We have had a very arty month this month!
We completed our learning about the designer Orla Kiely by creating our own Orla Kiely inspired prints. We also learned how we can bend, spiral and cut paper to create 3D art. We displayed our 3D tree sculptures in the school art exhibition. The art exhibition was a great success and we enjoyed looking at the work displayed by the other classes.
We've made the most of the beautiful sunny weather that we have been having and have been out in the woods pond dipping and also hunting for minibeasts. We were lucky enough to have fine weather for our class trip to Burrator Reservoir too. We learnt lots about the history, geography and flora and fauna of the area. 
We celebrated David Attenborough's 100th birthday with a special guest appearance from a tortoise. It was so lovely to see such an interesting animal up close. We also created birthday cards for David and thought carefully about the messages we wrote within them.
In maths we have been learning about volume and capacity and have been practising counting in steps of 2, 5 and 10.

Another week has flown by and we are in full rehearsal for our performance at the Festival on Tuesday. Everyone is giving their absolute best and it is going to be a great day! 

Our enquiry into Crime and Punishment is in full swing and we have looked at life in both Roman and Anglo Saxon times. We all agree that life was pretty gory back then and are glad that 'Trial by Ordeal' is something that belongs in the past.

In DT, we are designing and creating prototypes for a new school playground. We have designed our equipment, got into groups to share our ideas and create floor plans and then have taken notes on the equipment that we will need in order to bring our designs to life. Watch this space as our projects develop...

On Wednesday, our school was lucky enough to have been visited by a local politician (Tom) who talked to us about what politicians do and what the House of Lords and Commons are about. We were asked to put in a bill to be discussed and a unanimous vote for 'NO SCHOOL FRIDAYS' was put forward! 

Congratulations to our Person of the Week, Thomas, for demonstrating our school values and being a role model to their peers.

That's all from us so enjoy the weekend and see you on Monday.

Miss Randle and Mrs Clary.

It has been a very busy start to the half term! This is the first newsletter after half term and what a start we've had! The weather has not played ball for some of our activities meaning that last week we didn't make it to the building site. We have rescheduled this for the 29th June and the crew on the site are already planning lots of activities. This week saw Class 2 spend the day at Trelowen Flowers - a local organic flower farm in Rilla Mill. They had a great time, looking after chickens, planting seeds, making flower bombs and so much more! Thank-you to Wayne and Tamsin for their hospitality. We will definitely be back to see how their farm grows. Yesterday was the annual beach day. Although we didn't go near the sea, the rain made sure it looked like we had. Despite the weather, we had a great time, building sandcastles, making art and beach-combing. Next week is also really busy: Swimming sessions on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday for Years 4 and 6, the Bridge School Games for all children and on Tuesday, a visit from a professional photographer. He is visiting all schools in the trust to capture what it means to be part of Darite. There will also be a whole school photo so can all children make sure they are wearing correct school uniform. There is so much that we do at Darite, I can't wait to show it to people. Finally, I would like to say how proud we all are of the children at Darite. Sometimes we do have to do assessments with them and this week Year 1 and some Year 2 sat the phonics screening check. Year 4 did the multiplication check and I had the privilege to show the Year 6 writing to an external moderator. He was very impressed with the writing and we are proud of all the children.

With Spring beginning, a lot of our learning this month has been centered around plants. We have searched for wild flowers in our school environment and we have learnt about how plants grow. We have planted and cared for seeds.
In Geography we have been thinking about the difference between human and physical features. We have spotted both in our local area.
For PE we have been enjoying athletics out on the school field.
We have had lots of lovely practical maths sessions recently as we have been learning to measure length and weight.
In RE we have been learning about a sense of belonging. We brought uniforms and other items in to show the teams and clubs we belong to outside of school.

What an exciting month March has been!
Right at the start of the month we marked World Book Day. It was great fun to dress up as characters from our favourite books and our costumes sparked lots of conversations about what we like to read. 
Over the month we have observed and looked after some tadpole, finally releasing them into the school pond where they can thrive in a lovely environment.
In science we have been exploring our senses. We have used out sense of smell to guess the contents of some mystery pots. We have used out sense of taste to describe the flavours of foods. We have used our sense of touch to create textured Easter egg 'feely' pictures.
This month we concluded out learning about what the weather is like in the UK by observing and recording the weather for five days. We used a thermometer, rain gauge and weather vane to give us data.
We have been learning to weave. We used our weaving skills to make woven Easter baskets. This required lots of focus and the results are just lovely. Now we are waiting for the Easter bunny to come and fill them!

Residentials, Cricket Workshops, Kids Day Out and wonderful learning opportunities have filled this week at Brunel. Please enjoy browsing through this week's edition of the Brunel Bulletin. 

Another wonderful week has flown by in Mousehole Class, and the children have continued to impress us with their enthusiasm, creativity and hard work across the curriculum!

English

In English, we have been exploring verbs and the suffixes -er and -or, thinking about how these can change words and their meanings. The children have also planned, written and performed their own Kennings poems. We were so impressed with their imaginative ideas and confident performances, which brought lots of fun and creativity to our classroom.

