During the Spring Term the Barn Owls had a very important job – to incubate some eggs and then, once hatched, look after the chicks. The arrival of the eggs and the incubator before half term was very exciting but this was nothing in comparison to hatch day!!
On the morning of Tuesday 26th February, while jumping around for fitness, we noticed that some of the eggs were moving. When we listened carefully we could also hear the eggs cheeping! When the children arrived at school on Wednesday morning 3 little chicks had already hatched. Fortunately one chick, Sunshine, decided to make her appearance during the school day. The event was filmed with an iPad and the children did some descriptive writing about this.
When all 5 chicks had hatched we moved them into the brooder. We had to make sure they were kept clean and that they had fresh food and water. Then the important task of naming them completed – Cocoa, Chocco, Flash, Storm and Sunshine. They were all very small and wobbly at first but this quickly changed. By the end of their stay with us they had increased considerably in weight and had developed wing and tail feathers. The best thing about having the chicks in our classroom was letting them out to play while we sat and watched. We were very sad when the chicks were collected; we were all used to the chirping that came from their corner!
The Barn Owls have also learnt about the life cycle of a chicken. They have all worked with a partner to create a PowerPoint presentation to show their knowledge. The chicks have also been use as inspiration to write stories with a familiar setting.
This term the Barn Owls have been thinking about how life has changed in Britain in the decades after the World War 2. First we needed to create time-travelling campervans to allow us to travel back through the decades.
One aspect of this unit of work has involved finding out about the artist Bridget Riley and optical illusion art. We had great fun trying to work out different optical illusions and our eyes went funny looking at Bridget Riley’s art! We all created our own optical illusions – 3D hands that are not really there!
The Barn Owls have been extremely busy during the Spring Term with a variety of activities connected to our school theme of water.
We all created our water lilies painting in the style of Monet. We followed a step-by-step guide to create our masterpieces and learnt some new techniques with the watercolour paints. We are all extremely proud of our finished paintings (especially Mrs Cameron) and they have taken pride of place in our classroom (we don’t want them to ever come down!).
We had to work in groups to solve the difficult task to design and make a bridge that would be string enough to hold 500g. It was challenging because we were had limited supplies and a strict time limit. When it came to testing our bridge only 2 were strong enough! However we did learn about what does make a strong structure.
We enjoyed an afternoon spent with the Eagle Owls where we created some BIG ART. We were allowed to use anything in the classroom to create a picture about water, but we were not allowed to draw or paint! The Barn Owl classroom looked completely upside down, but the finished BIG ART was spectacular. The Owlets came to view our completed work as well.
We had a fun Water Wise session led by Anglia water. This made us think about how much water we use and how to reduce the amount of water that we use. We had fun learning about which button to use on a new design toilet!!
In our PE lessons we learnt the traditional Maori Haka dance. This was great fun and we all perfected our fierce faces. We presented our Haka to the whole school and parents at the Easter assembly. We also added our own twist to the Haka and created an Easter Haka – lots of fun!!
In our Math’s lessons we have been learning about measuring length. As an extension activity we looked at Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’. This was really interesting as it gave us lots of different measurements of the human body and what perfect body dimensions should be! We used this to measure ourselves, but we found that it didn’t really work on us as children. So we invited Mr Butcher, the Chair of Governors, in to one of our lessons to find out if he was a perfect ‘Vitruvian Man’. Unfortunately, Mr Butcher’s measurements did not match Da Vinci’s ideal – however we had lots of fun finding out!
During the Autumn Term the Barn Owls have been enjoying the whole school topic ‘Celebrations’. We began the topic by designing our own celebration kits. Each kit had to hold 10 items which could be used for any celebration. We have also researched and created our own religious celebrations calendar; read and acted the story of Rama and Sita; designed our own Rangoli patterns; learnt about the Gun Powder Plot; and made our own poppy wreath for Armistice Day.
In our science lessons we had fun learning about temperature. We discovered that our hands are not an accurate judge of temperature, and we particularly enjoyed raising the temperature of the staffroom by 5 degrees!!
In PE with have practised a variety of ball skills through hockey and football. We have also been working in teams to solve problems.
