On Monday 3rd October, Maple participated in an African dance workshop as part of celebrating Black History month. The children thoroughly enjoyed learning and performing the dance to the beat of a djembe drum.
Upper Key Stage Two had the wonderful opportunity of taking part in a day long Viking History activity workshop delivered by external expert providers ‘History Off the Page’ – the children had enormous fun doing (amongst other activities) practising their archery skills, making Thor inspired metal work, using Viking medicinal remedies, creating their names in clay using the Viking alphabet, sewing garments, painting decorations and creating candles.
During Book Week, all the children enjoyed the workshop with the author Lou Trevleaven. Throughout this week, they completed activities based on one of her books ‘Homework on Pluto’ This led to children producing lovely work relating to a planet of their creation.
We had our Christmas Fire this afternoon. We enjoyed toasting (and eating) marshmallows and singing Christmas Carols!
This year’s picture is “Woman in a Hat and A fur Coat” by Pablo Picasso. Each class uses a picture for inspiration for their art work. Some of our classes created with own art work inspired by the Pablo Picasso artwork and others used his cubism style of art to inspire their own paintings.
Cubism is a style of art which aims to show all of the possible viewpoints of a person or an object all at once. It is called Cubism because the items represented in the artworks look like they are made out of cubes and other geometrical shapes. Cubism was first started by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque.
All the art work was displayed in the hall for all the children to enjoy.
On Wednesday 29 September, Maple visited the Duxford Imperial War Museum. During the day the children participated in workshops and made their own documentaries. We even saw Tom Cruise flying a plane!
Year 5/6 enjoyed a busy day visiting the home where the Harry Potter films were filmed. They were able to see some of the original sets, costumes, the original character masks and the design and making of the many animals.
The classes also took part in a workshop based on ‘Fantasy Story Writing’ where each group were given different props to assist with their ideas.
As an added bonus each child was given the opportunity to ride the famous broomstick and have a picture taken as a souvenir.
Maple class took part in a friendly tournament with other year five children from a number of schools in the area. The children were divided into three teams of seven with two subs per team. Each team played either four or five games.
The children had a lovely time practising their skills against the other schools and came back a little muddy but proud of the effort that they put into each game.
In 5 Maple we studied the painting ‘A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grande Jatte’ by Georges-Pierre Seurat.
We designed and painted our own compositions based around water and relaxation.
As part of our English writing we produced short biographies on the artist.
On Thursday 25th September the pupil in upper key stage 2 visited the Imperial War museum in connection to their history and D.T topics.
They were able to see close up some of the planes that took part in the Second World War as well as examples of different vehicles used during the conflict.
The children were also very lucky to meet face to face three veterans who shared their own experiences of military conflict. Two of the gentleman were only very young children when the war started so they talked and answered questions about their own experiences of daily life during this period. The third man had only in the last few years left military service so he was able to talk about modern life in the army.
All the children had an informative and enjoyable visit.
