Beautiful butterflies

This week our learning about life cycles has reached its climax! We've been eagerly watching our caterpillars this term as they've eaten and grown into huge caterpillars - just like our story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar.' It was amazing to watch them build their cocoon  - and then we waited. This week was the week when we witnessed the butterflies emerging from their cocoons and it was truly spectacular. Tregantle Class watched in amazement as the butterflies stretched their wings and began to move around. The butterflies remained in their net in the classroom for most of the week, until finally on Friday we took them into our garden and release them into the wild. It was very interesting to see how the butterflies reacted to being set free. A few were very brave and flew off immediately to find new homes. Some were more cautious and were quite still sitting in the sun before they tentatively made their way into the sky. It was a wonderful experience to watch this life cycle first hand - from tiny caterpillars to beautiful flying butterflies!  

A HUGE well done to all of Year 6 this week. The children have really persevered with their SATs assessments and have done themselves, and their adults, very proud indeed.  They are all FAB-U-LOUS! Thank you also for your continued support at home.

We celebrated the end of a busy week with a walk, BBQ and the children receiving their hoodies along with a special invitation. Thank you very much to the adults who have organised this for the children to celebrate the end of their time at St Cleer.

Mines and Mosques!

KS2 SATs
Well done to our wonderful Year 6 children. They approached the assessments this week with a determined and calm attitude. Today they have certainly let their hair down (and given it a rinse too) as they finished the week with some water fun. The warmer weather certainly added to their afternoon!

Summer 2024 Bridge Schools Trust Parent and Carer Questionnaire
Your feedback is really important to us as we work in partnership to achieve the best possible education for the children. Please check your email to complete a Trust-wide questionnaire that each school is sending out. For Q20, I would really appreciate your views on the key strengths to celebrate, as well as areas we could develop even further for all our children. Your time in completing this questionnaire is valued and will help us continually improve. Please complete by Friday 24th May, thank you. 

FOWPA Disco – Wednesday 22nd May
A reminder of arrangements:

14:15 – 15:00 Reception, Year 1, Year 2 and Year 3 (in school time)
15:15 – 16:00 Year 4, Year 5 and Year 6

Children are invited to wear party clothes into school. Please note that Year 6 will need to wear their PE kit to school and bring a change of clothes if they are going to the Disco.

We will have a couple of quieter areas should children want to have some time out from all that dancing!

Don’t forget to complete a permission slip if your child is in Year 4 - Year 6, as the Disco takes place at the end of the school day. Spare letters are available from your class teacher/office. For this fundraising event, we would welcome a suggested donation of £1.50. Please ensure your child brings into school a water bottle that can be topped up. A small snack will also be provided.

Lost Property
Thank you to FOWPA for organising the nearly new uniform sales this week. Next Monday-Wednesday after school, we will be putting out all the lost property by the main entrance. Please do take a look to see if anything belongs to your child. Anything that isn’t collected will be donated to a local charity/clothes bank.

House Points
Congratulations to this week’s winners, Choughs!

Swans – 365
Choughs – 369
Cormorants – 281
Puffins – 331

Important dates coming up:
Monday 20th May: Year 1 and Year 3 Trips
Monday 20th May: Year 2 PE instead of Wednesday (please wear PE kit)
Wednesday 22nd May: 14:15-15:00 Reception-Year 3 Disco; 15:15-16:00 Year 4-Year 6 Disco
Friday 24th May: INSET Day – School closed
Monday 27th – Friday 31st: May Half term
Monday 3rd June: Back to school
Tuesday 4th June: 14:00-16:15 Year 5 and Year 6 Quad Games
Wednesday 5th June: Class Photos
Thursday 6th June: Year 6 Dance-a-thon
Friday 7th June: Community Day for Royal Cornwall Show – School closed for children

A reminder that school is closed next Friday 24th May for INSET. It’s a four-day week for the children before the May half term break.

Have a relaxing weekend.
Best wishes,
Chris Wathern

Busy week for all

It’s hard to believe that there are only 4 more days until half term! The last few weeks have been so busy with learning, trips, events and so much more that we have blinked and missed it! We break up next Thursday as the 24th is a staff training day. We have lots to get through before then though so please stay posted through the blog and website!

Year 6 had a fantastic "Breakfast week" this week. They enjoyed delicious bacon and egg sandwiches cooked by Lisa - and completed some tests as well. We were, as always, blown away by their hard work, dedication and resilience for the SATs and each and every one of them gave 100% all week. We could not be more proud of them and they can now relax, ready for their final few weeks at Darite. They celebrated today by destroying their practice papers outside and using them to toast marshmallows. They folded their paper into various shapes and said a little personal goodbye before burning them. The children were thankful for all their hard work to prepare for the SATS! Miss Edwards said that the group were wonderful and it was lovely to hear their reflections on the work that they had put in and improvements they had made. Well done Year 6!

Thank-you also to those of you who were able to attend the reading breakfast in aid of the Book Trust. The donations helped us raise a fantastic amount of money to give to this worthy cause. It is a real bonus for the children to have an audience for their reading, and being able to raise money as well is a bonus. The children joined in with PJ day fantastically - even though some of the pyjamas were a bit warm! 

