

This week we have been enjoying some sunshine outside, whilst finding wild flowers in preparation for the Trelawny Fayre art competition.
We learnt about the work of Cornish artist Marjorie Blamey, who painted water colours of wild flowers. We then found real examples of flowers that she had used in her work. We chose bluebells as a focus, and have sketched some wonderful examples of them, in preparation for painting next week. The children have asked if we can sketch some different kinds of flowers next week. I am so pleased with their efforts and with the work that they have produced so far. Well done everyone! Entries will be judged next Friday. 
Our science topic this half term is all about plants. We learnt about the process of pollination this week, and drew a comic strip to explain the process. The children became very good at using scientific vocabulary to explain the process. 
In English this week, we have been learning about traditional tales. We learnt the story of Little Red Riding Hood and have used the story to help us with grammatical structures and sentence openers. Next week we will look at different versions of the story.
In maths this week, Year 2 have been learning about length. They have used metres and centimetres to estimate and measure objects. Year 1 have begun to learn about multiplication, by finding and making equal groups. We have been counting in 2’s, 5’s and 10’s.
Next week, during our RE lesson on Thursday afternoon, we would like to walk to the church. We will be learning about things that people use to help them to worship. Thank you for completing the relevant consent forms at the beginning of this year, which allows us to take the children off site for visits. We will only be walking as far as the inside of the church. 
Have a lovely weekend and enjoy the long awaited sunshine!

The class 2 team!

At the end of our last term we created some superb water colour flower picture.  The skills we practiced came in useful as we took part in a one-off art competition, painting flowers, including roses.. 

We also started our next art theme.  We began with a still life of apples.  We will be looking at impressionism  inc. he work of Paul Cézanne, build to recreating our still life, but in the style of impressionism  

TT Rock Stars (TTRS) will be a big focus over the next few weeks as the Year 4s build up to the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) in June.  The 'Soundcheck' option on TTRS works in a very similar way to the MTC and we aiming to complete 6 (SIX) soundcheck per week to build up our times tables speed and stamina.  The Year 3s are joining us on our practice journey also aiming to complete 6 soundcheck per week.  Luckily, they have a year before they take the test.

Regards,

Mr Knight

Welcome back.

The children have settled back into class routines exceptionally well. They have been enjoying the dry weather and being able to make the most of our large field especially at lunch times.

On returning to school, it was lovely to see all the children’s fabulous (finally dry) prints that we created last half term based on Hokusai’s, 36 Views of Mount Fuji series(pictured left).

During our English lessons this week, the children have not only finished their final draft of their newspaper reports, but they have also started a new learning based on Beowulf. The children summarised the story using their computing skills to digitally create a storyboard along with designing their own story maps to help them to retell the story off by heart. This week we have also been reminding ourselves of various word classes and their roles.

In our science lesson this week, the children learnt about solubility. They made predictions, carried out tests and reflected on their results.

During our PE lessons this week, we thoroughly enjoyed beginning our focus of touch rugby with Pro20. In our athletic lesson this week, we used the iPads to capture our running technique and time across a distance which we hope to improve on other this half term.

During PSHE, the children learnt about mental health and the balance between challenges and support.

We enjoyed our Music lesson with Mrs Butlin and look forward to music with her during this half term.

Homework has been set on Mathletics and Spelling Shed. Please also remember to read regularly and that we have Times Table Rockstar logins.

Points to remember:

PE on Mondays and Fridays

St George’s Day- red and white mufti Tuesday 23^rd April

Clubs start this week

SATs week- 13^th- 16^th May

Residential- 12^th-14^th June – full payment due

What lovely weather we've had this week to welcome the children back to school for the summer term! It has been wonderful to spend some time outside in our outside area and for our PE lessons. We started our new learning for this half term, our big question is 'What is a superhero?' The children are very excited about this topic!

