Science week got off to a great start yesterday. The children all looked fantastic dressed up as famous scientists. Great discussions were initiated about their chosen scientist. Thank you parents for facilitating this, the drama and excitement in school was fantastic and a catalyst to learning.

Today was the afternoon to be outside; the finest day of the year! Thank you to the children and families that donated plants, the children thoroughly enjoyed planting them around the school. A special, huge thank you to all of the parents, grandparents and even big brothers and sisters for coming in to help with the jobs outside. The atmosphere was wonderful, with Early years and upper key stage 2 children all ‘digging in’. The school playgrounds look fantastic and much brighter and tidier. These days are a true testament to the St. Mary’s ethos, a pleasure to be apart of.

What a fantastic start to British Science Week! The whole school was ready and raring to go and explore and discover this morning – our costumes were AMAZING!

After an exiting assembly to get us going, we spent the day investigating gliders and flight – seeing who could make a paper helicopters stay in the air the longest. Unfortunately, our designs didn’t quite go as planned – but that’s science! Maybe we’ll give it another go! The good news is, there was lots of planning, making, testing and evaluating happening – what a full day of discovery and exploration!

Many huge thanks to all the parents who helped with costumes and getting all of the children enthused for the week – Mrs Thomas has lots of fantastic investigations planned for the next couple of days based on our rocks and soils science topic, and we have a STEM ambassador coming to visit tomorrow (Tuesday)!

Our theme song this week is the Fossil Rock Anthem – give it a listen in your house! The actions rock!

The Year 5 girl’s science group are in high spirits this week! They are gathering momentum for National Science week on 12th March. High on the agenda, is planning an assembly on the more serious issue of how girls/women are drastically under represented in the STEM (science, technology, engineering and maths) industry. If this wonderful bunch are anything to go by, this imbalance will soon be rectified!

They will also be welcoming and guiding the many visitors we have planned: STEM ambassadors, Kendal college lecturers and students and QES staff. We hope parents and grandparents will be joining us in planting and tidying our outside spaces on Tuesday 13th. The children have been asked if they would like to bring in and donate any plants for this time.

The girls have been setting up the ‘enclosure’ for their prehistoric creatures to hatch – we are hoping they only turn out to be the size that is promised on the box! Year 5 are also busy researching all about Japanese quail; they will be attempting to hatch some in time for science week: fitting with the topic of life cycles. They have been promised a visit from a tortoise too; they can compare two very different egg laying animals! More pics to follow…

This week we are launching our annual science week with a mufty day – dressing up as your favourite scientist on Monday.  We are also gardening in the school grounds on Tuesday (1:00-2:30). In addition we will be going out on visits and taking part in various activities and investigations.

We are pleased to announce that we will have a visit from the founders of the Noah Initiative on March 13th to hear about the work they are doing in Kenya.  Mrs Neale recently went out to Kenya to visit the project and shared her experiences.

Year 5 have been thoroughly enjoying David Walliam’s books: they are humorous and exciting. The children are becoming punctuation wizards, but are now finding that some authors are lacking punctuation in their novels! They have written a persuasive letter to Mr Walliams; they have asked him to visit our school and discuss the punctuation he uses. They have even suggested he comes to one of their SPaG lessons to brush up on his semi-colon and colon knowledge. We will eagerly await his response…

Well done to our teams who qualified for the Sport Hall Athletics Tournament taking place at Kendal Leisure Centre on the 9th March.

Congratulations to all our teams who played excellent matches against Sedbergh Prep

The results were as follows:

Football club have been training again today during lunch time with Mr Watson.  This week saw some shooting practice and other drills on the astroturf.

We had half an hour of snow fun this morning before returning to the normal timetable of lessons! What a super day for enjoying the snow at lunchtime.