Larchfield Primary and Nursery School
Our children are central to all that we do.
Class Activities
07.06.24
Year 3 have been busy this week. In English we have been practising our descriptive writing by using effective adjectives to describe the rainforest. We have been tackling money in maths and have started to add and subtract amounts. We had the opportunity to use our maths skills when looking at the climate of the rainforest. We looked at bar charts and line graphs to look at temperatures and rainfall in Brazil. Our thinking caps were definitely tested when we thought about the symbolic use of fire in RE. We had lots of ideas of how fire is used to celebrate special occasions and festivals by different people and faiths. In computing, the idea of not using technology to communicate was lost on many children! However, they soon thought of the varied ways communication happens. This led us to write our own email to a friend telling them something about ourselves that they would not know. the children loved receiving their emails.
17.05.24
It has been a very busy week in school with all hands on deck to support the year 6's through their testing week. In year 3 we have still been busy learning. This week, we took advantage of some of the lovely weather and did our learning outside. The children continue to be fascinated about the conservation of bees and they made a plan of the learning garden and came up with ideas for how to improve it to make it more bee friendly. Our next step will be putting these plans into action. In English we have been working on justification and the children have written about the presents they would give Eeyore. They had to justify their choice and say why he would appreciate the gift. We have continued with our tropical art work and have started to paint our finished piece. They are coming along a treat and we can't wait to show you the finished masterpieces!
03.05.24
Another busy one in year 3. The children had the opportunity for some outdoor learning acting out balance scales to decide which end would be heavier. Great fun was had by all! The children have really enjoyed making up their own Woozle character based on the Winnie the Pooh book and are now writing their character descriptions. One of the highlights of the week was art, where the children experimented blending colours to make different tones of green. They were really surprised how many different shades they could make. Let's hope the weather is kinder to us next week so we can get outside for learning more often.
25.4.24
We can't believe we are already into our second week back. The children are very excited to have started the Canopy Capers topic and are eager to find out about rainforests. We are currently reading Winnie the Pooh, which the children adore and are finding it very funny. We have all written our own complaining song and are now planning a letter of advice to Rabbit as Pooh is stuck in his rabbit hole. In RE we have been discussing right and wrong choices and linking it to morals. Working in groups, the children had to rate the 10 Commandments from the most important to the least important. It led to some very interesting discussions! This week the children have enjoyed playing with mirrors and looking at reflections. They loved finding out the differences between concave and convex mirrors. In art we have been learning about Henri Rousseau and looking at his style of painting. Watch this space for how they get on.
15.03.24
Year 3 have been busy this week. We started our new science topic looking at light. The children were good at sorting out light sources from objects that reflected light. They then had to sort objects out from light sources that require electricity to those that do not. In or history lesson we worked as a group to annotate a picture telling the story of how an ancient Egyptian enters the afterlife. One of the highlights of the week was our dance lesson. It turned out to be quite a challenge. Our theme is machines and they had to come up with movements to represent different machines. We can't wait to put these actions together to choreograph our own dance!
08.03.24
The children had a great week continuing their learning. Friday was very exciting and they made a wonderful effort with their world book day costumes. We have been continuing our journey with length and perimeter and we are getting to grips with converting between cm and mm. The week ended on a high when the children got to model create their cartouches out of clay.
01.03.24
We have been lucky enough to have had a great author visit this week- Simon Mole. The children wrote brilliant poems based on belonging to their herd; a club or group that they go to. Their enthusiasm was through the roof! This was followed by a performance workshop, where they honed their presenting skills. On Friday, some children performed their poem in a collaborative zoom call with other schools. it was amazing. I think this week will stay in their memories for a while! In Maths, we have moved onto length and practised measuring accurately in centimetres and some of us are starting to include the millimetres. The week ended with the children learning about Ancient Egyptian cartouches and designing their own, which they will be making next week. Watch this space!