During our maths learning this week, we were focusing on building numbers and continuing patterns beyond 10. We practiced counting to 20 using the stable order counting principle. We practiced counting both forwards and backwards. We then explored counting and building amounts and explaining what number we had built. The children were starting to notice patterns they could see e.g. ten and 1, ten and 2, ten and 3 etc. They then said that "the number after the one was going up by one each time". We will continue with this strand of learning next week where we will be further investigating pattern and verbal counting. 

In English, to introduce our new 'big question' we begun the week by looking at some very familiar superheroes and writing their names and their superpowers.  Our story this week was 'Eliot Jones, Midnight Superhero'. We wrote about the superpowers Eliot used in the story and what he used them for. We also  looked at when speech bubbles are used in stories; we then wrote some speech bubbles for the characters in the story.

In RE we have started to discuss which places are special and why. We talked about places that are special to us, for example, places to be happy, to have fun, to be quiet or to feel safe. The children came up with some lovely ideas, including, the beach, the park, the woods, the playground and their bedroom.

In PSHE we have started our unit on 'Relationships' and this week we have been looking at our families. Mrs Forbes shared a photo of her family; if any of the children would like to bring in a photo of their family to share during our PSHE circle time next week on Wednesday we would love to see them. 

Our art learning this week involved creating a piece of artwork...more information to follow soon! 

The children each took their tricky word bags home on Friday, please see the note inside which provides some more information. If you have any questions please feel free to ask. 

School photos are next Friday - please ensure all children are wearing their school uniform. 

Class 1 Team

This week, the children have thoroughly enjoyed getting their teeth into their printing learning journey. They made Styrofoam print blocks, string print blocks and sponge print blocks. After experimenting with these different methods, each child decided which they would like to use in their main art piece. They justified their choice and shared top tips with each other. Many children loved what they had managed to create out of a piece of sponge but decided that they will use a Styrofoam print block as it would give them the chance to add more fine detail in their print.

During PSHE, the children learnt about wellbeing; they drew a wellness well and thought about how positive and negative thoughts affect mental health and how we can help ourselves and others.

In our science lessons, the children learnt about materials and their properties. We explored various properties including transparency, hardness, magnetism and finished by creating an investigation to test electrical conductors and sorting these from electrical insulators.

During our English lessons this week, the children have been drafting a newspaper article about an earthquake. They have learnt about speech punctuation and have used examples in their articles.

Homework has been set on Mathletics and Spelling Shed. Please also remember to read regularly and that we have Times Table Rockstar logins.

Points to remember:

PE on Mondays and Wednesdays

Parent consultations Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday

Break up for Easter on Thursday (school closing early)

 

Well this half term is passing by so quickly, we have just completed the last full week of our Spring Term!
Nest week we just have 4 days before we break up for our Easter Holidays.

This weeks book was "Owl Babies" by Martin Waddell

The three owls Sarah, Percy and Bill all want their Mummy.
The Three baby owls awake one night to find their mother gone, and they can't help but wonder where she is. What is she doing? When will she be back? What scary things move all around them? Stunning illustrations from striking perspectives capture the anxious little owls as they worry.

We talked about where Mummy had gone and that she went looking for food for the three baby owls. 

We talked about Nocturnal Animals and why these animals come out at night! we listed Owls, Hedgehogs, Bats, Foxes, Mice, Moths and Hamsters.

We listened to different animal sounds to see if we could name them and did really well at spotting the Owls Hoot!

We were able to get outside lots this week without having to dodge the rain, which made a wonderful change, so nice to see the sun shining in the sky.
On Friday we put on our wellies and had a run/walk around the big school field to stretch our legs! We were also finding lots of play equipment that had been scattered on the field so decided to be helpful and collect it all up and put back into the school sheds.
We played on the tyre park area for a while and watched Mr Knights PE lesson that was taking place on the playground.

We made our own paintings of Owls and started to make some pom pom owls which we will complete next week.

Next week we will be doing all things Easter...

