Over the Easter holidays Mrs Hillyard created a fantastic timeline in the hall - do pop in and take a look when you can!

Thank you so much for joining us on Wednesday 27th March for our Open Afternoon and for giving the lessons a go alongside your children and their class mates. It was wonderful to watch the lessons unfold over the afternoon - we had lots of Art, Science and Maths show cased by children and parents carefully supported by staff. Thank you to the staff team for going with this idea and for taking another opportunity to share the children’s learning with you.

Happy Easter! 

This week 3/4B visited the church to learn about what Easter means to people of the Christian faith. They got involved in all sorts of activities including exploring bible stories through the use of props to making easter crosses and writing their own prayers. They learnt that if you want to you can say "amen" when praying together - this means, "I agree". The children were also able to ask lots of interesting questions and I was really impressed with how they engaged with the activities. Well done 3/4B and have a fantastic Easter holiday! 

Miss Boney 

Our last week of spring term. 

We have had a lovely last week here at Pre school. The sun shone, the rain came down, we even had a little snow and hail. But most of all we all had FUN!

This weeks sound of the week was 'i' we learnt lots of words starting with the ' sound. ' ink, invitation, inch, inside, in, if,- Here is the video we watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_f5BPXyA6Sw&list=PLW2PD084DKeX0D28Cr1Oxo0mObBho0fqE&index=3 

You should all now have a copy of your child's name and the rhymes to help them form them. Please keep doing this at home and encourage them to write it on the line as well. Any questions please just ask. 

Please keep practising number 1-10. Recognising  and making the number. 


When we come back we will be in the summer term! Our new topic will be 'At the seaside' If you manage to go to any Cornish beaches during the Easter holidays please get a photo of your child and we can pop it on our map!  
Also, if you collect anything that would be fantastic too!

A few areas we will learning about are the  RNLI and what they do,  different beaches in Cornwall, animals of the sea, how to be safe ant the beach and Ocean pollution. We will keep you up to date on what we will be doing each week Via Tapestry. 


We hope you all have the most amazing Easter holidays. Please take lots of pictures and add them to Tapestry for your child to share when we get back. We will see you from the week of the 15th.

Miss Whitty and Miss Ronald :) 

Embracing Spring Fun!

Wow, we have had a lovely SUNNY week here at Pre school.  We have mainly spent the week outside in our outdoor area. 

 
The outside area of our school is abuzz with laughter and joy as children engage in various activities that celebrate the arrival of spring. From honing their scissor skills to mastering kicking techniques, there's never a dull moment.

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!

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.  

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.

 

Learning Adventures in Preschool 

This week we embarked on a marvellous exploration into the world of the letter D. D is for so many wonderful things, like dinosaurs, dog, dirty and even daddy. The children have loved learning this sound. The enjoy the rhyme ' Around the dinosaurs bottom, up his tall neck and down to his toes' They have had go at forming this during their free flow play.

We have also been honing our number recognition and fine motor skills this week through the magical world of colouring by numbers. With crayons and pencils in hand, the children eagerly identified numbers and carefully coloured each section according to the corresponding colour. It was incredible to witness their concentration and determination as they navigated through the activity, all while reinforcing their understanding of numbers and enhancing their fine motor skills.


As you have noticed our sandpit has been taken down and we have a brand new one! In the area where the sand pit used to be, is now going to become a dynamic gross motor space for the children to explore. The children will have the opportunity to develop their coordination, strength, and spatial awareness in a safe and stimulating environment. This week we had the football goal and scooter out. The children are already putting in requests.

We wish you all a lovely St Patricks day on Sunday. Join us again soon as we continue our journey of discovery, curiosity, and endless possibilities.

Have a lovely weekend.
Miss Whitty, Miss Ronald and Ellie :)

Life Skills

We were really excited to attend the Junior Like Skills Workshops at Liskeard fire station on Thursday afternoon.  We didn't know what to expect but it was an action-packed afternoon full of really useful information and tips on how to stay safe in different situations.

When we got to the fire station we rotated around lots of different activities:
- Online safety
- How to catch a bus safely
- What to do if somebody is choking
- How to administer CPR - using the DR ABC acronym
- Staying safe on the roads
- How to make sure our passwords are secure
- Checking our homes for potential fire hazards
- Staying safe near railway lines

We all learned a lot - and enjoyed all of the different activities.  We also came away from it all with a lot of freebies!

A huge thank you to all of the organisations involved in putting on such an interactive session!