Maths

This week in maths:

• Year 2 have been learning about mass, volume and capacity, using practical activities to compare and measure different amounts.
• Year 3 have continued their work on fractions, learning about the whole, as well as ordering and comparing fractions. They have shown great perseverance when tackling some challenging concepts.

PE

The children enjoyed another exciting session with Cricket Chris, developing their cricket skills further by learning how to bowl the ball accurately. There was some fantastic concentration, teamwork and determination on display.

Computing

In computing, we have been exploring desktop publishing, learning how to organise text and images effectively to create attractive and informative documents.

History

We had an exciting hook lesson to launch our new history enquiry question:

"How have children's lives changed?"

The children became history detectives, sorting different children's objects into the time periods they thought they belonged to: Tudor, Victorian or Modern Day. They enjoyed discussing their ideas and making predictions before finding out the answers.

To deepen our understanding, we then worked collaboratively to create large-scale artistic representations of a Tudor child and a Victorian child. The children absolutely loved this activity, and the finished pieces are now proudly displayed in our classroom for everyone to enjoy.

Art

In art, we began our new unit on sculpture. We started by exploring what sculpture is and how sculptors create three-dimensional artwork. Using the boxes kindly brought in from home, the children experimented with cutting them into different shapes and discovering ways to join them together without using glue or tape. They showed fantastic problem-solving skills and creativity as they investigated different construction techniques.

These are just some of the highlights from another busy and successful week in Mousehole Class. The children continue to amaze us with their curiosity, resilience and willingness to embrace new challenges. We look forward to sharing more of their learning with you next week!

This week in Science, we have been learning about habitats by researching the lives of two inspiring naturalists, Jane Goodall and Sir David Attenborough. We discovered that Jane Goodall was born in London and became famous for studying chimpanzees in Tanzania, where she spent many years observing them in their natural habitat. Her work helped people understand that chimpanzees can use tools, form strong family bonds and show emotions, which changed the way scientists think about animals. We also explored the life of David Attenborough, a British broadcaster and natural historian who has spent over 70 years creating documentaries about wildlife and the environment. Through his programmes, he has shown people habitats all over the world, from rainforests to oceans, helping us understand how animals adapt and why it is important to protect our planet. Alongside our classroom learning, we really enjoyed our first swimming session at Mount Kelly, where we had the exciting opportunity to swim in a 50m pool with multiple lanes. In addition, we have begun rehearsals for our end-of-term play and are already showing great enthusiasm as we learn our lines and develop our characters-there is a real buzz of excitement as we prepare for our performance!

Today, the children at Storytellers proudly set off on their Big Toddle to raise funds for Barnardo's!

Despite the rainy weather, our little fundraisers braved the puddles with huge smiles and had a fantastic time splashing their way around the toddle route. Everyone came dressed as their favourite animals and looked absolutely fabulous, making the day even more special.

To keep our energy levels up, we enjoyed some delicious animal-themed cakes before proudly receiving our well-earned medals at the finish line.

We are delighted to share that, so far, we have raised an amazing £184 for Barnardo's! A huge thank you to everyone who has supported us and donated to this wonderful cause.

Thank you for helping our little toddlers make a big difference!

What a busy and exciting week we have had in Tregantle Class!

The highlight of our week was definitely our wonderful class assembly, where we shared the story of The Enormous Turnip with our parents and the whole school.

The children amazed us all with their fantastic storytelling, confident acting, and brilliant actions. They sang their song about turnip soup beautifully and shared photographs of themselves making their very own turnip soup.

It was wonderful to see how much they had enjoyed bringing the story to life. The children also performed a fantastic dance, confidently showing the different characters from the story as they worked together to pull up the enormous turnip! We were so impressed by their creativity and enthusiasm.

Another highlight was seeing the amazing character masks that each child had independently designed and created. Every mask was unique and showed the children's imagination and hard work. The children also shared what they had learned from the story, especially the important message about working together and being a "Teamwork Tiger!" They showed us that when we support each other, we can achieve great things.

Every single child spoke confidently, joined in brilliantly, and truly shone. We are incredibly proud of you, Tregantle Class - well done for a fantastic first assembly!

Over the past two weeks we have been exploring insects and answering our enquiry question "Are insects helpful?".
The children have been busy exploring our bug themed tuft tray, using the magnifying glasses to explore with and finding the different insects in the book provided.
They have been creating different craft including dragonflies made from pegs, paper plate bumblebees and caterpillars.

At story time we have read a range of insect related books including "The Very Hungry Caterpillar ", "The Bad Tempered Ladybird" and "Bugs big trip".

In phonics this week we have been blending sounds together to create whole words, creating different alien voices in a game of "Voices in Space" and rhyming different words to complete a sentence.

In maths we have been exploring patterns and how many in a set. We have also been finding special objects up to 5 and beyond.

This week on Wednesday the children had a group photo taken, these should be available soon for you to order.

Have a good weekend

Julie and Sarah

SATs & Hoodies!

