Food & Farming Week 2 & Home Learning

Year 3 enjoyed a busy week last week. In addition to our visitors from the Priest house museum, the children also enjoyed an interactive workshop from Prof Stentiford from Cefas. The children got the chance to do some hands on science and animal identification whilst also learning about healthy eating and food sustainability - which links to our topic work next week about threats to the rainforests.

Next week is the second week of our Food and Farming fortnight and we have more fun learning activities and special visitors planned.

Class trips
On Tuesday afternoon the class will be going on a trip to Brace of Butchers and on Thursday afternoon they will be visiting Maiden Castle farm. As the weather has been very wet recently could all children have a pair of wellies, a waterproof coat and a change of trousers on Thursday please.
If you would like to volunteer on either of these trips please let Mrs Thorpe know on Monday.

Thursday is also Wacky Hair for Hospice care so I hope to get some wonderful photographs of the children and staff with their wacky hairstyles and wellies at the farm!


Friday - Harvest Assembly & Autumnfest
Our Food and Farming fortnight will culminate with our Harvest Assemblies and Autumnfest.
Our Harvest assembly will be at 10am on Friday in the hall.
This year we will be taking donations for Dorchester food bank during our harvest.

Autumnfest will be on Friday from 5pm - 7.30pm. Tickets are available now from the office. £5 for a family of four.

Homelearning 
For home learning this week we have asked the children to research foods, materials and medicines that originate from the rainforests of the world. We would also like them think about foods that are grown in Britain.
Please also continue to send in children's autumn and harvest photographs which we will exhibit at the harvest assembly.       
   

Y3- Clay pot firing and the start of Farming Fortnight

Welcome to our Farming Fortnight! 

Over the next couple of weeks we will be have a number of learning activities based on farming and local produce. Thank you to everyone that has handed in acorn shells. We will be able to use these in our Harvest art work. 

Today Julian and Sue came back to help us finish our pots. We weighed the pots to see the difference in weight since they had dried out. Then we put them in a fire which had to be 600 degrees! After about 1 hour the pots were finished. We were lucky that none had broken. Julian has now taken our pots to go in to an exhibition in Wimborne. We will get them back soon. This was a fantastic Science experiment which all of the children thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you so much to The Priest House Museum, Wimborne and Julian and Sue Richards. 

Swimming, home learning and next week

Swimming
Well done to all those children that went swimming yesterday. Myself and the rest of the year 3 and 4 teams were very impressed with how well the class adapted to the new routines. 


Home learning 26th September
We would like the children to:
- take photographs or draw pictures of things that remind them of autumn or the harvest. Please either email these or bring them into school by 8th October. 
- collect and bring in any acorn cups.
- continue with their practice challenge from last week, if they need more time. 


Forest school clothes on Monday for everyone
On Monday please can all children bring in their forest school clothes for their final clay workshop.   

We love puddles!

Today in Forest School we put on our wet weather gear on and headed outside. Everyone collected apples from our Forest School area then we went in to the dry of the polytunnel to make bird feeders. We used lard and bird seeds to make our feeders. We then went back out in the rain to place our feeders and have little splash in the puddles!

Everyone will need their Forest School kit for Monday please as the whole class will be having a session outside with Julian the Archeologist. 

The group that stayed inside with Mrs Bernard started to design and plan a collaborative project based on the Rainforest. 

Y3 Forest School is starting

Just a reminder that Forest School will start this Monday for Slytherin and Hufflepuff. Please can we have full warm wet weather gear (trousers, long sleeve top, fleece, raincoat) in school including wellingtons. We will endeavour to go outside in all weather and if you child doesn’t have their outdoor clothes they may need to stay inside. 

Thank you

Mrs Thorpe

Home Learning - Year 3 19/9/19

In this week's home learning we would like the children to practice something and then write about their experiences. We are looking for perseverance not perfection. 

Praising your child for showing determination and any improvements they make in their chosen activity, however tiny, will help them develop this important skill. 

(Hard copies of the home learning will come home on Friday. Apologies for the delay). 

  

 Home Learning 19th September 2019

To celebrate the rugby world cup we have set you a practice challenge. To become good at anything, including rugby, you need to practice. 

1. Choose something that you would like to improve (e.g. times tables, riding a bike or kicking a ball).
2. You can choose anything but it should be something that you are NOT already good at.
3. Fill in the table and tell us how you got on 

The sections on the table to complete will be:

• What I need to practice.
• How many days I practised. 
• How many minutes I practised. 
• Please write about how you got on with your challenge. 

If you have any photographs of your practice attempts or personal bests we would love to see them!

Y3 Clay workshops

During the afternoon yesterday we were joined by Rachel, Brian and Barbara from the Priest House museum in Wimborne. They gave a talk on pottery through the ages. The children looked at pieces of pottery and had to classify the era. They then looked at their own finds. Thank you to everyone that bought pieces of pottery in.

This morning Julian and Sue Richards lead a workshop. Julian is an Archeologist who was actually one of the team who worked on our school grounds before the school was built. He discovered the site of the roundhouses where our meadow is now!

In the workshop the children had to weigh the clay and temper then mix together before they formed their pot. We had some fantastic thumb and coil pots.

These pots are now drying before we fire them in a couple of weeks time.I wonder if your child remembers what happens if there is moisture in the clay?

Julian also identified one piece of clay as being 800 years old!