We still have a few poorly staff and children with a sickness bug. To prevent any further spread to children and staff, it is our policy that if a child has had sickness or diarrhoea, They must not be in Pre-School for 48 hours from their last episode of sickness or diarrhoea, whatever the cause.
If your child is going to miss a session or is absent due to sickness, then please let us know by calling Pre-School on 01503 220686 or by emailing us at preschool@pelyntprimary.co.uk by 9.15am.
Thank you for your continued understanding on this.


A few dates for your diary -

- Tuesday 26th March 2pm Easter Celebration at church (note change of time) All welcome.

- Thursday 28th March Pre-School and School end for children at 1pm


- Friday 29th March – Friday 12th April Easter Holiday
- Monday 15th April Summer Term starts

Hello everyone

We cannot believe we have just completed the last full week of Spring term 2! Just 4 days to go next week!

We had an exciting music lesson with Mrs Butlin this week after our singing assembly. We learnt a funny duck dance and had to move like the different members of the duck family and listen carefully to when the music changed. Mrs Butlin also showed us her clarinet. She told us all about it and she played it for us, we listened carefully to the sound it made and how she moved her fingers to change the pitch.

In our maths learning this week we have started learning about 3D shapes. We started off by being able to recognise the shapes and then started to learn their names. We have learnt about these shapes: cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, pyramid, sphere. We then started to use mathematical vocabulary to describe the properties such as all of the faces on a cube are flat. Towards the end of the week, we were finding 2D shapes within 3D shapes. We used paint to print the 3D shapes and identified which 2D shapes we could see. On Friday we were using 3D shapes for tasks where we had 3D shapes and a ramp. We had to explore which 3D shapes rolled down the ramp and which did not and then explain what we noticed about the shapes that did not roll. After that, we explored which shapes stacked and which did not, we investigated which properties made it a good shape for stacking.

In English this week our learning has been based around the story 'Katie and the Dinosaurs'. We used describing words to describe one of the scenes in the land of the dinosaurs and wrote about where we thought Katie would take Grandma at the end of the story.

In PSHE we have been discussing the importance of being clean, in particular washing our hands.  We spoke about the importance of washing our hands and then looked at how we do it properly. We discussed that we can’t always see the germs on our hands because they are invisible. We then took part in an experiment. The pepper in the water was the germs. When we put our finger in the water the pepper (germs) stuck to our finger. We then dipped our finger in soap and dipped it back into the water. The pepper (germs) moved away from our finger. This showed that germs don’t like soap and we need to use it when we wash our hands to wash the germs away.

We enjoyed going out to the forest school area looking at the pondlife. Before we went out to the pond, we discussed what we might expect to find and what pond creatures look like, we linked this to our learning about lifecycles. We then did some pond dipping where we tried to identify the pondlife using magnifying glasses to take a closer look, we were so excited to have found two newts! We looked at them in the jugs so we could take a closer look and were surprised to see all of the different colours on the newts! 

A few notes about next week:
*No PE due to Easter service on Tuesday afternoon and early school closing (after lunch) on Thursday afternoon.
*Parent consultations on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after school – everyone has booked a slot – we look forward to meeting with you.

Class 1 Team

Hello everyone!

We had a lovely day on Monday in our outside area, finding tadpoles and frogspawn. We enjoyed learning about different habitats, as well as the plants and animals that thrive in and around a pond. We also learnt about the life cycle of a frog.

This week, we have continued our learning about Amelia Earhart. In English, we began writing a biography. We have also made models of ‘The Canary’, the plane that Amelia Earhart flew. We have made these out of wood, and have also painted them with our own designs. 

In maths this week, year 1 have been measuring length, using centimetres and metres, while year 2 have been investigating odd and even numbers. 

Thank you for all of your kind donations to comic relief this week.

Have a lovely weekend!

From the class 2 team.

This week has been a busy one with lots of important learning taking place across the week.  

