Welcome to the Aquamarine Class

4SH 2023-24!

Autumn Term 2023

Our Class Read - "Why The Whales Came" by Michael Morpurgo

An exciting historical adventure from War Horse author and former Children’s Laureate Michael Morpurgo.

Gracie and her friend Daniel have always been warned to stay away from the Birdman and his side of the island. But then they find a message in the sand and discover the Birdman is not who they thought. They build up a lovely friendship with him, but when the children get stranded on Samson Island they don’t know whether to believe the birdman’s story that the island is cursed.

Set against the backdrop of the First World War, in the tradition of Friend or Foe and Private Peaceful Michael Morpurgo brings the emotional reality of conflict to life in a way that is accessible to younger readers.

We are looking forward to finding out what happens during our class reading time!

Our Stunning Start

We arrived at school in early September 2023 for our first day in Year 4 where we had our "Stunning Start" ~ a fun and creative day where we discover our topic for the term! 

To begin the day, we were challenged with a Word Search, finding words to do with the cold and the Arctic. Following this, we went onto the playground to hunt for objects which each had a letter attached - when we found all the letters it spelled out the name of our new topic - FROZEN WORLDS!

After break, we read a story called "The Runaway Iceberg", about two Emperor penguins who find themselves drifting on an iceberg and have to enlist the help of some new friends from Antarctica to help them get home. This gave us lots of ideas to write our own Haiku poem with a Frozen Worlds theme!

In the afternoon, we created some fantastic Northern Lights artwork! When it was done, we enjoyed a cup of hot chocolate and wrapped up in our hats, scarves and gloves! We then enjoyed a demonstration on how to make fake snow: we loved putting our hands into the bowl to feel the texture of it. Some of us have decided to ask our adults at home if we can have a go at making it at home!

We are very excited to see what else we will be learning this term about Frozen Worlds.

In December, we had a Christmas Craft afternoon where we had a wonderful, creative time making Christmas cards, snowmen decorations and chocolate Christmas trees!

For our cards, we used strips of coloured paper to create a stripy effect behind our tree template. Our snowmen were made from three wooden balls, some string and a pipe cleaner for a scarf. We especially enjoyed making our chocolate trees, using melted chocolate and sprinkles! They were delicious! See some of our photos below...

SPRING TERM 2024

Our Class Read

Our new class read is "Billy and the Minpins" by Roald Dahl.

'But...but...who are you?' Little Billy asked.
'We are the Minpins,' the tiny man said, 'and we own this wood'.

Billy's mum says he must never go out through the garden gate and explore the dark forest beyond.

So, one day, that's exactly what he does!

There he meets the Minpins, tiny tree-dwelling people whose children are the size of matchsticks. They live in fear of the terrible, galloping 

GRUNCHER.

Will it gobble Billy too - or can he find a way to defeat the hungry beast?

In this half-term's Stunning Start, we discovered our new topic would be "Stone Age to the Iron Age"! Firstly, we spent an exciting and informative morning drawing our own cave art whilst in our prehistoric cave! We took our flame torches inside and drew animals, hunters or handprints using charcoal, and orange or red pastels. We also completed Stone Age wordsearches and some of us attempted to make our own.

In the afternoon, we made some Stone Age tools using cardboard, tinfoil and brown string. We looked at the possible diet of Stone Age people, and watched some videos where archaeologists told us where and how they might have lived. We then made and tasted some stewed fruit with honey and sunflower seeds, which lots of the children said was delicious! Of course, we used a Stone Age style 'stick' to eat with too!

Check out our photo gallery below!

In early February, we went to Mill Park to build dens as part of our DT lessons. We wanted to see how people in the Stone Age might have made their homes cosy, safe and waterproof! We used sticks, stones and tarpauline for our dens. We tested if our creations were waterproof using watering cans!

* Ancient Egypt *

After February half term, we arrived back at school to discover our new topic was Ancient Egypt! Lots of exciting things were planned for our Stunning Start. Firstly, we learned about Canopic jars and what the Egyptians used them for. Using clay, we made our own Canopic jar with the lid being the head of an Egyptian God. After break, we discovered a dark tunnel in our classroom which we had to navigate with torches. Inside, we found Egyptian pictures which we described using our fantastic vocabulary in preparation for writing mystery and suspense stories later in the term! In the afternoon, we got creative by making our own Egyptian jewellery from paper plates and then writing our own names in Egyptian hieroglyphs, Check out the gallery below!

Our New Class Read

The Boy At The Back Of The Class by Onjali Q. Rauf

A story of friendship, hope and the importance of kindness, The Boy at the Back of the Class is a story full of heart and humour, told from a unique perspective. Featuring illustrations from Pippa Curnick, this is an exceptional book by an emerging voice in children’s writing.

When a new boy joins their class, a group of children try to befriend him. They soon learn that Ahmet is a refugee and has been separated from his family. None of the grown-ups seem to be able to help him, so the friends come up with a daring plan, embarking on an extraordinary adventure.

We are reading this book in preparation for our trip to the theatre to see the stage production, which we are very excited about!

Our topic this term is SAIL AWAY! We began our Stunning Start by taking a trip down to Mill Park, where we had been told a new, mysterious creature had been discovered... We will be writing about this creature during our English lessons for the first few weeks, using chromebooks to create a newspaper report. While we were at Mill Park, we sketched pictures of the nature around us. Additionally, the staff used nets to pond dip and we were excited to see what they caught in the pond! We saw several newts, a huge water beetle and lots of other pond bugs.

In the afternoon, we used cardboard tubes to create our very own rainmaker, using paint, tin foil and rice! This was great fun, although very messy!