Levens School


Games Night at YoYo

YoYo Club are having so much fun, captured earlier this week absorbed in, and thoroughly enjoying their selection of new games.

What great fun they were having, combined with hot buttered toast, what more could anyone want!


Our School Mural

We have enjoyed the opportunities that we have all had to work with local artist Sophie Martin on our mural over the last few months.     At the very beginning stages every child, including our nursery,  had the opportunity to create a drawing of something in our school grounds, the playing fields and around our village that would contribute to the final painting.   Sophie then integrated our work with her own to create the final piece that has provided such a striking, colourful and eye-catching creation that can be enjoyed everyday in our dining room.  Some of older children can be seen here working on the final painting!

Thank you to the Michelle Jurd Memorial Trust, who generously funding our project, we have all been able to enjoy creating a collaborative piece on the theme of ‘Our Community’ with Sophie.


South Lakes Cross Country Trials

On the most glorious afternoon this week, 6 of our most experienced runners undertook the challenges of the South Lakes local trials on the wonderful grounds of Sedbergh Prep. School at Casterton and nestled amongst the backdrop of the Barbon Fells. Rather that be daunted by the prospect of running a most challenging course of rough patch hills, railway embankments, mud slides and rocky lengthy hills, our squad were empowered and full of satisfaction at a ‘job well done’ when they eventually crossed the finish line.

It was a superb event attended by over 500 children and our children did so well in approach and determination, we are very proud of them all and delighted to report that some squad members managed to qualify for the area final at Penrith in a few weeks.


Clay Tiles

We spent a happy and productive session just before Christmas creating our final clay tiles, inspired by our research into Roman mosaic patterns. Here we are rolling out the tiles and creating our designs based on our sketch book plans. Some indented the clay by pressing different tools into it and others added clay to build up raised parts of the design, remembering to score and use water to make sure they stayed attached once dry!

Here are our finished designs with a few beside the final plans in our sketch books!

 


Still-life and the work of Paul Cezanne

Years 5+6 have been learning all about the work of Paul Cezanne.

Cezanne was a French painter who is often regarded as the father of modern art influencing many other artists including Picasso.  Many of his most recognisable paintings are still-life studies of a group of everyday objects arranged on a table or cloth: they often contained fruit, plates, water jugs, vases and even human skulls!

Cézanne created more than 900 oil paintings and 400 watercolours during his lifetime.

In Class 4, we have been learning how to represent 3D objects onto a piece of paper by completing studies of apples in our sketch books using only three tones – dark, medium, light – with pencil crayons.

After studying and discussing a range of different still-life compositions created by Cezanne, we created our own arrangements and began our own observational studies in pencil.

Finally, we worked on using colour to to show light and dark in our compositions.  Here are our paintings so far; our finished pieces will be on display in school very soon!


Reception visit Leighton Moss

We had a wonderful visit to Leighton Moss Nature Reserve on Monday to find out all about birds as part of our winter topic. We enjoyed learning about birds’ feathers and the four jobs they do. We also explored nests, comparing lots of different ones and talking about what the birds had used to make each one. Our morning was finished off with a treasure hunt and creating our own large nest. In the afternoon we enjoyed a sensory walk and looking out over the sky tower which gave us the most amazing views of the local area where we also spotted some migratory birds. A wonderful day was had by all, a day outdoors in the fresh air meant some of us became a little sleepy on the way home!


A Bundle of Joy!

Mrs Haslam and Miss Robinson are so proud of all the children for their three performances of ‘A Bundle of Joy’. They certainly helped us all to enter into the festive spirit!

 


Beauty and The Beast

Reception children all the way up to Year 6 really have had the most magical theatre experience today! The Dukes Theatre is always so welcoming, their well judged performances are a joy and this year was no exception. The action packed story was a more modern version with funny jokes to entertain the children with details keep the adults smiling too including details of magic and wonder! The children were keen to join in with audience participation including clapping along and letting the actors know if they agreed with their plans! Here is what some of the children had to say…

“The Beast was rather scary and the Dung Song at the start was great!”

“I liked it when the Beast and Bella were planting flowers and their friendship was growing too.”

“I was sitting on an end and so the Beast came really close to me!”

“My favourite bit was the dog as he spoke the word woof and he was called Nigel!”

 


Dance with Ashley

Class 3 have been working really hard with our expert dance teacher, Ashley who has come from the Brewery Dance Team on Friday afternoons. We have been using the Romans as our inspiration for our piece. This involves individual elements, paired work and group parts too and we have developed our own sections and learnt sections as a whole class too ready to perform to Class 4 this next Friday. Thank you to Ashley for teaching us and providing some expert training for Mrs Wadey and Mrs Craggs too.

Here we are in action…


Stayin’ Alive

Last week in class 4, the Westmorland Fire Brigade came to teach us: how to put an unconscious person in the recovery position; how to properly perform cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR); and how to use a defibrillator. We also practised calling 999 with a real emergency operator!

Everyone in Class 4 had a go at using the CPR dummies and it looked like everyone had an educational hour. We had had fun too – our instructors were full of jokes and surprises. We never knew what to expect from the emergency situations.

Do you know what to do in an emergency? If you ever find yourself in this terrible situation, the information below might just save a life.

  1. Check the situation is safe for you to act.
  2. Check for a response from the patient.
  3. If there is no response, call 999 and ask for an ambulance.
  4. Check if the patient is breathing. Try and feel their breath with your cheek and watch to see if their chest is rising and falling.
  5. If the patient is breathing, put them into the recovery position.
  6. If the patient is not breathing, start CPR. Do 30 pumps in the center of the chest, followed by two rescue breaths. Repeat until help arrives.