Nikki Mahadevan We’ve had a weather station running in our Learning Garden for around a year now although we have only been able to upload data to the web site intermittently. Today it was finally hooked up to an old computer which allows us to upload the latest weather information to our Woolley Weather pages every 10 minutes. (A link to Woolley Weather can be found down the right-hand side of our home page.) While short term data is displayed on the web site, full historical data is stored at school.
Since adopting the name of ‘Woodpeckers’, the Infants have been creating some fabulous artwork. Last week they painted some Great Spotted Woodpeckers to decorated the entrance to their classroom. During computer class they used Dazzle 03 to produce these fantastic pieces of digital artwork.
The Wildlife Trust will be visiting the school, on Wednesday 25th September, to work with the children to build an Insect Hotel for our Learning Garden.
The main structure of the hotel will be made from 4 or 5 pallets which need to be of the same size. If you think you can source some, please let us know asap. We have also been given a list of materials which we need to collect before the day:
48 bricks – of the same size.
About 10 stones of roughly same size as bricks or smaller.
Lots of pine cones
Lots of interesting and colourful old/chipped crockery – especially cups, saucers
Old small terracotta pots, can be broken
Large bin liner of Straw
Large bin liner of damp leaves
Small straight -ish sticks – lots
Bamboo canes – lots (at least 30 x 6ft canes)
Old roofing slates (enough to cover a pallet) or roofing felt and tacs
Small stones/decorative gravel – the more interesting the better
Shells
About 10 logs about 8- 10cm diameter and up to 1ft long
Lengths of old piping –of not more than 10cm diameter and cut into 0.5ft lengths, – about 10-12. (The piping and logs need to be able to fit into the sides of the pallets so diameter is dependent on size of pallets). Drainpipe – sections 6”/15cm – is suitable.
Piping of different diameters to fit into larger pipe.
Hazel (or other) coppiced poles.
If you can help with providing some of these materials, please get in touch asap. (In school or by leaving a message on this post)
Each child may also bring in something precious/decorative to put on the top such as unusual natural objects such as feathers, stones, fossils, etc.
Just a reminder that our Woolley Moor Show scarecrow entries, The BFG and SpongeBob Squarepants, are on display outside school this week. The winners will be announced at the Woolley Moor Show this Saturday (17th August).
There are many more competitions for both children and adults to enter, and lots of great attractions taking place on the day.
(Competition entries can be made to Mr J. Ward by telephone, or email by Friday 16th August 9 p.m. Late entries (except for floral art classes) may also be made on Saturday morning between 8 am and 10.45 am on the show ground – check the show leaflet in your child’s reading folder or on the show website.)
Our Year 6s spent Monday morning at Tupton Hall School designing ‘alternative’ movie posters using Photoshop, an industry standard software package for image manipulation and creation. Rango the Chameleon morphed magically into Ringo playing his fish guitar; Up became Pup in a Cup; Zookeeper became Lookeeper (use your imagination!); Epic became Antiseptic. Mr Cooke even made an appearance in a Where’s Mr Cooke? poster sporting a stripy red and white hat. The Photoshop session was a new workshop option offered by Tupton as part of their annual ICT transition programme for Year 6 children from feeder schools.
In the afternoon the children were joined by our Year 5 children for a very energetic Japanese Taiko Drumming workshop led by Tupton Hall’s Head of Music. The hot weather wasn’t able to dampen the children’s enthusiasm and the rhythmic pounding of drums reverberated around the Expressive Arts Department and possibly outside too through the open windows – oops! Tupton Hall runs a Taiko drumming club especially for their Year 7 students…I think they may have gained a few future recruits!
Well done to our four Year 5 mathematicians who represented the school at this year’s Junior Maths Challenge hosted by Tupton Hall School.
They faced challenges such as solving mathematical acronyms and anagrams, building a structure, maths logic problems and a memory drawing task. They came first in the memory drawing test and also did well in the tower building challenge, gaining the second highest combined points score for weight bearing and height.
The children were able to let off steam in the Gym by taking part in some more active problem solving and were given the chance to work with children from the other schools. This fantastic, well organised, event was ably lead by Tupton Hall’s Sixth Form Student Ambassadors; we look forward to taking part in next year’s challenge.
Dragon’s Den competition winners! Dragon’s Den competition winners!
Fantastic news – our school has won the Cluster Primary School Dragon’s Den Competition! The £250 prize money will be presented to our school by members of the Dragon’s Den Panel in the next couple of weeks. Well done to everyone who contributed ideas and a special thank you to the three children (one Year 6 and two Year 4s) who went along to pitch the winning idea for a ‘learning garden’ to the Dragon’s Den. Our team spoke clearly and well and answered questions confidently. The Dragon’s Den panel were impressed with the way the children talked about the plans and also loved the fact that the ‘Learning Garden’ is building on and developing what we already have. They thought it was great that, as a school, children have already organised Enterprise fund raising activities to support putting plans for the ‘learning Garden ‘ into place.
CONGRATULATIONS – What exciting news!
We managed to complete our contribution to the Brackenfield Well Dressings on schedule; it will be on show with the rest of the well dressings over this Bank Holiday weekend. It’s been hard work but we’re sure you’ll agree it was worth it! For the first time the boards were put together in school which meant the children could see the board develop over the week from start to finish. As always, they were involved in all stages of its design from the initial drawings, assisted by Anne Robson, through to adding the variety of natural materials needed to complete the well dressing.
Visit our well dressing page to find out how we make our well dressings and for pictures of our earlier ones.
During next week we will be putting together our contribution to the Brackenfield Well Dressings, “The Parting of the Red Sea”. We need natural materials:
Fresh materials such as flowers are added last and should be brought in from next Wednesday.
Pictures of our well dressings from previous years can be seen on the web site’s well dressing page.