Year 5 children went to a ‘Life Skills’ event at Liskeard fire station where they learnt lifesaving information from various emergency services and companies like GWR. It was great to hear that some of the children went home and taught their adults some of skills learnt like CPR.

During our outdoor learning time, the children learnt about pond life. We noticed frogs, tadpoles and newts in our pond at school and learnt the life cycles and animal groups of these creatures. We made our own wood slice life cycles which we will give to the younger classes once they are varnished. We noticed that the edges to our pond are quite open so we used other wood slices to carve a danger sign to warn others about it. We chiselled into the wood slices which we found particularly difficult. It made us wonder how ‘Hokusai’ our artist focus at the moment made the detailed wooden print blocks all those years ago.  In our outdoor session, we also learnt about filtration and tried to improve the water quality of the pond as it is looking quite murky. In groups, the children made water filters using various natural resources that they found. There was a clear difference once the pond water had been through the children’s filters. They noted how the water still wouldn’t be safe to drink!

In PSHE, we continued our topic, ‘Healthy ME’.  The children learnt about exploitation, peer pressure and gangs. They learnt about what to do if they are in a situation where they are being made to do something they don’t want to do. They also learnt about, ‘Clever Never Goes,’ which helps children to recognise specific situations that are unsafe and gives them the tools to respond. This tied in well with year 5’s Life Skills trip to Liskeard Fire station.  

In our English lessons, the children planned a newspaper report about a natural disaster. They learnt about direct and indirect speech and wrote examples that could be used in their reports. Some children managed to change the levels of formality between the various witnesses and experts in their speech examples.

During our RE lesson, the children learnt about how Christians choose to live their lives. We learnt about various parables including the ‘Foolish Builder’. The children recreated this parable by attempting to build mini structures on various foundations. All children were able to explain that the different foundations they used represented Christians that followed Jesus’ teachings and those that did not.

During our geography lessons this week, the children had a physical geography focus. They learnt about tectonic plates, volcanoes and earthquakes and plotted the ring of fire on a world map. After learning about how buildings are built with special features in earthquake prevalent areas to try to reduce the impact of the quakes, the children designed their own buildings with similar features and tried to build these using spaghetti and marshmallows. They used a base of jelly as their foundations so it was great fun testing their buildings against an earthquake simulation! We got up to ‘8’ on our own Richter scale.

During our computing lesson this week, the children learnt how to create a database of data in Excel. They researched the changing temperatures in various countries across 20+ years to see if they could notice the effect of global warming. The children learnt how to calculate the total and the mean in their spreadsheet by typing in equations. They also learnt how to plot their findings into various styles of graph.

Mr Hewitt came in and worked with some of our gifted artists to add finishing touches to the school mural.

Homework has been set on Mathletics and Spelling Shed. Please also remember to read regularly and that we have Times Table Rockstar logins.

This half term, if the children would like to make a volcano to ‘erupt’ in school. We will be erupting any volcanoes made in these last 2 weeks of term so if they could be brought into school this coming week, that would be great.

Points to remember:

PE on Mondays and Wednesdays

Hello everyone

It was great to see everyone wearing something red on Friday for Red Nose Day. We discussed what Red Nose Day is and the children asked some brilliant questions to further their understanding.

During our Maths lessons this week we were looking at composition to 10 and making bonds to 10 using 2 parts and 3 parts. We used Numicon to support our learning about parts and being able to visibly see the different bonds to 10. We ended the week by looking at doubles and finding doubles to 10. We reminded ourselves that the concept of doubling is ‘twice as many’.

We continued with our photography focus and set up our own scenes and took photographs of it. We then changed part of the scene and took another photograph and explained the changes we had made.

When we arrived at school at the beginning of the week we noticed there were dinosaur footprints in the classroom and they had taken a big bite out of one of our books and left the paper all over the floor! When we looked in the nest we saw that the eggs had hatched and  we had baby dinosaurs in the classroom! However, when we arrived in the classroom on Tuesday morning the baby dinosaurs had gone missing! We made 'Missing' posters for the baby dinosaurs and stuck them up around the school to see if anyone had seen them. We still hadn't found them, so on Thursday we made traps to try and catch them. We are really hoping we find them soon!

