I hope you all had a wonderful half term.

It has been lovely to be back in school today with the children finishing their Victorian Workhouse descriptions.

Please see some of their fantastic pieces of writing. I am sure you will see how much effort has gone into them.

In geography, we have been learning about volcanoes and their impact on people and the environment.

We have designed and made paper mache models of volcanoes during our Design Technology lessons, paying careful attention to the way that they are formed.

Finally, we conducted a scientific experiment to make our volcanoes 'erupt'. 

I'm sure you can tell by the photos that we have made a lot of effort to ensure that our volcanoes looked magnificent and that we had lots of fun in the process. 

Storytellers have been learning about Diwali, also known as the festival of lights, and many rituals and traditions during the event include light. Diya lamps are lit around the doorways and windows of people's homes. This symbolises the triumph of light over dark and welcomes Lord Rama home from the story of Rama and Sita. The children listen to a story about family traditions celebrating Diwali. They enjoyed creating their Diya lamps and decorating our entrance with Rangoli, a popular Diwali tradition –beautiful patterns made using colourful powders and flowers. People draw Rangoli on the floor by the entrance of their homes to welcome the gods and bring good luck!  

This week, we continue our season's theme by investigating Halloween. This festival signifies the move from autumn to winter and is always a great favourite for young children.

We have enjoyed reading a classic this week, “Room on a Broom” by Julia Donaldson. The story of a witch, a group of animals who help her, good manners, friendship and cooperation was fun to read aloud because of its rhythm and rhyme and opportunities for the children to join in.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the potion Station today. They measured out bicarbonate and various coloured vinegars along with a variety of Halloween-inspired pasta shapes and then watched the results. They were totally immersed in the process, which created some wonderful learning opportunities as we talked about the reactions that happened and the words we could use to describe them.

The children carried on this passion for potions within their role-play area, currently themed as ‘Meg and Mogs’ house. There have been many magic spells and rhymes as the children explored roles together. Having a selection of pumpkins around the room has offered an abundance of learning opportunities, from size ordering and counting to mark-making in various exciting ways.

 We are excited to see what next terms learning adventures bring …

We started off October continuing to look for signs of Autumn, collecting leaves from the wider school environment and then matching them to a Leaf Identification sheet. Using some of the leaves we collected, we made Autumn crowns and wore them when singing our favourite seasonal song ‘Autumn leaves are falling down.’

We rolled conkers and pine cones in trays to create paint effects on paper leaves. 

For World Mental Health Awareness Day we enjoyed a ‘Colour Monster’ themed tuff tray and spoke about colours and feelings. With the colour theme of the day being Yellow, we attempted to find yellow items across nursery, working together to fill a tuff tray. We read ‘Sometimes I Feel Sunny’ which explores the emotions that naturally occur in every young child's life.

We enjoyed a visit from the Fire Brigade and enthusiastically looked around the fire engine, which was the perfect fit for our children’s interest fire station area.

For Harvest Festival we learnt about food and where it comes from whilst playing the role of customers and shop keeper in our farm shop. We also made bread rolls and demonstrated great turn taking adding ingredients and mixing, as well as handling tools and using rolling pins.

We kicked off some early Diwali celebrations, tasting some delicious Malaysian food and smelling lots of different spices. We used scented playdough and decorated with Marigold flowers to create some fun festive designs. 

In the library we looked at the works of our current school author, Julia Donaldson, exploring her many books and characters and listening to our favourite stories.

October

We have had a lovely Autumn October. In Science we have been looking at Seasonal changes. 
During this time we looked at how the weather can change too. By making a Water Gauge and Wind Vane we were able to make observations throughout the week. We also took a look at the daily temperature. 

To check out the strength of the wind we created our own kites. We noticed that on the day we decided to trial them the wind had died down but had moments of gusty wind. At those times the kites lifted into the sky. 

The temperature stayed between 15 - 17C and our rainfall rose from 5cm upto 20 cm by the end of our observations. 

Throughout October we managed two Autumn walks, finding red, orange and yellow leaves. The walk was a peaceful one with the sounds of birds singing and a few last butterflies fluttering around. It was great finding the Wind turbine and watching the blades go round.

It will soon be Halloween, have a lovely halfterm and spooky halloween!

The End of Autumn 1!

This half term has seen so many exciting activities and opportunities for learning. We've taken part in cricket sessions, violin tuition, a trip to Bodmin jail and street dance to name a few!

