St Albans trip
Year 4 had a lovely visit to St Albans Cathedral as part of our history topic on the Anglo-Saxons. They learnt about Saxon food and cooking and how different it was to today. The children made butter, by shaking double cream until it became solid. They added salt and parsley, spread it on bread and most enjoyed the taste. They also made apricot conserve and learnt how the Saxons would have sweetened food with honey and fruit juice.
They went on a Saxon trail, through the cathedral where they learnt about life in Saxon times, using role play, in costumes, which they really enjoyed. They learnt about some of the brutal ways that the Saxons dealt with crime and punishment and decided they were glad that they weren’t around in those times! They also studied some Saxon artefacts, trying to work out what they would have been used for and what they were made of. As always with Panshanger children, they were a credit to us and to their parents, as their good behaviour was commented on by all the staff at the Cathedral.
We have just begun our new Design and Technology topic which is called ‘Pop-Up Mechanisms’. In this unit we will learn how to create five different moving mechanisms. We will then incorporate each one into a simple pop-up book aimed at younger children. This is our first mechanism. It is called the v-fold or mouth mechanism – you can see why! We had to work very accurately with our measuring, cutting and folding to make the pop-up work. When you open the card, the ‘mouth’ will open wide and then close again. We turned our v-folds into very scary monsters!
The children enjoyed performing on stage this half term in their production of Pirates Versus Mermaids. Year four played the parts of mermaids, pirates and pool party pirates and worked extremely hard to perfect their singing and dancing for the show! They all did amazingly and we had a lot of fun! We are a little sad that it is all over now!
