Year 5 & 6 Athletics

This morning, a number of Year 5 & 6 children took part in a range of events at Debenham High School. A total of eight primary schools were represented during a fantastic occasion on a beautiful day.
Congratulations to all children who tried their hardest, yet competed with smiles on their faces and in the utmost sportsmanlike way.

The following successes were achieved by Earl Soham pupils:
2 x GOLD (Year 6 Girls Speed Hop and Year 5/6 Girls 600metres)
2 x SILVER (Year 6 Girls Speed Bounce and Year 5 Girls Shot Putt)
5 x BRONZE (Year 5 Girls Speed Bounce, Year 6 Girls Sprint, Year 5 Boys Quoit Throw, Year 6 Boys Shot Putt and Year 5 Girls Standing Long Jump)

And everyone tried their hardest... WELL DONE!

Yellow Class Visit to Minsmere

Yellow class recently visited Minsmere Nature Reserve as part of their 'Habitats' topics. Whilst they were there, the children saw a wide range of flora and fauna - some of which were rather rare, such as a bittern.

The children took part in pond-dipping, finding bloodworms, great diving beetle larvae, pond snails, caddis fly larvae, waterboatmen and pondskaters.
They also visited West Hide which enabled them to see a range of wading and sea birds including avocets.

During the woodland activity, children hunted for minibeasts and finally they visited Bittern Hide where some were fortunate to a bittern and also marsh harriers. A beautiful grey heron was also seen close up. Just as we were leaving, we were lucky enough to see three fantastic deer.

Dance Mats

There's a fantastic new after-school club on Thursdays.
Electronic dance mats are linked up to the big screen with sequences for the children to follow. The children then have their percentage scores revealed based on how many of the moves they made correctly. It's a fantastic way of keping fit, imoprove co-ordination and HAVE FUN!

African Dance Day

To coincide with the start of the World Cup and the Year 6 work on 'Water for Africa', the whole school were involved in a day of African dance activities superbly led by Mrs Bev Jarvis.

Each class were taught some elements of African dance which have had a great influence on the modern dances of today across the world.

Red Class had the theme of the 'Dawning of a New Day' followed by being 'Hunter Gatherers'.
Yellow Class used the theme of 'Greetings' as a stimulus.
Blue Class followed the ideas of 'Tribal Celebrations'.

Crucial Crew

At the beginning of last week, year six pupils visited the East Anglian Museum of Rural Life, Stowmarket, where the annual Crucial Crew event was held. They learnt about how to keep themselves safe in different situations, including:
- how to wash their hands properly;
- how to stay safe around electricity;
- how to make a 999 (or 112) call;
and much more.

Everyone had a good time and learnt a lot.

A Groovy Smoothie Week

Whilst many of the Year 6 children were having their African Adventure, the remaining children in Years 4, 5 & 6 spent the week working on a variety of activities relating to 'smoothies'.

DAY 1: The children tasted 7 different smoothies and had to try to work out what the ingredients might be. They also looked at describing the colours (I particularly liked 'muddy pig pink' and 'scorched wheat yellow') and checking the actual contents of every smoothie.

DAY 2: Today's activities mainly revolved around maths (measuring the cartons and making a 'net' of their own carton) and art & design (planning and creating the designs for their carton). Once the designs, complete with company logo had been completed, the nets were then put together to create a carton. Some children then decided to push their designs a little further by adding a spout with a screw on cap for pouring.

DAY 3: Having meticulously planned the ingredients they were going to use for their own smoothie, the children were involved in a day of activities revolving around recipes. The children looked at a range of examples (some good, some not so good) to help create a checklist for 'What makes an effective recipe?' Having planned their recipe thoroughly, every child then completed a final version to be followed the next day.

DAY 4: The children arrived looking like they'd just won a trolley dash in the local greengrocers. Fruits of all shapes and sizes were on show along with a range of milks and juices. The fruit was prepared, following the recipes and with a whizz or too of the blender, glorious smoothies were created. They were very good as could clearly be seen by the surrounding areas of many children's mouths!

DAY 5: To finish off, children worked on creating an advertising 'jingle' for their product. They also worked on compiling the data from the taste test and representing it through pictograms.

African Adventure - Day 5

Following last night's "talent" show (the less said the better!) we retired to the African Village for a night in the huts. Earlier in the day we had all taken our sleeping bags, pyjamas and cuddly toys from our rooms in the Hall to the village. The children soon settled down to sleep and the staff headed into their own huts to sleep. All was quiet in the village, except the male staff hut which reverberated to the sounds of Mr Pearce's snoring!

We awoke this morning to a beautiful Spring day. The sound of birdsong permeated the air and the sun streamed in through the trees. After returning to the hall for showers and breakfast we set off to the beach to solve our final, but perhaps most important problem - cleaning the water we delivered to the village so that it was fit for drinking.

The children collected a range of different sizes of stone and produced a water filter from a bucket, a hose-pipe, a funnel and a piece of cloth. They set about filtering their water to remove most of the dirt.

The final step involved a trip back to the village to pour the water through a slow-sand filter. This removed the last of the dirt and made the water clean enough for the staff to drink.

A filter like this costs just £40 and by successfully completing our challenges over the course of the week we were told that our efforts would enable a village to benefit from one such filter, changing the lives of thirty or more Africans.

We were left with one final challenge - to see just how many more filters we could provide over the coming weeks. With this in mind we hope to hold some fundraising activities next half-term to help us change yet more lives.

The whole experience has been both challenging and fun and I and all the children have had a fantastic week together. However, all good things must come to an end, and so for the last time, this is Mosuwe, signing off.