Today, we held our summer Musical Extravaganza – our celebration of children’s musical talents. Parents, wider family, staff and pupils were treated to solo and group pieces on piano, guitar and violin. From those just starting out to the soon to be leaving Year 6 children, all showed their skill and determination. Thanks must of course go to our dedicated music teachers, Mr Duesbury, Mrs Hurley and Mrs Rainbow.
All our year 5 & 6 pupils enjoyed an amazing time with Waterwise this week; learning how to keep themselves safe in and around water. After a discussion about identifying hazards when openwater swimming; we were soon in the water playing games, including rescuing ducks!
Scafell’s top tips for swimming in open water are:
As well as learning such important life-saving skills; we laughed lots and lots.
After we dried off, we enjoyed a lovely picnic and explored Fell Foot Park!
We had our annual celebration of sport. With everyone spilt into four teams, we ran, we jumped, we kicked footballs and we wanged wellies.
It was a close fought affair with only 3 points between first and second but purple team were the winners.
Scafell have been exploring the subject of climate change and the impact of human activity on the planet. As part of the United Nations World Environment Day on June 5th, children in years 5+6 took the mask challenge – this was a social media campaign to design and make creative masks related to this year’s theme on air pollution and make a pledge to change one aspect of your life to help reduce our carbon footprint.
Here are some of our fabulous creations and promises to change.
We have also created amazing speeches inspired by Greta Thunberg, the 15year old Swedish activist; wrote persuasive poems encouraging people to do more to protect our planet; led assemblies to raise awareness with the rest of the school and our parents; and considered what more we could do as a school to be more environmentally friendly.
One change we will be making soon is reducing the amount of plastic use in our school by changing how our system for supplying milk for our infant children.
Skiddaw and Scafell class enjoyed a fascinating time exploring farming today at Heaves Farm. We walked up briskly and arrived perfectly timed to be whisked away to the far reaches of the farm. We learnt all about the ways farmers and their animals provide for us – such as chickens, sheep, cows and pigs. We’ve walked inside the milking parlour and the cow shed, watched hour-old calves and learnt how robotics, machinery and IT keep the farmer in touch with their animals 24/7. There were also a myriad of other interesting farming and country related stations where we met spinners, veg growers, butchers, vets, sheep shearers, sheep dogs and their owners and dry stone wallers to name just a few. Sincere thanks to all the members and volunteers of the Westmorland County Agricultural Society and Roger, Carole and Gary Mason for opening their farm up to us. We’ve come back to school full of facts and insights into how farming touches everyone’s life everyday.
This week, Scafell were lucky enough to be invited to the annual rugby festival at Kirkby Lonsdale Rugby Club! Despite being a bit dubious about all of the rain in the morning, it brightened up into a scorcher of a day and a fantastic experience!
We started with a mass warm up – nearly 450 of us at the same time! (Mr Dean’s note – having 450 children stampeding across a field towards you is very unsettling). This got us into the right mood for the day and we get straight down to it with some skills based games!
Rugby can be a tricky sport – the ball is a weird shape and you’re only allowed to pass backwards, so the skills games really helped us to refine our technique and get some important practice in for the afternoon of games ahead. We also learned about rules specific to tag rugby – tackles are made with two-hand contact and the most important part of the game is good sportsmanship (something which I’m proud to say Levens had in spades!).
Having practiced a variety of skills it was onto the pitches to take part in a gruelling series of quick 5-minute games. We got to play a range of schools across the local area and managed to win more often than not! More importantly, everyone made sure to play fairly and work together to make the day a great success.
Many thanks to Kirkby Lonsdale RUFC (http://www.klrufc.co.uk/) for hosting and organising the day. We’ve definitely got some future rugby players in our midst!
Don’t forget to check out the photo album of the day for some awesome action shots!
Scafell have been asking big questions this week!
Our topic in RE this term has involved exploring creation stories from different religions and cultures; and comparing them to the Christian story of Creation found in the Old Testament, in the book of Genesis. We have also looked at the findings of great scientists, including: David Attenborough, Stephen Hawkings and Charles Darwin.
We invited Sarah from NISCU into school. Sarah is a scientist and a Christian. She talked to us about how it is possible to believe in the scientific theories explaining the beginning of the world whilst also believing that God began this sequence of events. She really got us to think about these big questions and ideas in more detail with some fantastic props and activities that included: dominoes, party poppers, mystery feely bags and an animation showing the theory of evolution of millions of years.
Well done everyone; you braved a wet, blustery and cold day to make the most of this wonderful second opportunity to develop our sailing skills. The day started early with lots to do before we could get on the water. First, we needed to be kitted out in wetsuits, water shoes and splash tops. Then, we learnt how to rig our boats: with the added addition of a boom at the base of the sail this week. After lots of instruction about how to manoeuvre on the water, off we went. It really isn’t easy; so lots of determination, teamwork and resilience was required from everyone.
After a great session on the lake, we headed up through the woods and fields to Orrest Head for our late picnic lunch. Our day ended with a well-deserved ice cream to celebrate a memorable day.
Every year the 5th June is marked as the United Nations World Environment Day. This is a day to question what contribution you are making to reduce the catastrophic footprint humans make on our very precious planet; before it’s too late.
The theme for this year is air pollution. Did you know that 90% of people around the globe are breathing polluted air each day and many children die each year because of air pollution.
Following a whole school assembly on Tuesday morning, each class has been exploring climate issues. Look out for more posts soon to see what we’ve been up to.
We had a most wonderful day on the Lake this week thanks to our hosts Windermere School and the perfect conditions for sailing. We are already looking forward to our second day’s experience next month.
