News From African Adventure Day 1

Just a quick post today to let you know all have arrived safely and are enjoying our first day.  We are experiencing some problems with the wireless connection.  We hope this will be restored tomorrow and we can give you more details and photos then.

Year 4, 5 & 6 Visit to Duxford

Today, 'Activities Week' for Year 4, 5 & 6 began with a trip to the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. For the first time in over a fortnight the sun shone and not a single drop of precipitation was endured!
As you can hopefully see by the photos above, a great time was had by all. The children got really 'hands on' in Hanger 1 (AirSpace), visited the Land Warfare Hanger, the American Air Hanger, the Battle of Britain Hanger and much more from over the past 100 years.
The children were also able to witness plenty of aircraft taking off and landing, plus doing some loop-the-loops! They boarded Concorde, tried on and handled equipment and looked inside a 'midgit' submarine and a World War II Operations Room. All-in-all, plenty to see and take in and more to look forward to as the week progresses with our theme of 'flight'.

Planet Builders - Planet Explorers

This week in Blue Class, the children became planet builders. They were given a fruit to act as their basic planet, and worked in groups to embellish it with buttons, dowel, pins and a range of craft materials.

Once the planets were finished, the groups became exploratory teams, trying to learn more about the other teams' planets. They constructed viewing scopes from rolled up card, through which they had to study their chosen planet. They first had a brief, distant view (to simulate earth-bound observations). They used their discoveries from this initial observation to plan the next stage: a fly-by. This simulated a planetary probe gathering information about a planet as it passed by. The third stage was to orbit the planet. This allowed the groups to see the planets much closer and to get a 360 degree view.

Combining all their observations, the children then chose a landing site for closer inspection. They could examine this point in great detail, but could not see further afield.

The explorations were modelled on the real processes involved in studying the other planets in our solar system.

What's the Buzz?

This week we were lucky to have a visit from some bee-keepers, who brought in some of their bees and gave a very informative and interesting talk about taking care of them, and the many products made from honey and beeswax.

The children (and adults) found the subject fascinating and the visit inspired some excellent pieces of writing.

Writer of the Week

Wall of Fame

No Rounders Tonight

There will be no rounders club tonight as the pitch and playground are both too wet. Sorry for any inconvenience.

Writer of the Week

Wall of Fame

Thomas Mills Armada Day

Today year 5 and 6 headed off to Thomas Mills for a fantastic cross-curricular day all about the Tudors and, in particular, the Spanish Armada.

We were joined by pupils from Dennington Primary and divided into two groups by year group.

Year 5 began the day in the DT room, building a model of an Elizabethan English warship. In under two-hours, the children were able to create a superb model, using a range of tools that are not available to them at primary school.

Meanwhile, the year six pupils learnt about the Spanish Armada and how they met their downfall due to a combination of good English tactics and superior ships and weapons, mistakes on the part of the Spanish, and most importantly, the good old British weather!

This was followed by a maths session in which the children played a board game. Their aim was to successfully sail their ships (this time in role as a Spanish flotilla) from Spain to the Spanish Mainland to collect Aztec and Incan treasure for King Phillip.

After lunch the groups swapped over and completed the other activities. It was, as usual, an excellent day that all of the children (and staff) thoroughly enjoyed.

Swimming Gala, Wednesday 18th April

Earl Soham Swimmers go one better than last year!

In the swimming gala held at Fram. College this morning our Earl Soham children once again did themselves proud. Last year we finished 3rd overall, but were top small school. This year we were again top small school, but finished 2nd overall with 109 points, the winners being Debenham with 141.
All of the children should be proud of their efforts, as we were represented in 11 out of 14 of the individual event finals. The only disappointment of the morning was that there were no medals presented this year, especially as we had an individual race winner in the girls' backstroke. Well done young lady!!

The morning culminated in the normal chaos of the raft race - the girls taking the raft one way down the length of the pool and the boys bringing it back.  All good 'clean' fun!!! Well done everyone, and I hope your parents aren't too hoarse!