Levens School

Reception visit Lakeside!

 in Bowfell / Whole School by

Reception had a wonderful time at Lakeside on Wednesday. On arrival they hunted for natural materials and sticks to make their own potions with the magical ingredient that was lake water! They thought about what special powers their potions might have…

They then built shelters and homes for a variety of woodland creatures, thinking carefully about what each might need to have in their home.

Soon it was time to harness up for a climbing challenge, seeing some children making it right to the top in the trees, everyone had such a good go! A splashing afternoon was had by all playing duckies in the lake, collecting ducks and balls in teams whilst having to manoeuvre their boats using only hands to push the water away. Everyone was very happy and soggy at the end of a fun-filled day!

Skiddaw’s Lakeside Day

 in Skiddaw by

It was sooo wonderful to be out and about again, starting our half term off in style at Lakeside YMCA today. We had the best weather – warm but not too blisteringly hot and not to windy either. Each child challenged themselves with the low ropes course, a high ladder challenge and a fantastically wet watery team challenge. You’ll see from the pictures that, for once, lunch wasn’t just the most popular part of our day. We certainly built up an appetite and the chocolate muffins, homemade that morning by Helen our wonderful cook, were wolfed down with great speed by anyone having a school packed lunch!

Thank you to Jack and Georgia, who looked after us brilliantly.

 

Sculpture and the Human Form

 in Art / Scafell / Whole School by

Scafell have been working on observing and drawing the human form, one of the most challenging subjects to represent on paper.

We began by completing quick 15minute sketches of each other – keeping still in a carefully constructed pose was almost as difficult as the drawing!

We then moved on to exploring the human figure in 3D using play dough and aluminium foil. We could manipulate our figures into lots of different poses.  We used these to create very quick gesture poses.   We are now working on our wire  sculptures and hope to be able to share these very soon!

Which spoon is best?

 in Science / Skiddaw by

Our science work on fair testing and materials over the last two weeks has been linked to the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears! Which spoon would be best for Father Bear to stir the hot porridge with so he didn’t burn his hand?

In the first week, Mrs Wadey demonstrated it all wrong and didn’t make it a fair test at all – she had different sized pots, different sized spoons and put the spoons in all at different times. We were challenged to do better!

We had to choose our equipment from a vast selection to carry out a fair test to see which spoon conducted heat the least and would keep Father Bear’s hand cool whilst he stirred and made the porridge for breakfast – wood, plastic or metal?

Many of Y3 and Y4 devised ways of recording their own results and others worked together to create a table. Most children found out, concluded, that metal would get warm quite quickly and so wouldn’t be a good choice for Father Bear. Our discussion about why metal spoons were OK for eating but NOT good for cooking were interesting too and included thinking about how long the spoon was in contact with the hot food! Great scientific thinking and recording on this by all.

Year 2 violinists

 in Skiddaw by

Year 2 are currently learning to play the violin with Mrs Hurley on Tuesday mornings. This year the lessons are being funded with special thanks to a kind bequest from Guy and Maggie Paton, local residents, in memory of their son Jamie. They are on lesson 7 of 10 and are enjoying learning how to hold the instrument comfortably, pluck and play the strings and use the bow too. This is involving lots of multitasking but the pupils are doing brilliantly following instructions and having lots of success!

Here they are in action…

 

Persuasive Writing in Years 5+6

 in English / Scafell / Whole School by

Pupils in Scafell have been undertaking a unit of work on persuasive writing which is linked to our current science topic on health and the human body.

We began with an apprentice-like challenge where we had to create a new toothpaste, develop the name of the product and the branding.  This involved some research on current toothpaste brands and their marketing techniques.

Once ideas about new products had been developed, we enjoyed some market research tasks to find out how our peers viewed our designs.  We then set about developing a poster campaign and radio advertisements to market our exciting, new products.

Our final piece of writing in this unit of work, is a more formal online magazine article informing young people about the detrimental impact of smoking on the human body and persuading the reader that it is never a good idea to smoke.

Which advert catches your eye?   Which toothpaste would you buy?

Green fingers in Scafell

 in Scafell / Science / Whole School by

Scafell enjoyed planting our seedlings in our new outdoor classroom this week!! We are looking forward to seeing them flower over the next few weeks.

Year One explore algorithms

 in Bowfell / Whole School by

This week Year One began their computing topic about algorithms. They had to think logically about how to give a robot the correct instructions to brush its teeth. The next challenge was to work together to build Lego models, capturing picture instructions at each stage for another group to follow.

Our Amazing Earth

 in Geography / Skiddaw by

To understand about how mountains are made, how volcanoes erupt or what earthquakes are, we first need to know that the earth has different layers inside. We have been having great fun creating playdough earth models! The middle layer of red is the core, the orange is the mantle and the brown the crust. Land and sea have been added too. We know that the mantle and outer core are made from rock that is so hot that it is liquid and so it really would be impossible to dig a very deep hole and pop out on the other side of the world! We decided to slice our earths in half instead to reveal the hidden layers. Here we are making our playdough worlds…

 

Bowfell’s sensory space

 in Bowfell / Whole School by

Nursery and Reception children have enjoyed exploring Bowfell’s new sensory space on our mezzanine level in the classroom. The dark den cave was a huge hit as well as the fascinating bubble lights and goo tubes!