The Henges of Plaistow

In Woodpecker Class we have really thrown ourselves into our Prehistory topic. At the moment we are exploring the Stone Age. As part of this we have been looking at monuments and more specifically, henges. This week we designed out own henges and then went outside to build them using natural materials. There were some many different and brilliant ideas for building them - no henge was the same! Miss Dore was very impressed with everyone’s creativity.

Ratatouille

In science we have been looking at food groups and healthy eating. This week we combined our DT and science and made ratatouille. We all worked in small teams to chop, mix and measure our ingredients. At the end we all took a pot of our ratatouille home to try.

Butser Ancient Farm

On Tuesday we had our school trip to Butser Ancient Farm. When we arrived we were taken into an Iron Age round house where we discussed the transition from the Iron Age to the Romans in Britain. After this we had a go at being archaeologists and found lots of different artefacts. Whilst on the way to our next activity we found some Roman public toilets - we decided that we preferred modern day ones!

Next we had a go at making some Roman jewellery using copper wire. We made rings, bracelets and earrings. After lunch in the shade, we turned our hands to making mosaics. We had small tiles and could copy a Roman design using symmetry or we could make make our own design.

Our last activity of the day was spinning wool. This initially looked easy but turned out to be surprisingly tricky. We had to gently pull the wool from the bundle whilst spinning it. We then got the opportunity to look around a Roman villa.

Overall we had a lovely day, made lots of lovely things and learnt a lot from our guide. Thank you to all the adult helpers who came with us.

Camp out!

The best way to end sports week is to finish with the year 3 camp out. We had a fantastic time setting out our tents, eating cake, playing with our friends, cooking dinner, learning about bats and going on a bat walk, cooking breakfast, washing up and sleeping - wow we did fit a lot in! Everyone really got into the team spirit and helped with all the camp jobs and activities. It was lovely to see how much teamwork was going on. Here are just a few photos of our fun time.

Bullseye!

Robin Hood watch out there are some new archers in town! On Thursday we learnt how to use a bows and arrow to shoot targets. We played a game with the target where we had to shoot different parts in order to make a pizza. We then had to then fire our bows and arrows at smaller targets in order to earn points.

Teamwork makes the dream work!

Our first day of sports week was focusing on teamwork and all the skills needed to be a good team player. We then used those important skills in order to get our whole team from one end of the field to the other just using two mats.

Finding parts of a flower.

This week in science we have been looking at and naming the parts of a flower. To help us identify the various parts we used diagrams and real flowers which we gently pulled apart to reveal the important parts such as the stamen and carpel.

Marvellous Mosaics

Over the past few weeks we have been researching Roman mosaics and had a go at creating a mosaic using squared paper. All of this has been leading up to us creating out own mosaics using tiles of paper. We first drew the outline of our design and then used glue to stick the tiles on. We love how different they all look and how bright and colourful they are.

Using Money

In our modern world it is very easy to buy things online, use our phone to pay or our bank card. This week Woodpeckers have been practising using money. In our classroom we set up a shop. Each child was given a handful of coins and had to work out how much money they had in total to spend at the shop. They then had to work out the exact amount they needed for the items that they wanted to buy.

Woodpeckers were also set a challenge of working out how much money Miss Dore had in her 1p and 2p jar. They started off by sorting the money according to the coins. In pairs they were given a pile of coins, then they counted how much money they had. The last step was to then add each pairs amounts together to find the total.

Our Celery Experiment.

In science we have been looking at parts of plants and their functions. Recently we have been focusing on the stems and how the xylem move water around the plant. This week we have carried out an experiment to see how important water and the xylem are. We had 2 sticks of celery. In one pot we put our celery in water with food colouring. In another pot we put a stick of celery, which has had the bottom covered in Vaseline, in water with blue food colouring. Over the next week we will be monitoring our celery to see what happens.

Capacity

This week in maths we have been looking at capacity, litres and millilitres.

Magnificent Magnets

Over the last 2 weeks, Woodpecker class have been exploring magnets. We have learnt about magnetic fields, how magnets work and also what types of metals magnets are attracted to.

World Book Day

Woodpeckers had a great day exploring books for World Book Day. We got some new books for our book corner and found out that Miss Dore was the ostrich in the Masked Reader. We then had a lovely session sharing our books with Year 5.

Feel the Force

Can you feel the force? Woodpecker Class have been looking at forces in science this week and using force meters to measure the force needed to do everyday task such as opening a door, tucking a chair in or unzipping a pencil case. We then combined our new skills with our previous knowledge of friction to complete an experiment to measure the frictional forces of different surfaces.