Have a fantastic weekend. 

Hello everyone

Here's an insight into some of our learning in Class 1 this week....

In PE we have been developing our awareness of distance and weight and if we were able to throw in a coordinated way for accuracy. We had three hoops to throw the bean bags into and had to adjust the way we threw the bean bag to enable us to try and reach the hoop that was the furthest away. We then completed a carousel of activities such as hoopla, target practice and throwing bean bags over a distance. 

Our focus in Maths has been around shapes. We have been selecting shapes for a purpose, exploring how shapes will appear once they have been rotated, manipulating shapes and making tangram pictures. 

In English, we have been reading the story 'Superworm'. We have been thinking of adjectives to describe Superworm and Wizard Lizard and then writing our own character descriptions. We have also been practising writing a list when writing what rubbish Superworm finds underground. 

In art we used Lichtenstein’s “Ben Day Dots” as inspiration to create a piece of artwork. We used pop art style dots to show colour without filling a space completely. We are all so proud of our pieces! 

In PSHE we have been looking at using ‘calm me time’ to manage our feelings. We spoke about if we had ever felt angry and discussed different ways we could calm down. One of the ways we spoke about was to listen to calm music. We decided we wanted to do some drawing whilst listening to calm music. 

The theme for Show and Tell is: Free Choice. As it is the last day of the term I thought the children could choose something of their own choice to bring in and tell us about. Please bring into school on Thursday morning or if emailing photos please send to rhorn@pelyntprimary.co.uk by 8:40am on Thursday.

Points to note for next week:
Class 1 Assembly on Wednesday 9am - children to come to school wearing their Superhero costume.
INSET Day on Friday

Class 1 Team

A Creative Week

Talland Class have enjoyed exploring the Batik art form during this week. This is linked to our study of the Maya civilisation and to the beautiful colours they used in the materials they used: their clothing, in particular. The children noticed the use of complementary colours, shape and shading when they produced their own representations. 

English

During this week, the children have entered a poetry competition using their own unique poems. They have developed good confidence in using many poetry devices to good effect: metaphors and similes, for example.

Maths

The children's knowledge and understanding of place value is becoming clearer. Due to this, they have been able to add and subtract decimals to 2 decimal places.

best wishes,

Mr Parry, Mrs Swabey and the Talland Class team (Mrs Walters and Ms Rowlands)

This week's jokes:

Why should we always look up to the sun for positivity? – He always focuses on the brighter side of life.

What did the sun say to the ice? – You’re gonna have a total meltdown!

Summer 1 - Week 5 - Innovating, researching and recording! 

English

In English this week, the writing genre focussed on information texts. The children read up to chapter 7 gathering information about Podkin, his siblings and most importantly the 12 gifts from the Goddess.

The children used a planning format to innovate their own gifts from the Goddess. They had to consider its name, its magical properties, its history and its current whereabouts. They used 3 of the original gifts to give them inspiration before generating their own. The plan would then provide them with notes for writing their information texts independently.

The children then began writing the introduction, here they had to provide the reader background context, what the text would be about and some information about the Goddess.

Finally, they began writing their main body of the text; this was broken down into weapons, tools, armour/clothing. For each, they had to explain information about the gifts using descriptive language.

Next week, it’s poetry where the children will explore how to use onomatopoeia.

Maths

For Maths, we continued with position and direction. The children learnt about translation, and then translation using co-ordinates in order to be more accurate. They then were introduced to symmetry, where the children had to make connections to previous learning. Using mirrors, they located lines of symmetry on shapes and identifying horizontal and vertical lines of symmetry.

On Thursday, the children then completed their end of unit assessments. Their scores were recorded and next steps/targets set.

On Friday, the children then completed their half termly arithmetic assessment. This is where the children can work towards their targets making progress in their scores!

Wider Curriculum

This week, the children were Geographers learning how to describe and understand key aspects of the water cycle, whilst outlining the impact on human geography through the distribution of natural resources.

This was a heavy research lesson, with lots of discussion and use of retrieval skills to unpick information and record key facts. The children then created a double page spread explaining their understanding of the above. They then use iPads to continue gathering data and statistics.

Next, the children then looked at natural disasters, again the recorded what they had learnt making links to the UK and other foreign countries, outlining the impact on human geography.

We’ve had a busy week, next week is the countdown to half term!

Have a lovely sunny weekend,

Best Wishes,

The Year 5 Team

Summer 1 - Week 4 and 5

Adding to our learning journey

Over the last 2 weeks, the children have been busy impressing us with their writing and maths skills. 

Writing - Every morning, the children have been coming into class and writing sentences based on a picture stimulus. The progress the children have made in their writing has blown us away. They are saying their sentences aloud, applying their phonics knowledge, correctly forming their letters and getting more confident in using finger spaces. Great work Reception!

Maths - We have been working on addition and subtraction  stories over the last two weeks. In their addition stories, the children started with using concrete objects, and were then able to move on to writing addition sums. We moved onto subtraction within 10 this week which the children are starting to grasp. 

