Skiddaw have enjoyed 3 weeks of athletics sessions with Dallam PE specialists. In the sunshine, we have all tried the field events of discus, javelin and shotput as well as training in sprints and longer distance track events. Mike was great at creating fun relay games and encouraging us to pace ourselves for the longer distances. We finished the series of sessions with a Levens Olympics with Jamaica, America, Great Britain and Australia teams.
We spend part of Friday afternoons “Planning” in Skiddaw class. This means the children are enabled to make choices about where they want to take their learning next. The cloakroom becomes our music studio whilst modelling of all sorts, including boxes, construction kits and playdough, are all on offer. We have access to computers and make presentations and research things that interest us – recently these have included birds and the history of people’s names! Some children choose to write stories and illustrate them, others make cards or work as a team on some of our massive jigsaw puzzles. Building models with wooden blocks is really popular at the moment as well as role play in our shop. The children develop important life skills of cooperation and collaboration alongside persevering and problem solving when following through their own plans. There is always lots of sharing and appreciation of ideas, talents and skills and the afternoon usually ends with a magical musical performance!
Skiddaw class have been working hard learning all about 2D and 3D shapes. We have made labels and models and have been using these to look at their properties. We have been using vocabulary such as vertices, edges and faces to describe 3D shape and even made some “What am I?” shape quizzes to get everyone guessing!
On 18.5.17, four people, in a little orchestra from Cumbria Music Hub, played us five tunes from the Carnival of the Animals – the tortoise, the lion, the kangaroo, the swan and the cockerel. There were 2 flutes, a keyboard, a clarinet and a bassoon. The tortoise was a really slow piece like it was plodding along. The cockerel going cluck was really short and spiky, in other words staccato. The swan was smooth and gracefully played, in other words legato. The lion’s tune sounded really royal as lions like to be king of their kingdom. It was very jumpy in the piece for the kangaroo.
The lion was the most popular piece in Skiddaw Class.
“I really liked the kangaroo’s tune because it was high and jumpy like an actual kangaroo!” said Daisy.
Written by Skiddaw Class