Art

This half term, we have been looking at the Cornish artist Patrick Heron. We have been discussing and comparing his work. The children have learnt all about abstract art and different types of printing. We have explored and applied a range of printing techniques including; printing with different objects, impressed images, relief printing and block printing. We have developed our skills and experimented with layering marks by overprinting, repeating a print to make a pattern and applying line and shape to our work. Have a look at some of our printing techniques and work inspired by Patrick Heron. 

Music

In our music sessions, we have been learning that music is made up of long and short sounds called ‘rhythm’ and high and low sounds that we call ‘pitch’. This half term we have been dancing, singing, and playing instrument to explore the sounds and how they work together. We have been improvising, playing instruments, composing and performing. We have learnt to find and keep a steady beat and copy back actions. We can play or clap simple rhythmic patterns using long and short sounds. We can clap four-beat rhythms, creating long and short sounds. We have also been responding and thinking about different music. Have a look at us using instruments to explore pitch. 

English and Forest School

In English, year 1’s have been learning to write instructions. We wrote written instructions for ‘How to Toast Marshmallows’. We are working hard on using ‘Fred talk’, finger spaces, capital letters, full stops and rehearsing a sentence before writing. The children used imperative verbs, adjectives and time adverbials in their writing too! Have a look the fun we had using our instructions to toast marshmallows. 

Thirza Schaap

Our art topic this half term has been about environmental art and sculpture.  We have been using the artist Thirza Schaap as our inspiration.  Thirza Schaap is a Dutch artist who also lives in South Africa.  She creates things of beauty using plastic that she has found which has washed up on the beach.

We have thought about what we like about her work and looked at themes she tries to convey through her work.  We have also studied her use of colour and will be creating our own environmental sculptures based on those by Thirza Schaap.

This week we considered how Thirza Schaap uses colour in the background for her sculptures.  We used chalk pastels to try and create some different effects which we might want to use in our final art work.

The moon is not made of cheese...

...it's made of Jaffa cakes!

As part of our continuing journey of learning about the Solar System - we focussed on the moon.  We learned about how we can see the moon and what the moon is really made of - then we learned about the different phases of the moon.

We were interested that a new moon is completely dark (that seemed a bit weird) and that when the moon seems to be getting brighter it is called 'waxing' and when it is getting darker it is called 'waning'.

To consolidate our learning, we represented the phases of the moon using Jaffa cakes!  We weren't allowed to eat the Jaffa cakes until we had completed our poster!!  We loved this learning and can remember a lot of it...and we even left two Jaffa cakes for Mr H.

Well done to both Year 3 and Year 4 who decorated their tree offerings for St Cleer Church and walked them to place them on Friday 8th December. We look forward to seeing them all as well as our church celebration on Thursday 14th December at 2pm!

Well done to Miss Hillyard, Mrs Fry and Mrs Clack for supporting Glee as they sang and signed their way through a morning of festive singing at Trago Mills. They managed to raised almost £200 for Liskeard Food Bank. Thank you Trago for providing the space and for the very generous donation into the pot too! We know that this is money that will support many families in our area.

Artwork and general update

This week 3/4B have been inspired the work of Sir Frank Bowling to create abstract watercolour paintings, using the different watercolour techniques we have learnt. Check out these gorgeous examples from Charlie, Millie, Hayley and Rosienna. They were all so beautiful it was very hard to pick just 4 to share with you!

The children have been working so hard on their Maths and English learning. In Maths we are coming to the end of a unit on multiplication so now and over christmas would be a great time to get lots of times tables practice in at home to keep these skills ticking over (see Y3/4 KIRFS.... TT rockstars is also brilliant for this).

In English we are making good headway with our non-chronological reports... the aliens are eager to find out what uses there are for the mysterious object that has landed on their planet. We have also been learning french vocabulary, and looking at how different food is grown and shipped around the world in geography.

Don't forget! Elf day tomorrow!
Children may come to school in their best elfy garments.

Homework
Homework is now live on Atom Prime. 

Reading
Children should be reading at home every day with an adult. Please do sign the reading records when this is done so the children can keep working towards getting their wristbands. 

 Week 5 

We have had another fun and exciting week here in Pre school.  

We have been learning the number seven, we are able to recognise it within our environment and a few of us are now working on representing  it by counting out  objects.


We have gone all things Christmas this week and we were really lucky that on Thursday is SNOWED!! of course we had to go outside and have a play. We spoke about what snow is and why we get it. The children spoke about what they need to wear to keep warm in this weather. We all had lots of fun. 

Friday our the school Elf came to our room and put toilet paper everywhere!!  We spoke about what advent is and why and who celebrates it. The children then of  course had to go on a elf hunt to find Mistletoe. Sadly we couldn't  find it. 