23.02.24
What a great week we have had! Not only did the children speak confidently in their class assembly, they have also become line dancers! In history, they really enjoyed exploring what it was like to make a discovery, just like Howard Carter. We recreated a tomb in the class and the children had 10 seconds to explore because of the poisonous gases. As a team they had to draw the treasures they found. They loved it! Hopefully this will really help feed into their diary writing so they will be able to include some rich detail. The children explored ways in which a person can save a situation or make it better for someone in our RE topic, forgiveness. They loved acting out the scenarios they thought of. Year 3 are certainly enjoying their learning!
06.02.24
This week the children have become embalmers in science. They have mummified a tomato. The tomatoes are now safely tucked away and the children will be looking at what has happened in about 2 weeks time. It was a great opportunity for team work and following instructions carefully. To follow up, we have also written instructions on our experiment. In maths we are still focusing on multiplication and division. The children found it exciting to find out what maths facts they know from one times table sentence!
It has been a busy half term and the class are ready for a rest!
02.02.24
Today, we finally got to finish our Egyptian headdresses! They look fantastic on our tea-stained paper. We think we all make good pharaohs!
11.01.24
This week we have enjoyed learning more about the Egyptians. We have looked at where the Ancient Egyptians fits into a time line of other historical periods, and the time line of major events during this era. In English, we have started the Egyptian Cinderella story and compared it to a version of the original fairy tale. We have also practised using comparative conjunctions for comparing different Egyptian gods. In Maths, we have been looking at the difference between grouping and sharing in our Multiplication and Division topic. We found it tricky to start with but using the equipment is helping us. In Science, we have started our Forces topic and discussed the question 'What would life be like if we could only push and not pull?'. It led to a very interesting discussion! Today, we have started our first dance lesson. Please ask your child to show you their moves! You can see it has been a busy week!
The children have returned with smiles on their faces and buckets of enthusiasm, which was lovely to see. We are keen to learn about the Egyptians and we are starting to learn our song to go with the topic. We had some good knowledge already. In maths, we are starting on our multiplication unit and were using arrays to help us. It's going to be a good term!
Despite being so close to Christmas, we are still working hard here in year 3. This week, we explored our grounds to find materials to make our own paint in art. We are working towards creating a piece of cave art using natural materials. English has been great too. We are creating our own pre-historic creature to make a factfile on. The children have really enjoyed thinking up imaginative scientific names for their creations. In our PE lesson we have used our dodging skills essential for defense to avoid being caught by the crocodiles.
We have had fun this week. We have got our heads around column addition and have certainly made progress. We have also been practising our mental maths skills and we are improving! In addition, we have experienced democracy in action when we voted for our school council members. We even had our own ballot box and had to queue up with our voting slip. PE has been a highlight with many of us improving our gymnastic skills and devising interesting balances.
maypole dancing in National Week
Another busy week and one week closer to half term! However, the children are still completing a lot of learning and are enthusiastic. Last week we learnt about Mary Anning and we were angry at how she was treated by the society of the time. We also have made a pull out information leaflet on how fossils are made. We were very proud of our harvest collection which we know will help so many people. Thank you all for supporting the children with this.
Welcome to another year! The summer has been incredibly busy and the school is looking fabulous. Here in year 3 we are all excited for the new year. We hope you are too!
What a great start to year 3. The Stone Age is a real hit and we have been looking at how they find information about prehistory. We also have reminded ourselves of our place value knowledge looking at numbers up to 100. However, our biggest challenge this week has been keeping cool!
We are really enjoying the Stone Age and our science was extra special this week. We made sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic rocks out of chocolate. Best of all, we could eat them afterwards! We had a really important lesson on how to be safe on our scooters. It was good fun. However, some children had more trouble stopping than others.
We have had fun this week creating our own woolly mammoths from milk bottles. This has been used to write some fabulous sets of instructions!
We like to learn in lots of different ways at Larchfield. We researched the special festivals celebrated by the Hindu faith in groups and presented our findings to the class. This week we also completed some outdoor maths, where we had to order our numbers in groups. We worked with numbers up to 1000. Our challenge was then to try to order the whole class! This was tricky!
