Stroud Valley Community School

by MDJ

Hello from V who has kept busy making herself some new toys out of old clothes (pants), she’s also doing her bridge homework here and learning all about the Sydney Harbour Bridge today.

Don’t forget to scroll down and check out the class blog, it’s updated regularly.

This afternoon in DT we started to our bridge topic. We investigated different types of beams and tested them to see which was the strongest.

We are now halfway through our PawsB mindfulness course with Miss Lowrie. The children have been getting better and better at mindfulness activities such as FOFBOC (feet on floor, bottom on chair), five finger breathing, tummy & chest breathing and the ‘mindful mouthful’ – ask your child all about them. They have been learning all about the brain: the prefrontal cortex is the ‘team leader’ and makes decisions; the hippocampus links old experiences with new ones and helps our memory and the insula helps notice how we and others are feeling: emotions and moods.

This term in science we have been learning about classifying animals and plants by their features and characteristics. We looked at classification keys for animals and then used the knowledge to make our own classification key for liquorice allsorts! Tomorrow we will be learning about classifying plants.

We were proud to invite parents and carers in to school to show them the wide variety of work we have done with Hedgehog Republic (HR). We displayed leaflets, our mural in reception, our amazing ‘Scratch’ games. Over the last term the children have worked with HR to create a coding game which shows the hazards hedgehogs face and what will help them to thrive and not decline in numbers further.

We were lucky enough to have a genuine uniform from World War Two brought in by Daisy, thank you. The children all tried it on.

Aventurine and Emerald Classes had the most wonderful, atmospheric school trip. They dressed as evacuees and were sent off on a steam train. They also learnt about being a fire warden, had to spend time in an air raid shelter and much, much more (ask your child what they did).

This term one of our PE topics is dance and the children have been learning the Charleston. They have thrown themselves into the dance and are all eager to perform in front of the class. Sorry about the blurry photos, they couldn’t keep still. Next we will be ‘doing the Lamberth Walk – Oi!’.

The children came dressed as evacuees, complete with a gas mask box and a small suitcase/pillowcase filled with items they would pack. They listened to Mrs Jefferies talk about her experiences of life as an WWII evacuee and seeing the bombed remains of a neighbour’s house. ‘Sergeant Nicholls-Grey’ from the Parachute Regiment came in to look for potential future recruits. The children sewed toys out of scraps of material, knitted and made models of Anderson Shelters and sung war time songs. In the afternoon they had their rations of bread, butter, jam and spam.

In our first week together Emerald Class made their very own Quiet Critters. Quiet Critters like to sit on our desk and watch us working, but if it gets too noisy they can’t stay, they can’t stand loud noises! So they all live on a shelf and when we need to work quietly they come to our desks.