The Snowy Owls, Golden Eagles, Merlins and Ospreys have been putting the finishing touches to their production of The Tempest which will take place in Magna on Tuesday 9th July. Children and staff are getting very excited – it promises to be a spectacular event! There are 400 seats altogether at the venue so there should be room for everyone who would like to come.
If anyone has not yet purchased their tickets, they are available from:
https://tickets.rotherhamunderground.com
What a fantastic start to the term we’ve had in Merlins and Ospreys. It’s only the beginning of our topic and we’ve already tasted lots of chocolatey treats.
Last Monday was our WOW day. The children worked on a carousel of activities – these included making and tasting some authentic Mayan hot chocolate, designing and making some fantastic Aztec masks, a chocolate quiz with blind chocolate tasting and a science activity where the children looked at how chocolate could melt and solidify. The afternoon saw the children taste a cocoa bean – they were surprised by the bitter taste. A poem/music making activity followed this and no wow day would be complete without a choco-latte dance – ask your children for a demonstration! We finished the day with hot chocolate and a story.
Last Wednesday, we had our visit from Carl who works for The Ministry of Chocolate. We all had such a fantastic day and got to learn so much about where chocolate comes from, the farming process, fairtrade and chocolate tasting. The children ended with making their own chocolate. They worked incredibly hard to become level 10 chocolatologists. Keep an eye out for your invitations to our chocolate masterclass where you will get to learn how to gain the same accolade!
Here are some of the other stunning entries to our ‘Decorate an Egg’ competition. As you can see, we have some highly creative children in our school … and who doesn’t love a good egg pun?
As you can tell, our judges had an eggs-tremely difficult job, but here are some of our winners, along with their prizes:
The children in Ospreys and Merlins were absolutely delighted with the visit by Kevin Read from the Yorkshire Planetarium, who brought his Stardome in to educate the children further about Earth and Space. It was a truly ‘out of this world’ experience, but don’t just take my word for it, here is what the children from Ospreys have written (very eagerly) about the experience!
‘Merlins and Ospreys have been learning about the solar system, and on 8th of February the stardome came into school for our two classes to go inside and enjoy. Faith thought it was interesting and we all learned about space and she would like to become an astronomer and study space, Holly thought it was AMAZING! Now she wants to be a scientist and an astrophysicist. We would to see it again and learn even more about our galaxy, our solar system and our sun.
The planet Pluto was actually pink and blue. There is a suitable galaxy/planet that we could live on but unfortunately it would take you 100,000 years to get there, but we have no idea what this planet is called. In 15 years NASA is thinking of sending 10 people to Mars and if they survive, NASA will be sending thousands or more people but unfortunately it would take 3 years to get there.’ FB and HW
‘Merlins and Ospreys have had a wonderful morning in an outstanding stardome, learning facts about space, galaxies, planets and stars. The children enjoyed every bit of it, saying it was amazing and it was great as it felt like they were actually moving in Space.
Charlie said he felt dizzy when the screen was moving. The class loved the video as it was amazing seeing all the planets orbit the sun and learning new facts.
They saw lots of planets like Venus, Saturn and Mercury and found out about lots of new galaxies.’ CA and OC
‘Ospreys and Merlins are learning about space and Kevin came with a Stardome and all of us enjoyed it. A Stardome is a big inflatable balloon that has projections of the solar system and constellations in it, so it’s 3D. When we were in the Stardome it felt like we were travelling through space, it was so cool. Kevin knows everything about space, it was amazing.’ EM and FH
‘Inside the Stardome it looked like we were in space. Ospreys have lots of questions for Kevin and have emailed him with them. Kevin knows everything about space, he is a space wizard. This is a fact that Kevin told all the Ospreys, ‘if you look straight at the sun from a telescope or directly at it for 3 seconds, you will be blind, so I would not look at the sun directly.’OB and FH
‘We learnt that there are lots of galaxies. Did you know the sun is white, but it’s a yellow dwarf star?’ RC and DS
Our topic this term is ‘The Intergalactic Rock Show’, which got off to a great start with our Topic Launch Day. Children danced to music from different decades, watched the launch of Apollo 11 and learned about it landing on the moon, were baking and preparing food popular in the 1940’s and 50’s as well as researching events from the 1950’s. In the afternoon, children continued to learn about life in the 1950’s, including the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. One of our volunteer helpers, Terry, spoke to the children about what he remembered about growing up in the 1950’s. The children had a really fun-filled, educational day.
