Easter is here! The children have been busy finishing their Easter craft and especially enjoyed making chocolate nests to go in their bunny baskets. They painted and made handprints as rabbit ears on hats.

The children have been busy matching numbered eggs on the maths table and have been following a sequence of colour patterns with eggs.
in phonics we have been naming things we might see at the seaside. The children have been clapping syllables in words and played seaside bingo!

The Easter break is now upon us. We hope you all have a wonderful, fun filled two weeks and we look forward to seeing everyone when we return to nursery on Monday 15th April.

Julie and Sarah

What a busy week we've had in Chaipel Class! Y6 have been working so hard this week, by sitting practice SATs tests whilst Y5 have been working equally as hard by doing their Fractions, Decimals and Percentages. In English, we have started to plan our own endings for the Midnight Fox. We have read up to the dilema, and are being left to make up our own ending for the story. In Art, we are getting ready to do our final piece, which we're all really looking forward to creating. 

On Thursday, we had a visit from Linda from Marie Curie in Cornwall, who presented us with an enormous cheque, revealing how much money we raised. It's amazing to think that only nine children managed to raise £692.05! Linda was extremely pleased and thanked us all for our hard work. - ROSIE G 

Also on Thursday, 6 pupils from Polperro join other children from the Trust in an Alternative Sports Day.
Max S and Ivy went from Chaipel, and this is what they ahd to say:
"I felt happy and excited about the day." - Max
"It was a learning curve because I learnt new sports which were fun!" - Ivy
Both agreed that they made lots of new friends too!

Congratulations to Ivy for being Miss Randle's Person of the Week for being determined and resilient in tackling her SATs papers.
- JACK 

That's all from us,
Rosie and Jack
CHAIPEL'S BLOGGERS

Hello everyone

We cannot believe we have just completed the last full week of Spring term 2! Just 4 days to go next week!

We had an exciting music lesson with Mrs Butlin this week after our singing assembly. We learnt a funny duck dance and had to move like the different members of the duck family and listen carefully to when the music changed. Mrs Butlin also showed us her clarinet. She told us all about it and she played it for us, we listened carefully to the sound it made and how she moved her fingers to change the pitch.

In our maths learning this week we have started learning about 3D shapes. We started off by being able to recognise the shapes and then started to learn their names. We have learnt about these shapes: cube, cuboid, cylinder, cone, pyramid, sphere. We then started to use mathematical vocabulary to describe the properties such as all of the faces on a cube are flat. Towards the end of the week, we were finding 2D shapes within 3D shapes. We used paint to print the 3D shapes and identified which 2D shapes we could see. On Friday we were using 3D shapes for tasks where we had 3D shapes and a ramp. We had to explore which 3D shapes rolled down the ramp and which did not and then explain what we noticed about the shapes that did not roll. After that, we explored which shapes stacked and which did not, we investigated which properties made it a good shape for stacking.

In English this week our learning has been based around the story 'Katie and the Dinosaurs'. We used describing words to describe one of the scenes in the land of the dinosaurs and wrote about where we thought Katie would take Grandma at the end of the story.

In PSHE we have been discussing the importance of being clean, in particular washing our hands.  We spoke about the importance of washing our hands and then looked at how we do it properly. We discussed that we can’t always see the germs on our hands because they are invisible. We then took part in an experiment. The pepper in the water was the germs. When we put our finger in the water the pepper (germs) stuck to our finger. We then dipped our finger in soap and dipped it back into the water. The pepper (germs) moved away from our finger. This showed that germs don’t like soap and we need to use it when we wash our hands to wash the germs away.

We enjoyed going out to the forest school area looking at the pondlife. Before we went out to the pond, we discussed what we might expect to find and what pond creatures look like, we linked this to our learning about lifecycles. We then did some pond dipping where we tried to identify the pondlife using magnifying glasses to take a closer look, we were so excited to have found two newts! We looked at them in the jugs so we could take a closer look and were surprised to see all of the different colours on the newts! 

A few notes about next week:
*No PE due to Easter service on Tuesday afternoon and early school closing (after lunch) on Thursday afternoon.
*Parent consultations on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday after school – everyone has booked a slot – we look forward to meeting with you.

