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!

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Congratulations to our amazing Key Stage 2 children on their fantastic production of Bugsy Malone. Singing, acting and dancing were all superb. We know that parents, carers, family and friends must be as proud as the adults in school. Well done!

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:

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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.

Dance fever

Designing a rocket