This week we have been looking at the size of dinosaurs and answering the question ‘were all dinosaurs big?’ We all said that we didn’t think you could fit a dinosaur in the classroom. We found out though, that although some dinosaurs were the largest ever land animals to live, some were also very tiny. We learnt that the smallest dinosaur was the Compsognathus, which was the size of a chicken! We then used unifix cubes to measure the height of three different dinosaurs and put them in order from the shortest to the tallest.

The Class 1 Team 

We started our week creating Mother day cards.  We used some water colour skills to create pictures of flowers painting wet on dry.  We then used more water to spread the paint and create the petal shapes.  World book day saw the whole of Class 3 in fancy dress or PJs!  we had a number of famous character came to class 3 including Matilda, Little red Riding Hood and Veruca Salt.  We are looking forwards to seeing more red costumes this Friday for Red Nose day. 

Home work is on Ed Shed and everyone has had the chance to log in at school.  Fingers crossed, and you'll be able to smoothly access it at home.

Looking forward to a great week including outside learning on Tuesday.

Mr Knight.

Hello Everyone,

We really enjoyed celebrating world book day on Thursday. The children were excited to tell us all about their favourite books or characters. We also took part in an online illustrator’s master class by the author Rob Biddulph. We learnt how to draw some of his characters from the story; ‘Charlie McGrew and the Horse that Grew’. This book is available to exchange with your world book day token. 

On Monday 11th March, we have our outdoor learning day. The theme will be ‘pond life’. Please come to school wearing clothes and footwear suitable for the weather. 

We've had another really busy week of fun here at Pelynt Pre-School!

Starting off our week we were looking at different types of birds.
Our book this week was "A tale of two feathers" 



In this story, Otis the owl finds a shiny blue feather and cannot find the bird it came from. Meanwhile, Kia the kingfisher finds a stripy white feather and cannot find the matching bird. One night, the birds finally meet and solve the mystery!

We looked at a real birds nest and talked about how and why birds build nests, we also talked about how hard it would be to build a nest, we decided that birds were really cleaver to be able to build such beautiful, neat and tidy homes with only their beaks!!

We went outside and did some bird spotting, counting how many birds and the different types we saw in and around our school field.

Also we made our own gorgeous birds out of clay which we will be able to bring home once they are dry.

We celebrated St Pirans Day on Tuesday, we looked at why Cornwall is so special to us, looked at pictures of the Cornish Coastline and how lucky we are to have so many beaches to explore in and around our county. We watched a Cornish Sea Tale "The Mermaids Magic Comb", and made our own Cornish Pasties out of play doh. We finished off our celebration of St Pirans Day with a service at the church and lay some daffodils outside.

Also this week we have celebrated "World Book day", we went across to big school to watch an author event with classes 1 and 2 on Wednesday and on Thursday we dressed up as our favourite book characters, picked out our favourite books and read lots of stories.

We have all deserved a relaxing weekend after all the activities we have taken part in this week!

Next week is "British Science Week" so we will be doing lots of activities linked to science, and hopefully some fun experiments too...

This Friday, 15th March, we are holding a Comic Relief Fundraising (whole school) so please wear something red for suggested donation of £1.

Have a wonderful weekend, and hopefully we'll see some much needed sunshine.

Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.




Just a little reminder.
We still have a few poorly children with a sickness bug.
To prevent any further spread to children and staff, it is our policy that if a child has had sickness or diarrhoea, then they must not be in Pre-School for 48 hours from their last episode of sickness or diarrhoea, whatever the cause.


Notifying us of absences:
If your child is going to miss a session or is absent due to sickness, then please let us know by calling Pre-School on 01503 220686 or by emailing us at preschool@pelyntprimary.co.uk by 9.15am. Thank you for your understanding on this.