Welcome to Miss James' Class 2024/25 

Autumn Term

📚 Our Class Read 📚

This term we have been reading The Abominables by Eva Ibbotson.

A hundred years ago, in the Himalayan peaks of Nanvi Dar, the daughter of an English earl is kidnapped by a huge hairy monster. In a secret valley Agatha Farley is introduced to a family of motherless yetis and devotes her life to their upbringing. She teaches them to speak, tells them stories and insists on polite manners. But as the decades pass, tourists come to the mountains, a hotel is built and yeti-hunters arrive. Agatha knows that there is one place in the world where they would be protected - her ancestral home at Farley Towers. When a boy and his sister stumble upon her hidden valley, she knows she has found the courageous people who will carry out her plan. The excited yetis are smuggled into the bridal suite at the hotel. A freezer lorry is waiting to put them into semi-hibernation on the long trip home. But the baby yak that has fallen in love with the youngest yeti foils the refrigeration plan and they set off on a hugely entertaining road trip half way across the world. In the Sultan of Aslerfan's kingdom the yetis release all the animals from his zoo. In the Alps they rescue a lost child in a blizzard. In Spain, the yak creates chaos at a bullfight. But when they arrive in England, a terrible shock awaits them at Farley Towers...

🖌 Art: Rainforest art 🖌

This term in art, we have been looking at different methods of printing. Due to our geography rainforests topic, we have used various artists that live in rainforest as inspiration. We discovered some artists use natural dyes and materials to help create their artwork. So we used leaves, berries, spices and flowers to print and dye fabric. We then learned all about poly printing and how to create our own animal-inspired prints using ink. Finally, we are combining these compostion skills and our knowledge of various media to help us create a final piece inspired by rainforest wildlife! 

🐞 🐦Rainforest Day! 🦜 🕷

This week, we had the pleasure of having rainforest experts Sue and Dave visit! Since they have taken over 60 trips to the rainforest, they were the perfect people to help us with our Geography topic. First, we learned all about their travels, how they have lived with different tribes and their cultures and traditions. We even saw how individiuals living in the rainforest used darts to hunt their food! Thankfully, the live demonstration was on a balloon! We then completed different activities. We made tribal-inspired jewellery using colourful beads to reflect our personalities as well as sketching real rainforest animal specimens! Although these were very enjoyable, perhaps our favourite activity was being able to learn and handle creepy crawlies. We met stick insects, leaf insects, a scorpion, a giant millipede and a tarantula! All of 3/4 J pushed themselves out of their comfort zones and handled the insects carefully. We are also so proud of how many fabulous questions the children asked.