Class 1 Team

Thank you so much to Looe Primary for hosting the Bridge Schools Trust Alternative Sports Event this week. 6 of our Year 5 pupils joined 80 children across the trust to try fencing, Segway, street surfing and ultimate frisbee! They thoroughly enjoyed it and represented the school so well. It was another wonderful opportunity for our children to mix with other children across the Trust as well as put their sporting abilities to the test! They passed with flying colours! Well done team St Cleer!

We had the most fantastic day at Looe Primary today.  We hosted an Alternative Sports Day for all of our Trust schools.  We had nearly 80 children attend the day and a range of exciting activities were delivered by Kernow Sports and Leisure who work with the children at Looe every week.  The children participated in mini segway, ultimate frisbee, street surfing and fencing which they enjoyed very much.  The street surfing was very hard, but they enjoyed it a lot!  It was great too because they could not really succeed without the help of a partner. The day ended with a large dodgeball competition.  All of the children represented their schools fantastically well, and both behaviour and engagement were excellent.  Well done to Wadebridge, Blisland and Trenode, who won 1st, 2nd and 3rd places for scoring the most points for their overall skill, technique and application in each event.  We are very much hoping that this can become an annual event.

Heading into spring!

This week Tregantle Class have been exploring the signs of spring that we have been noticing in our environment. We finally had some dry days at school and even a little bit of sun shine at times! Our EYFS children have been learning the rhyme 'Mary had a little lamb' and finding out about the baby animals which are born in spring. They had a go at using their scissor skills to make their own 'little lambs' to go with the rhyme. 

Thank you to all the parents and family members who joined us for our Rainforest café this week. It was wonderful to see the children excited to show you their learning that they have done over this term. There were lots of proud faces from the grown ups too! Thank you for all your kind donations we have raised over £100 that we will be use to hopefully adopt a rainforest animal. The children have been deciding which animal that will be. Not only this, the children did an amazing job in their class assembly to showcase all of their learning which included a powerful song ‘Anthem of the rainforest’.

Don’t forget we have an early finish next week (Thursday) before we break up for the Easter holiday.

Many thanks Year 2

Work Inspired by Brian Mock 

Our artist this half term has been Brian Mock. Brian Mock is an American artist who creates life size sculptures of animals, instruments, people and much more out of recycled metal pieces. 

It has been really fun exploring his work, when the children were looking at the photos of his work they kept seeing familiar objects such as forks to make chicken feathers or nuts to make suckers on an octopus, they found this very intriguing.

They then went off and used a variety of construction to make different models of their favourite animals, playing with the height, width, amount of legs etc needed to make it look real (it was slightly tricky to get the height of a giraffe accurate :)). After this they went on to design their animal sculptures that they were later to make, they even labelled it. 

Our Final Pieces

Pictured above are just a few of the amazing final pieces reception created. 

To make their clay sculptures they focused on key skills, such as: scoring between pieces to help them stick, making slip to help adhere the pieces together ( Clay slip is a liquid mixture of clay in water which acts as a thick glue), rolling and squeezing clay into the correct shapes, all these key skills really helped build the fine motor strength. 

They started their clay creations off by cutting a block of clay off the block, then they rolled and squeezed the clay to form the correct shapes, scored each part using a scoring tool, added slip and then added  recycled metal can pulls to resemble Brian Mocks welding work ( we thought it best rather than using blow torches :)). Reception really enjoyed this art project, which is evident in their attention to detail with their final pieces. 

3/4B have been working on their Narnia-inspired narrative writing and produced some really lovely pieces of work! We have also used Narnia as the inspiration for our artwork, working on collage techniques and monoprinting. 

For British Science Week 3/4B enjoyed making water clocks.

In Science we have been learning all about light and have been exploring how light travels as well as how shadows are formed. We used torches and marbles to investigate what happens to the size of a shadow when you move it further away from the light source. 

In Maths, Year 3 have nearly finished their learning on fractions and have blown me away with their focussed work on this topic. They have represented fractions as bar models, compared fractions and found equivalent fractions. They were even able to link their learning from multiplication and division to find equivalent fractions in their heads - super work Year 3! Year 4 are also working extremely hard at their maths learnign, encountering mixed numbers for the first time and representing these on number lines. Year 4 are also doing lots of daily multiplication practice to get us prepared for the X tables test in June.  