This week our celebrations for Black History Month culminated in a sharing assembly whereby we saw which notable person of colour, from the past or present, each class has focussed on. In Talland class, we spent time learning about Mary Seacole - a black lady who, during the Victorian times, was incredibly selfless, nursing soldiers in the Crimean war.

After finding out about her struggles and successes, the children created their very own 'relief printing' tile from card. They then did wax crayon rubbings over these to produce their portrait of Mary. They used the 4 colours associated with Black History Month and found out about the significance of these.

We can't wait to see what exciting opportunities Autumn 2 brings!

We hope that you have a lovely half term: stay safe and enjoy some family time.

Hello Everyone!

The children have been busy investigating all kinds of pumpkins this week. In English we have been reading the story 'Pumpkin Soup' by Helen Cooper. We began by exploring a range of different pumpkins and used adjectives to describe them. The story inspired the children to make pretend pumpkin soup during play. They added all sorts of weird and wonderful ingredients. Reception enjoyed drawing and painting the pumpkins, while Year 1 wrote a list of ingredients for how to make pumpkin soup. We are really proud of the instruction writing that Year 1 have produced this week.

Today we took advantage of the weather and spent some time in the school garden, hanging up some home made bird feeders. We also enjoyed an art lesson, where we re-created some concentric circles, in the style of the artist 'Kandinsky

After half term, our enquiry question will be 'What was it like before I was born?' Every Friday, we will have a themed show and tell, where the children can bring in and talk about something from home. On the first Friday after half term, please can the children bring in an object or a picture from before they were born. 

Have a lovely half term break.

From the Penhallow team.

w/e 25.10.24

TALLAND CLASS BLOG 25.10.24

HAPPY HALF TERM EVERYONE!

What a fabulous Autumn term 1 it's been. It's been so lovely getting to know Talland as a class and I have to say - what an exceptional group of children we have! They've all worked so hard, helped each other to learn along the way and have had a load of fun doing so! I'm so proud of each and every one of them - keep up the great work Talland!

Maths: Children have worked their way through PLACE VALUE, ADDITION AND SUBTRACTION and the year 5s even learnt VOLUME!

Writing: We've made fantastic instructions for travelling through the digestive system and have been writing an adventure narrative based on saving the Micro Monster, who was kidnapped by Acidro (the evil gastric acid beast), whilst following our instructions to travel through the digestive system. What a cheeky little acid monster Acidro is!

Art: Talland created an amazing mixed media collage by making a mood board of school based objects, choosing which collage they preferred, experimenting (over  a course of lessons) how to tint, shade and create different textures with paint and produce fantastic final piece.

Science: WE delved into the digestive system, looked at teeth and food chains. This was so much fun!

Geography: Talland looked at erosion, defenses for erosion and the impact erosion has on communities that live near the coast. We also explored different physical features of coasts - some children took some amazing photos of these different features with their parents - a huge WELL DONE there!

Well, that was a brief break down of just some of the learning that took place over the last 7 weeks. I have had a great time and I hope your children have too!

That's all from Talland - we hope you have a magnificent half term and look forward to seeing you all soon!

Signing off from Mr. Langley, Mr. Bishop and Miss. Colton.

October

We've been very busy.  Learning about Noah in RE, what responsibility is, what collage is and looks like in art, how scientists create and conduct fair tests.
We've been finding out about the Bronze and Iron Age and how Stonehenge was created.

What a lovely last week of the first half term we have had! 

English
We have completed and edited our Back to Pompeii timeslip story and are in the process of writing up our best copy as part of our handwriting lessons. Everyone has worked extremely hard and have produced writing with language which creates mood, atmosphere and tension. I look forward to reading them!

Maths 
Y6s have been learing a range of strategies to solve division problems (including short division and factor division) whilst the Y5s have been learning about multiples and factors. They all have a focus times table which they will need to practise their fluency and recall of.

Wider Curriculum
We wrapped up our enquiry into Ancient Rome and its influence on Britain by having a Roman Day on Thursday. We had such fun baking honey biscuits, engaging in gladiator battles, eating typical Roman foods for that era and making shields and jewellery. We completed our day by testing out our aquaducts and we invited Penhallow class to watch our 'destruction of Pompeii', re-enacting the fateful events of 24th August AD79.

Chaipel staff have thoroughly enjoyed our first half term of the year and we wish you all a lovely break. 

Thanks for your support and see you all back at school on Monday 4th October.

Miss Randle, Mrs Clary, Mrs Hodge and Miss Colton.