Huge thanks to everyone who supported or who helped at our Christmas Fair on 6th December. It was a wonderful opportunity for friends and families to come together to have fun and raise money in support of our school.
Our year 5 & 6 pupils led their own creative stalls and games. These included: Find the Joker, Lucky Dip, Spin the Wheel, Hook a Duck and The Canonball Challenge. They raised a staggering £174!
On Friday we enjoyed listening to the musical talents of our pupils on the piano, violins and guitars in our Musical Extravaganza performance for parents and children. Thanks to Mrs Hurley and Mr Duesbury for all their hard work this term supporting our young musicians’ learning and progress.
Having worked so hard on designing and building pyramids, it would be a shame to not show them off!
As you know by now, Scafell class have been learning about the ancient Egyptians. We’ve recently been looking at pyramids. Having learned what they are for and how they were built, we had a go at designing our own pyramid so that people in the future would remember us as great leaders!
Having set this in part as a homework task, I was stunned to see so many excellent ideas and unique designs. To celebrate this, we turned our classroom into a museum for the afternoon, complete with information cards, and invited Skiddaw along to come and see what we had made.
Check out the gallery and see them for yourselves!
What an amazing performance we saw today at the Dukes, Lancaster! It was lovely to go as a whole school, we enjoyed delicious ice creams in the interval and were spell bound by the action on stage. Highly recommended production for all the family.
Here are a few comments from the children…
I liked the puppet birds that flew around our heads. I liked the way each of the actors played lots of different characters in the story. They swapped and got changed really quickly behind the scenes. The dad transformed into the evil step mother right on stage! I liked the way they had a real tree in the corner and Ella climbed up it. It was really funny when the Prince sat down next to Miss Butler and spoke to her! Someone disappeared under the stage and then popped back up dressed in something else! The step brother’s costumes were really funny. I liked the baby that transformed into a puppet toddler which transformed into a child puppet that changed into a real live Ella! I liked the prince’s clothes. They had clever ways to do the sound effects of ripping cloth, smashing plates and chopping off toes!! Cinderella wore a leather jacket and had sparkly boots.
Thank you to FOLS and parents for their financial support of this visit. It really was a memorable day in the life of Levens School!
On Friday we welcomed Anthony, a skipping coach, into school. He worked with every class…twice…teaching them good skipping techniques including tricks to develop their skills. We all learnt about standing up tall with our backs straight, penguin position hands and windmills. He commented especially on the children’s excellent listening skills and was impressed with the speed of improvement seen over each session. Pupils showed a strong sense of perseverance and we all had great fun skipping the day away. Celebration Assembly showcased examples of our skills from every class in traditional and in French skipping. We are looking forward to skipping more at playtimes from now on.
From the humble ramp to complex systems of levers and pulleys, simple machines make our lives easier every day. Scafell class have been finding out more.
As part of their History topic of Ancient Egypt, Scafell class have been studying the six types of simple machine. These tools are everywhere in the world around us and give us mechanical advantage. This means they make doing really hard jobs a lot easier, by spreading out the force we need to use over time.
We all know that the Ancient Egyptians designed and built grand structures to honour the important people in their society. What’s really amazing is how the Egyptian engineers figured out how to build such huge monuments without the help of trucks or cranes. Instead, manpower and some clever use of simple machines made this great feat possible.
Huge stones were cut from quarries using a range of chisels – specially designed wedges to break the rock apart. The stones were likely transported using some kind of primitive form of the wheel to the nearest river, where they could be put onto a boat. Once at the building site, ramps, levers and pulleys were used to hoist the stones slowly up towards the top of the pyramid as it was built.
A lot of simple machines are quite intuitive to use, but it’s been fascinating to apply our math skills to the lessons and figure out exactly how simple machines make our lives so much easier.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to create a wonderful shoe box of gifts for Christmas. These were collected from our entrance hall last week.
Last week, pupils at Levens School were all talking about bullying! What does the word bullying mean? What should we do if we think we are being bullied and who can help us? What should we do if we see that someone is being bullied?
We have agreed that being bullied means that someone is unkind to you Several Times On Purpose – STOP! Being unkind might mean online comments that are hurtful, leaving people out at playtimes, being physical, calling people names. To raise awareness and keep us thinking about this important issue we took part in National Odd Socks Day; we also made a pledge to choose kindness; and we created our own sock designs with anti-bullying slogans and top-tips to STOP bullying!
As part of our learning about God this term, Scafell Class visited St. John’s Church. The pupils have been learning about the word’s that Christians use to describe God: omniscient, omnipotent, holy, eternal, spirit, loving and omnipresent. On our visit, we were particularly looking at what the artefacts, symbols and furniture in Church tell us about God.
Our work this term continues with looking at other Christian churches and making comparisons.
Pupils from years 5 & 6 enjoyed an amazing day at The Liverpool World Museum on Friday as part of their learning on The Ancient Egyptians. During the morning, the pupils explored five floors of galleries that included displays about dinosaurs, bugs, space, time, the natural world; and also exhibits related to Ancient Egypt.
After an enjoyable picnic lunch, the children became archaeologists for the afternoon. Wearing gloves to protect the genuine artefacts, we became detectives in deciphering hieroglyphs and identifying mystery objects and their uses. The workshop provided an incredible opportunity to get up close to some items dating back 3000 years including: kohl pots, canopic jars, a mummified cat, amulets, figurines and funerary cones.
Take a look at our photos from the day. Caution some are not for the squeamish…. look out for the mummified hand complete with intact fingernails!!