Heli 2 Sponsored walk

Wow, what a wonderful morning. The children were super excited to do their sponsored walk and made the nursery team proud. Morwenna and Andy the Air Ambulance mascot came to cheer us on our way. Thank you for all of your support.

Week 5 in Little Nursery

This week in little nursery we have been looking at 'The very hungry Caterpillar' story. The children have enjoyed listening to the story and retelling the story in their words. 
The children have been making their own caterpillars. We used a different variety of resources to decorate them including (Brand new) egg boxes, paint, googly eyes and pipe cleaners. 
We have been looking at the life cycle of a caterpillar and have watched a number of videos, showing what happens. The children have learnt what a cocoon is and what comes out of a cocoon. 
We have been completing 'The very hungry Caterpillar' cosmic yoga and learning how to move like a caterpillar and butterfly. 
Our wonderful grass head plant pots have been growing and you will see these come home this week. 

Just one more week left of this half term, next week we will discover all about the butterfly. 

Week 3 In Little Nursery

This week in Little Nursery we have been busy making our own grass head cups. Each child had their picture taken and attached to a plant pot. They were then asked to fill their plant pot with soil and grass seeds. We talked about how grass grows and watched lots of videos showing how it grows. The children were able to tell us at the end of the week that roots grow down and the seeds grow up. Well done.

We have introduced a special helper system this week too, the children have really enjoyed their tasks of picking the wake and shake songs, helping get ready for dough disco, feeding the class animals and watering all our wonderful plants.

It has been very exciting to see our sunflowers growing too. 

Week 2 in Little Nursery

This week in Little Nursery we have been very busy Making our very own Ladybirds using a number of materials. We sat in a large group first and looked at different pictures of Ladybirds, we read 'What the ladybird heard' and we talked about where we would find a Ladybird and their different characteristics.

We have been exploring capacity's during a food activity, by selecting, filling and emptying containers. The children used spoons to stir and empty the Rice Krispie mix into their selected cake case. Whilst doing this activity we talked about more, less, full, empty, little and big. Each child were able to chose their own colour cake cases, showing their growing sense of self through asserting their likes, dislikes, choices and decisions. 

Planting Sunflower Seeds

Welcome back everyone!

To start our wonderful topic of 'Things that grow' this summer term we have had lots of fun planting our very own Sunflower seeds. We are encouraging the children's exploration and curiosity of living things by carefully planting, watering and looking after plants they have grown from seeds.
The children had lots of fun planting their seeds this week we cannot wait to see them grow.

What a quick Half Term that was Year 3/4a! World Book Day, St. Piran's Day and Science Week - time flies when you're having fun!

Science
Shadows have captured our interest in Science where we've investigated shadow length at different times of the day, how the size of a shadow can be altered by its proximity to the light source and that opaque objects cause the better shadows due to light not be able to pass through the object. We created our own shadow puppets at home too. Can you guess the creatures?

Maths
We found our 'snake tongues' for fractions this week, understanding wholes, numerators and denominators and comparing and ordering unit and non-unit fractions. We also discovered that the larger the denominator, the smaller the fraction. Discussing the importance of understanding fractions when at parties as we'd like the larger fraction of chocolate cake!!!
I've attached the Summer KIRFS to start practising too.

English
We've all thoroughly enjoyed our time in Narnia, describing Lucy's adventure through the wardrobe and meeting Mr Tumnus. We discussed the use of senses, similes and metaphors to describe nouns and used DADWAVERS to help vary our opening sentence starters. We experienced what it'd be like to brush past fur coats and had fun venturing into the wardrobe through drama. We ended the term by innovating the well-known story and created our very own version, applying our writing skills.

Learning Adventure - Geography
We have ended our topic on Italy with pizza making, linking our knowledge of fractions to design our pizzas. We also had the opportunity to look at Italian culture, researching: music, fashion, family traditions and festivals.

Did you know?
The first classic pizza was made in 1889 using mozzarella, tomatoes and basil.
It was made for both King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of Italy during their visit to Naples, and it was from this that the Margherita pizza was born.



Thank you to everyone that popped into the open afternoon, it was lovely to see so many of you.