Music - We were lucky enough to have Mrs Wade join us to give the children an African drumming lesson. The children thoroughly enjoyed learning how to play the drum. They were able to copy rhythms and made their own rhythm up to perform it to the class. Thank you Mrs Wade for giving up your time to give the children this experience.

PE - After half term,  Reception will be lucky enough to have Pro20 for a sports session each week. This weekly session will be on a Monday afternoon, starting from our first day back. For this session, the children will need to come into school already in their P.E kits. They will not need to wear their school uniforms on a Monday until Pro20 has finished (we will inform you closer to the time when this will be). P.E kits can then be kept at home. It would be handy to still keep a spare pair of clothes/uniform in their bags daily or kept on their pegs, just in case of water play accidents etc. The children will continue to have a P.E session on a Thursday but this will be in their uniforms, as it is rehearsing for sports day.

Thank you so much for your help in making drop off and pick up a smooth transition through our new gate. We really do appreciate it. 

Have a wonderful weekend. 

Best wishes,
The Reception Team 

w/e 17.5.24

We had a great day on Friday, enjoying some cricket coaching! We learned loads and had such fun!

Also this week, we’ve observed Mental Health Awareness Week, with some FA football stars! 

Whilst the sun shines...

This week Lantic class have been learning how to jump in our PE lessons - jumping high and jumping a distance.  We were really good at jumping from 1 foot to 2 feet.

During science, we focused on trees this week and went on a leaf hunt, we then drew and labelled our leaves back in the classroom and looked at how we could classify them into different groups.

We've also been very busy with our Year 2 Reading SATs - the children coped really well and took them in their stride!  The should be proud of their efforts.

In RE, the class learnt to to understand what it means to belong to the Jewish community, they drew a Jewish family having their Shabbat meal and then wrote what the family do on Shabbat.  Perhaps you could ask your child what they learnt?

Over this week we have been learning to tell the time... we have really been working really hard on quarter past and quarter to the hour!!  We have also had a go at building tractors from various construction toys.  

As the sun was shining, we started to weed our patio area... it's looking good already!! 

On Friday, we were very lucky to have a Cricket Chris come in to explain and show the children how to play rapid cricket - we had great fun!  Locally, the children can play All Stars Cricket (5-8yrs) at  St. Stephens Cricket Club - Fri 10th May - Fri 28th Jun 2024 17:30 - 18:30. All Stars Cricket provides boys and girls from 5-8 years old with non-stop fun. The activity and game based programme is suitable for all skill levels, providing your child with the foundations to begin a lifelong love of physical activity and cricket, while making friends in a safe and enjoyable environment.

This week we have been exploring all things dinosaur related with our question "Where did the dinosaurs go?"
The children have been hand painting and decorating different dinosaur pictures. We have a few dinosaur experts at nursery and they have been teaching us all of the different names of the dinosaurs. Everyone's favourite appeared to be the T-Rex!!
The children had a go at bubble blowing painting this week and enjoyed watching all of the paint move around the paper as they blew through the straws.

At story time we have enjoyed listening to the story of "Aliens love dinopants" and have enjoyed reading and moving our bodies to the story "1,2,3, do the dinosaur". In phonics, the chldren have been matching different objects to their initial sounds, counting syllables in words at the garden centre and comparing sounds that instruments make.

In maths, we have been stacking and counting bricks and writing and recording our findings from this and we have been ordering numbers 1-5.

Just a reminder that next Friday 24th May is an INSET day so nursery will be closed to the children and then it will be half term from the 27th-31st May.

Have a lovely weekend and see you next week.

Julie and Sarah

These two boys impressed me with their achievement at the weekend. This week, we have continued to learn about explanation texts: ‘How animals have adapted to their habitats.’ In maths, we finished our Fractions unit and have started Mass and Capacity. We have enjoyed our art lessons where we have continued be inspired by Henri Rousseau’s jungle paintings and consequently have planned our own piece in his style. Thank you to those that came to support the Reading Café. I know some couldn’t make it or forgot so you are welcome to come to the year 5/6 one next month.

The children have been learning about the  'Life cycle of a butterfly’.
We have had some real caterpillars for the children to observe and to watch grow.

Over the past few weeks, the children have been lucky enough to see the caterpillars develop into chrysalis' and then turn into butterflies. 
This week, the children went to woody corner to release the caterpillars that had come out of their chrysalis.’

As part of Mental Health Awareness Week, your KS2 child will be coming home from school with a copy of My Brilliant Place To Be Me. This is a journal for 8-11 year olds, designed to help them to explore and nurture their well-being. It is full of activities and information, created to encourage the children to:

• Become more aware of their emotions, and recognise and name their feelings
• Understand that all feelings are OK
• Become better able to manage uncomfortable feelings with simple self-soothing strategies and by seeking help
• Identify the people in their lives who can help them if needed

Every Thursday afternoon, we walk to Hillcrest Residential Home. We enjoy craft and singing activities together with the residents. This is the highlight of our week and the children are building multi generational relationships, and making links to our local community. This week was World Nurse Recognition week, so we made thankyou cards for the nurses at the home together.