In The News

​In Literacy, we have been studying The Owl Who was Afraid of the Dark by Jill Tomlinson. We made some beautiful owl artwork. First, we created owls on black paper with chalk and paint to remind us that owls are nocturnal. We used silver and gold sequins for the owl’s eyes.

​We also created some fluffy owls, sewing recycled material pieces together. It was a bit fiddly but Mrs Reid was very impressed by our focus and concentration.

​As part of our RE lesson about Hinduism we have learnt about Diwali. We found out that Diwali is a special festival of light and it is celebrated in lots of different ways. 

​We also watched a film about the Story of Rama and Sita. We loved making Diwali lamps.

​Finally, we learnt a song about Diwali called “It’s Diwali,” which we sang in a two part harmony. 

As part of our fantastic Science topic Let’s Recycle, we have been carrying out some exciting and unusual Science experiments using recycled objects. First, we made Flying Owls by making cone shaped owls and placing them on top of different sized milk bottles. We loved when they flew into the air.
 
Matthew “The fiddly bit was making the cone”
Alfie “It was hard to cut the feet out because they were small.”

​Liam “The air in the bottle made the owl fly into the air.”
Ava “The air pushed the owl into the air”
Sophie “A little bottle just pushed the owl a little bit in the sky. The bigger one made it bigger in the sky”
Shreyan “We clapped onto the bottle to make it fly”

​Over the past 2 weeks, we have been practising and rehearsing our year group assembly. On Wednesday, we confidently performed to our parents, family members and Key Stage 2 children. We have had a lot of fun learning about the Ancient Egyptians. Our assembly included: interesting facts about them; detailed explanations on how to mummify a body; songs and facts about their life and stories about different Pharaohs. We really enjoyed sharing all the facts we have learned during our Egyptian topic. 

​This term we have been learning about Ancient Egypt. We have recently had the opportunity to visit the Oriental Museum in Durham. Whilst we were there, we took part in different activities, including handling and sketching different artefacts from Ancient Egypt, cracking Hieroglyphic codes and dressing up in Egyptian clothing! Each class attended a ‘Weighing of the Hearts Ceremony’ where we learnt how to mummify a Pharaoh. We each got to play the role of Egyptian Gods and decide the fate of the Pharaoh. We even got to see a real-life sarcophagus and a 2000-year-old mummy in the museum!

​Year 4 are learning about Christmas around the world. As part of our topic, we visited Waterstones to learn how Christmas is celebrated in many different countries. We found out many interesting facts about different countries and learnt how to say Merry Christmas in 8 different languages!
Do you know Christmas dinner in Jamaica is barbecued goat, in Mexico children go knocking on doors for treats and presents and in Kenya Santa delivers presents in a red Land Rover!
Mrs Finlay also read us a fabulous Christmas story called The Smelly Sprout. This is a story about a sprout nobody wanted to eat! When the mum and dad were making Christmas dinner, the smelly sprout fell out of the vegetable basket and mum threw it out of the window. He felt lonely until a mouse found him. The two friends were attacked by the fox. The fox tried to eat the mouse but sprout jumped into the fox’s mouth to save his friend. Finally, the fox spit the sprout out as he didn’t like it but the mouse was kind and ate him as he was hungry.
 A lady from Waterstones also read 4S (the well-known story) The Night before Christmas.
Each group also completed a trail around the Cornmill Shopping Centre. We had questions to answer about different objects in the shop windows and we also had lots of maths questions to solve too.  We looked at how Christmas is celebrated in Darlington – our town.
“The trip was fun and exciting. I enjoyed the Christmas trail because we had to answer questions and we got to explore the Cornmill and look in shop windows for the answers. I love shopping!” Maizey Y4
“I loved the Waterstones part because we got to look at all the books and heard a fabulous story. I was shocked to find out that they also sold toys, bags, glasses cases and lots of Harry Potter things.” Chloe Y4