Panshanger Primary School

Staff: Mrs Puddephatt / Mrs Harris / Miss Green / Mrs Clarke

Contact info. – rebecca.puddephatt@panshanger.herts.sch.uk

Spanish with Mrs Kay (Wednesday) and music taught by Mr Mitchell (Tuesday)

Summer 1

We have really packed a lot into this half term, both in and outside of the classroom!

In science, we have been busy growing and investigating plants as you will have seen outside of our classroom. Our potatoes are doing particularly well and our flowering pots look and smell lovely!

We have studied the country of Peru, looking at the three different areas, the coast, jungle and mountains. We researched the best things to do and see in Peru and used our facts to create a poster or leaflet for visitors. We enjoyed finding out about the Inca city of Machu Picchu in the mountains, and in art we created Inca masks and wool wrap alpacas.

Also in our art lessons, we created character mosaics, taking our inspiration from the French street artist ‘Invader.’ We ‘hid’ them around the school and lots of people commented on them! They are now all on display in the hall.

As well as our usual tennis and cricket lessons in PE, we had an athletics day provided by Premier Sports. We practiced a range of skills, such as long and short distance running, jumping, javelin and shot putt and then competed in our house teams. We also had two sessions with a coach from Tottenham Football club which included football skills and other activities, such as rock, paper, scissors using our feet!

We visited the Woodhall Estate for a Countryside Classroom day and for once it didn’t rain! We enjoyed seeing the sheep and lambs, taking part in tree and wildlife trails, finding out about farming, planting beans and going bug hunting. We loved meeting the birds of prey, especially Kevin the barn owl and Maggie the vulture! We also impressed the Woodhall staff by asking and answering lots of questions.

Spring 2

We have really packed a lot into this half term, both in and outside of the classroom!

We visited Welwyn Roman Baths and Mill Green Museum as part of our Romans local history topic. We had a great time finding out how the Romans had a bath (without soap) and about other parts of Roman life. We particularly enjoyed the Roman games and played them again in our classroom.

In maths, we have worked really hard at reading scales in g and kg. Lots more certificates have been awarded for the weekly maths challenge!

For our DT project, we first had a tasting session to see which bread and fillings we preferred. We then had a bread and sandwich day, making our own soda bread in the morning and creating our sandwiches in the afternoon.

We have enjoyed a range of PE activities including tennis, gymnastics, orienteering, Leap Year relays and creating our own obstacle courses. We also enjoyed dressing up as leaping animals! We have painted some beautiful water colour birds which have been much admired when people come into our classroom. In our Thursday class assemblies we have been learning British Sign Language. Ask your children to tell you which words are being signed on the photos!

Spring 1

This half term, we have worked really hard on reading, writing and performing play scripts, including Alice in Wonderland, the Owl and the Pussycat and the Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon. We also wrote our own limericks and it was quite a challenge to get the right number of syllables!

Science this term has been all about food, nutrition and our skeleton. We have enjoyed making balanced pizzas for ourselves and some pine cone feeders for the birds. We did some bird watching from our classroom window and saw blackbirds, blue tits, woodpigeons, magpies, song thrushes, starlings and robins. We sent our results to the RSPB as part of the Big Schools’ Birdwatch.

Our ‘Little People, Big Dreams’ book this term was Harry Houdini. We had a great morning finding out about his life and then trying out maths and paper puzzles. Some people had practiced magic tricks at home and performed to the class.

We had great fun on our speed stacking day which was run by Premier Sports. We learnt the technique for ‘3-6-3’ and we definitely got faster throughout the day. We worked with a partner first and then as a small relay team.

Well done everyone for working so hard again this half term!

Autumn 2

History this term has been all about the Roman Invasion of Britain. We loved finding out about Boudicca, and the Roman army. We made Roman shields and helmets in art and used these to role play Roman battle tactics!

In science, we have explored forces and magnets. One of our practical tasks was to explore which surface a toy car would travel the furthest on. We also made compasses with magnets and a bowl of water and got them all to point north!

Our design and technology project was using pneumatics to make a moving monster. We came up with some fantastic designs, some cute and some more scary!

We took part in the Santa Dash on a very cold afternoon. This didn’t stop us running lots of laps around the school though!

One of the highlights of the term had to be our play, ‘Gnome Alone!’ The acting and singing was wonderful. We were so proud of you all!