Well done to all of our children who took part int he South Lakes District Cross Country, hosted at Sedbergh Prep School, Casterton. The conditions were challenging but all of our teams came in the top 4 with 26 schools represented.  Some of the children who were placed will qualify for County finals very soon.

Year 5 have started their new topic of ‘Animals Including Humans’. Spot and Cupcake the rabbits have come in to the class; Spot is going home though! Cupcake will hopefully have some babies for us to study and monitor as they grow. The children are very excited! The classroom has a new odour, much to Mr Jones’ delight.

Our first Spring topic is Winter so we’ve been out in the frost and rain looking for signs of Winter. We found ice, evergreens, bare trees, brown leaves, frost, umbrellas, lots of woolly hats, berries and pinecones. We are keeping a look out for a robin and keeping our fingers crossed for some snow soon!

We used this experience to help us plan our topic. Our planning is displayed in our classroom so we can add to it at anytime.

In church, we retold the story of the first Christmas. We enjoyed singing, dancing, acting and making everyone smile!

Thank you to Bishop James who joined us for our 30th Anniversary of being on the present site in Kirkby Lonsdale. Primary education started as the subscription school in 1856 and then the establishment of the National School in 1858 and finally due to increasing numbers, the opening of our current school in Dec 1986.   At the time Bishop David formally opened the school and we invited Bishop James to join us, marking this special celebration.  Bishop James formally opened our Learning pod with Mrs Ormston and planted a Christmas tree to mark the occasion.   All of the children received a wooden key ring especially engraved to recognise the 30th Anniversary.

Wow – We have had a wonderful time in London exploring Democracy by visiting the Houses of Parliament. We also explored London (on foot) and finally taking a tour on the London Eye. During our visit to The Palace of Westminster we met Chris Mason from the BBC and Tim Farron, our MP and Leader of the Liberal Democrats. The tour of the House of Lords and House of Commons was a real highlight learning new facts and enabling us to have a perspective that not many people have of the debating chambers.

As part of the Great Leaders topic, Year 5 have participated in the first part of their training to be a ‘Sports Leader’. This entails them preparing and then delivering games and activities to KS1 at playtimes. They have been taught about the safety and communication elements and now have to go away and plan their own task. On Monday they are then going to practise on each other. If they feel it is something they want to continue with, application forms will be given out for them to complete. The successful candidates will then go on to more training and supported in delivering the activities to the younger children. This is an amazing opportunity, already some real talent has been spotted. Mr Jamieson, who is the trainer, was very impressed with Year 5’s fantastic enthusiasm and ambition.

Alongside of this, Year 5 are also looking at their own health and fitness; the outcomes of which will follow…

We went up into the woods and using what we could we around us made some fantastic leaf wreaths and decorations for the trees.

We have been learning about fractions. We found 1/4 and 1/3 of shapes and then used counters to help us to work out fractions of amounts.

Using our new gift from Mr Jones, Year 3 have been working out calculations using Roman Numerals.