It has been a few weeks since Year 6 sat their SATs, but all the staff at Copper Valley would like to say how very proud we were of each and every one of our children!

They came in each morning smiling - yes, smiling - enjoyed their lovely social breakfast together and then knuckled down calmly and with confidence to see what each day brought. 

If there were nerves, we did not see them; if there were wobbles, we did not feel them; if there were doubts, they did not show.

Year 6 have worked so hard all year and shown exactly what a fantastic attitude to learning really looks like. They took the whole week in their stride and we know that they will have done their very best.

On Friday, Year 6 were rewarded with a very chilled-out day and there was also the lovely surprise that their leaver's hoodies had arrived - cue photo shoot!

May

In Science this half term, we have been learning all about Electricity.

We have made our own circuits, adding different components, drawn scientific circuit diagrams, problem-solved circuits which don't work and carried out an investigation into which factors might affect the brightness of a bulb in a circuit.

In History, we have been learning about some figures from our British past - many of whom we had not heard of before - in order to decide whose face would be the most deserving to appear on a new British banknote. 

Our Art project is developing nicely. We have been designing our own 'Tag', researching graffiti artists and we have begun to think about ideas for a piece of environmental wall art. The aim is that our designs will be brought to life as huge pieces of art on a currently very boring wall on our grounds.

The next step is for the children to share their ideas to produce one of 4 final pieces and then we will all be helping to get them up on the wall - watch this space!

Thank you so much to Ed Hart for visiting us today to launch the Summer Reading Challenge which will run up until September. Ed will come back and visit us in October to deliver special certificates and medals for super star readers. Get signed up and get reading!

Our first week back after half term was a short one with Fridays Inset day.  We hope you all had a fun day if you took the opportunity to visit the Royal Cornwall Show.  It was definitely the better day for the weather!

This week we have started to introduce our Summer Term 2 enquiry question 'How do we stay healthy' - we have been talking about all things fruit and vegetables! We sorted lots of different foods into healthy and not healthy groups.  This opened lots of fun discussions about why we have certain foods as a treat and others are better options to keep us healthy.

We talked about names of fruits vegetables and shared with each other what ones we had tried and if we liked them or not.

This topic has been a great way to expand their imaginations and language during their explore and learn time in our Cafe and Mud Kitchen role play areas.

This week also seen us complete our Liskeard Show art entries.  Inspired by our Spring topic around gardens and planting seeds, we have entered our own 'Springtime Garden' artwork.  Look out for it if you visit Liskeard Show on Saturday 11^th July.

The pre-school Team

World Ocean Day

Today, the Storytellers celebrated World Ocean Day by taking part in a variety of ocean-themed activities. The children explored a large ocean play mat, using sea animals and ocean resources to create their own underwater adventures while developing their communication, imagination and storytelling skills.

The children also enjoyed making shell prints in playdough, carefully pressing shells into the dough to create different patterns and textures. This encouraged curiosity, fine motor development, and discussions about the creatures and objects found by the sea.

We created our own mini ocean sensory tray where the children explored what belongs in the ocean and what does not. The children sorted different items, identifying rubbish and discussing why it should not be in the sea. This activity helped to develop their understanding of caring for the environment and the importance of keeping our oceans clean to protect marine life.

April/May

We hope you had a lovely Easster and enjoyed the half term with the sunny weather. 

In the ARC we use a 'Totally Communication System'. This involves using visuals, symbols, Makaton, AAC devices, sound buttons, photographs and objects of reference. This enables the childreun to have the use and means of communtication in many different ways. 

During activities we play games where the child needs to choose between a few items pointing to the correct visual/symbol of their choice. Once this is established, the child and adult plays with the choosen item (making a choice). When the game is coming to a natural end there are symbols for 'more or finished'. We use these and makaton to investigate whether the child is ready to finish or do more.

When we engage the children in group activities such as 'Fun with Food', the children have visuals to help explore their senses. This encourages the children to look, touch and if they want to taste the item of food. At the end of the session the children can both sign and point to the correct symbol to indicate whether the 'liked or didn't like' the food.

Our morning routine starts with a song to encourage and invite the children to come and sit down. At this point we using symbols and the AAC device to find out the day, weather and the season we are in. We also look at who is packed lunch/school dinners and how the children are feeling. Here the children can put their picture up onto a appropiate visual. 

The children enjoy using different means of communication and this enables them and the adults that work with them to have a better understanding of their wants and needs. 

Hello everyone,

This week began with bikeability for our Reception children. As you can see, they thoroughly enjoyed it and improved their skills of balance and co-ordination.

We have all been very busy this week, practicing songs for The Polperro Festival. We have all been able to use percussion instruments to accompany our class song that we have been learning, and hope that you will enjoy what you hear very soon.

Our English lessons this week, focussed on Duffy's Lucky Escape, by the local author Ellie Jackson. We read the story and found vocabulary that we could use in our own writing. We also found examples of alliteration and used this to write our own lines of a poem.

We have also been enjoying some art this week, where we have used different objects such as bubble wrap to print sea creatures.

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

From The Penhallow Team