What a lovely day we had to celebrate Mexico’s Day of The Dead festival and the end of our mini-topic about Mexico! Children cooked enchiladas and made salsa, created decorated skull masks and played sport. The day ended with the children eating the food they’d made and doing some salsa dancing!
What a fab day!
The children in Year 4 have been tasting foods that are used in popular Mexican recipes (avocados, sweet peppers, chorizo, pineapple and sweet corn). They analysed these foods, stating whether they recognised the food and enjoyed the taste; some were enjoyed more than others (see the expressions on our faces).
The children were then excited to be using some of these ingredients to cook quesadillas and make guacamole. We then sampled the food we had made, which we really enjoyed.
More recipes will be made in the next few weeks.
On Friday 8th September, Merlins and Ospreys discovered their colourful new topic “Global Gourmet” with a fantastic WOW day. The first stop on our culinary tour of the globe is Mexico. The children, dressed in colourful fiesta outfits, enjoyed a carousel of activities including: cooking salsa, playing Latino music using boomwhackers and using their ICT skills to create their own sugar skull masks.
We made the most of the sunshine, spending the afternoon outside playing Mexican themed games, such as Pass the Sombrero and Mexican Beans. Everyone enjoyed the chance to sample our freshly made salsa with tortilla chips. The excitement didn’t stop there; having creating their own piñatas in the morning, the children took turns to burst open their designs and reveal the hidden treasures within. We couldn’t resist ending the day with a giant Mexican wave!
The Mexican Bean parachute game was a firm favourite. Ollie told us “It was really fun. If you were a Chilli you had to swap with another Chilli. The best bit was when Mr Tweed shouted, “Chilli Burrito!” it was great.”
Reece also enjoyed the outdoor games, “It was good to go outside and try different things.”
“Making our own salsa and trying it was really good. It was yummy!” Ava and Alanya agreed.
Ava also enjoyed the piñatas “Making piñatas was great. When we bashed them, loads of sweets came out and we ran to get them.”
Alanya summed up the day perfectly, “I really enjoyed all of it and the rest of the class did too!”
On the afternoon and evenings of Monday 3rd July and Tuesday 4th July, the Key Stage 2 children from Anston Greenlands Primary School put on a stunning performance of ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
As you know, this year, our production was a bit different: all aspects of the performance were turned over to the children. It started back in February when the children voted to put on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ from a selection of plays. They also made the decision to set the performance in modern times, rather than producing a traditional version of the play.
Since then, they have taken over every role in the theatre – as well as acting, singing and dancing, the children have been in charge of choreography and directing. They have designed and created props, make-up, scenery and costumes. Musicians have composed and performed tracks to complement the acting. Another group have focussed on creating blogs about our project for the school website. Our sound technicians, lighting technicians and stage hands were all KS2 pupils. Marketing, including ticket and programme design and sales, has been carried out by the children. Additionally, a group of pupils were in charge of catering during the interval.
I hope that all members of our audiences would agree that all that hard work paid off. The staff team were thrilled with the quality of the performances from our musicians, actors, singers and dancers. There are definitely some future stars of stage and screen in our school! All of our behind-the-scenes crew worked maturely and with terrific independence to make sure that the play ran as smoothly as possible.
A huge thank you goes to our parents, carers, grandparents, family members and friends for all of your support with learning lines, providing costumes and finding props. You made a fantastic audience – thank you for laughing and clapping in all the right places!
