What a wonderful end to the Spring Term!

Cheetahs, it's been quite a busy half-term in our class with so many wonderful events and special dates to mark! 

For the 100th Day of School, you made a superb display of 100 things you like about your school, which I very much enjoyed reading!  I was so impressed with the work you did on your chosen task for 100 Things That Make Me Happy.  You all have so many wonderful things going on in your lives!  Some of you were even able to find the good in feeling under-the-weather by thinking of things that make you happy even when you're stuck at home with a bug!  What an excellent perspective on life!

I've been thoroughly impressed with what our first 2 DT groups have produced with our new project:  Designing a new cereal!  I think we've got some students with a real knack for marketing at our school!  Thank you parents for all of the boxes you've brought it, the children have really been enjoying using their imaginations to create a new, tempting brand of cereal.  As always, I can't wait to see what they come up with next!

We had loads of fun on World Book Day and the Cheetahs looked incredible!  Every single one of us was dressed up (some of us had to dial down the craziness of the outfit for parent's evening thereafter)!  Thank you for all of your creativity and enthusiasm!  I hope you enjoy reading the Book Report Dice that the children made that day all about their favourite books!  They did a stunning job!

I heard great things about the Children's Sing to Sign event and hope it inspires the children to try to learn some more sign language and share it with us at school.

I hope all of the Mums in our class enjoyed your Mother's Day letters!  The children worked on their writing in paragraphs & challenging themselves to use a varied amount of punctuation (to earn a higher Kung-Fu Punctuation belt on our class display).  They thought really carefully about special memories they have with you and about how lucky they are to have you- they even made me well up!
We had a most enjoyable Science Federation Day over at Sutton school as well!  From making rocket mice, to bug hunting, to creative bean growing, to bottle rockets and a special scientific presentation- we were both enlightened and worn out by the time we got back to Catfield!  I wonder if anyone else has looked into purchasing "rainbow glasses"?  That was incredible!

Our Red Nose day dress-down was quite a big success as well- our Cheetahs love getting into the spirit of things!  Thank you for all of your donations for the charity!

I hope that the children shared the story of their Healthy Eating Theatre assembly with you.  It was quite the comedic show!  Can any of you remember the 5 food groups that were discussed?  Great job on the surveys about your most recent visits to a local doctor's surgery, hospital and or dentist!  They hope to make your next visit even more pleasant from reading all of your feedback about the activities in the waiting room and so on!

The children have been learning about the names of body parts and how to describe when something is wrong in Spanish & I've been most impressed with their improved pronunciations!  In Maths on Thurs/Fridays we have wrapped up our unit on measures and are now revisiting telling the time.  Do practice reading those clocks at home, especially analogue ones!  Parents, you can test your children's skills by asking them to tell you the time, then tell you what the time will be in 45 minutes, for example.  You could even quiz them on their knowledge of the 24 hour clock!  No time like the present!

A very big well done to Karla & Jack for their fantastic Reading test results in Year 3!
And another big well done to  Isabella, Grace, Connor, Alfie & Archie for their high achievements on their Year 4 Reading test! 

As you can see, we have been EXTREMELY busy in year 3/4 this half term!  I hope that everyone enjoys a well deserved break over Easter!  Play safely & enjoy the great outdoors Cheetahs!

-Mrs. Pell

DT Group 4 Egg Results Cont'd

Mellissa- before and feeling a bit unsure

Kayleigh- before and feeling confident

Archie- before (but after recovering some mishaps!)

Kayleigh- success!

Mrs. Pell's eggsperiment!  A fun, jelly-suspended mess!  My container broke, the shell cracked a lot, but the membrane of the egg stayed in tact!  Wow!

Mellissa- after and looking proud!

Archie- after and what a smash!

DT 4 Group photo! A mix of creative results!

DT Group 4 Egg Results! What a Show!

Our final group for the big DT Eggsperiment put on a real show today!  It's amazing just how original their ideas were, even though they were the last group to take on this challenge!

Let's have a look at our results.  We'll start with William's project.  Even though he was sick today, we remembered what you had planned, so we photographed it all for you to see!

William: Before

William: During

William: After- in tact!

Harley's Golf Egg: Before

Harley's Golf Egg:  After- a total smash, but really fun!

Georgia: Before

Georgia: After- well done!

I'm going to have to leave this here tonight.  The photos are taking too long to upload.  I'll try again tomorrow, don't worry!

Harley's Frozen Eggsperiment in Progress!

Hello again Cheetahs!  I can only post on the Cheetahs page, so when you see Harley next, let him know I've posted some pictures of his Frozen Eggsperiment in progress!

He has a very interesting idea indeed!  He thought that freezing his egg in a container of water would ensure that it wouldn't break upon the impact of the drop.  When he discussed this idea with his Dad, they came up with a way that they thought they could strengthen the ice- by adding cotton wool to it!  When he researched this in class, he discovered that this is similar to a strategy used in WWII wherein a percentage of sawdust was added to ice to strengthen it. This process was called pykrete after Geoffrey Pyke, who wanted to make an unsinkable aircraft carrier.

We really do learn something new everyday!

Fingers crossed that their plan works!  We'll find out on Thursday!  Keep an eye out for more updates on Harley's very original ideas!

Welcome Mr. Joyce!

Hello everyone!  We hope you enjoyed our Royal Mail surprise this week!  The children were excited to be formally addressing their own letters to their friends or family members, and as you know, are very thankful for the wonderful time they had over Christmas!  Well done Cheetahs for keeping it a surprise! 

We'd also like to welcome our new teacher in training to our class, Mr. Joyce!  He started with us this Thursday, observing the wonders of our Cheetahs Class and is looking forward to teaching the children their Maths lessons next week!  The children ALL made excellent first impressions and we're so very proud of them!  Like a cat, we think Mr. Joyce will agree that he has landed on his feet with us!

Happy weekend everyone!  

On Tuesday afternoon, the first group of Cheetahs enjoyed their first session of Forest School with Miss Wones.  They all decided to make dens this week and demonstrated amazing co-operation, problem solving skills and teamwork :)  Well done Cheetahs! 

Cheetahs' have had a fantastic start to the week with every child getting to at least 'keep it up' on Wednesday!
In English, we have started our new topic, looking at a book and film narrative called 'Varmints'

The children watched the first 6 minutes of the video, focusing on how the setting changed, before writing contrasting setting descriptions.
Grace blew us away with her beautiful, descriptive writing...
Before
The birds' song gently drifted down from the aqua sky, carried by a calm breeze.  The world was peaceful, safe and open.  There was emerald grass swaying and a beautiful pea-like green tree.  Everything was tranquil and still.  Nothing was tense.
After
Soon the loving world was swamped in a deep sea of concrete.  It had become a dismal, lifeless place, with tall, looming tower blocks sending shadows of gloom and tears across the stormy, black world, full of danger.  It felt like a ghost town.  Everything was almost deserted except the immense amount of buildings.

WOW!

In Maths this week, we have focused on our multiplication skills.  We looked at the grid method as a way of multiplying 1 digit by 2 digit, 1 digit by 3 digit and even 2 digit by 2 digit.  It was really important to set our work out neatly following
the success criteria.  Mellissa worked extremely hard to do this...

















Some of the children focused on solving multiplication problems using arrays and repeated addition...

Super work Ethan!


This is our wonderful book corner!