We had popped a list of names on Tapestry for Christmas cards.  

* You will be receiving a permission letter from our lovely student Ellie for her to observe you child. Ellie is with us everyday next week!

* ELF DAY - Wednesday the 6th please bring a  voluntary donation for  Alzheimer's society.

* Singing in the Church - Thursday the  14th - There is a Tapestry message regarding this!

Have a lovely safe weekend everyone. Stay warm!!

Miss Whitty and Miss Ronald :) 

Thank you so much to Sarah who joined us in assembly this week from Liskeard Food Bank to share a bit more information about how they help families in December and a delicious recipe to try at home!
School can make referrals to the food bank on your behalf so do get in touch if needed or contact the food bank directly here: e: liskeard.foodbank@gmail.com t: 07512 011452

To infinity and beyond...

We are loving our new science unit learning about Earth and Space.  We already know quite a lot of facts about the Solar System but we have learned a lot about each of the different planets, and how our understanding of the Solar System has changes over time.  We learned the mnemonic 'My Very Easy Method Just Speeds Up Nothing' to help us learn the order of the planets from the Sun (Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune).  For some reason we just love saying the name Uranus??

We learned about the Terrestrial planets and the Gas Giants, and that they are separated by an asteroid belt.  We created an artistic model of the Solar System and also laid out a scale model of the Solar System on a piece of string.  The children were blown away by the fact that each centimetre on our scale model represented 20 million miles!!

We then moved on to learning about why we get day and night on Earth and how the Earth's orbit and rotation influences the different seasons.
  

Leaps and vaults

LIn our Gymnastics unit this half term, we have loved learning different types of leaps and rolls.  This week we extended this into learning how to vault.  Many of us have learned some of the techniques in our parkour and gym clubs outside of school.  We were learning to hurdle leap onto the springboard, vault onto the raised bench and then either Straddle or Pike leap down onto the crash-mat.

On the lower benches we could get a bit more creative with our leaps!

We set up different stations in the hall so that we could practise the different skills - and enjoyed learning how to vault (although it was quite scary for some of us to begin with)

Week four. 

We have had another fun week here in Pre school. We hope everyone who has been off poorly is starting to feel better. 

This week we have been very busy learning and practising our songs for the church. We are all doing really well and are all very excited about this. 

This week in maths time we have been focusing on recognising the numbers 1-5. We had a number hunt around the classroom, we had to find the number recognise it and then make that number by counting out that amount of counter. We are all doing very well. 

We are still really enjoying the boom wakas the PTA kindly brought us.  In our music sessions we are focusing on  different beats and  the timings we all come in on. 

Christmas has arrived rather early in Pre school, thankyou to those who have brought their Christmas boxes in this week. Please remember them next week if you haven't. The children are doing lots of different crafts, these are all supporting their development in some way. Either fine motor, imagination, creativity, scissor skills, independence ect. 

* NOTES*

Wednesday the  29th - 12:30 pick up from the red door! 

Wednesday the 6th - Elf day - please come dressed as an elf all donations will go to charity.  

Thursday 14th - 2pm - Church performance - all children are welcomed to join us even if it is not your day. A message will go out on Tapestry nearer the time!

Monday the 18th - Christmas jumper day!

Tuesday the 19th - HLAF DAY pick up at lunch time!

Have a lovely weekend everyone, we will see you next week :)

Miss Whitty and Miss Ronald. 

Newquay Zoo

Reception and Year 1 had an exciting day at the zoo to support our Science and English work. In English, the Year 1’shave been busy writing information text about the animals we saw at the zoo. Reception have been writing the sounds the animals make and writing lists of the animals we saw.

 

In Science, we have been discovering animal families and exploring animal characteristics. We are learning the difference between mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. We have been learning the difference between carnivores, omnivores and herbivore. 

At St Cleer Primary we recognise that bullying is:

Physically, emotionally, socially harmful

Reoccurring

Intentional

As a school we use our school values to support how we work and speak with each other - underpinned by kindness. Each year we ask a selection of Year 6 pupils to support in the playground when peer relationships needs support and where we keep a look out for bullying so we can tackle it together. Well done to each of the students who submitted their thoughts on the role and received their ambassador badges in assembly. Let's work together to support each other so that bullying is something we tackle with kindness so we can work and play together so that we flourish.

Today in Science, Year 3/4A have been discussing how water can contribute to the erosion of rocks, acting out the affect of water turning to ice within cracks in the rock surface when temperatures drop. The constant thawing and freezing, will eventually cause rocks to break apart. Reece was the water!