Our new enquiry question is 'Was the Great Fire of London really that great?'.

We have become historians understanding the key event which happened in London in 1666. The class have loved learning about this and in 2 weeks can already impart so much knowledge where they have even applied it within their writing in both English and the curriculum. 

We are going to be linking this in our DT next where we are going to create Tudor houses before recreating the Great Fire ourselves with help from the local fire service.

We have a trip planned to the fire station this half term (date to be confirmed) where we will look at how fire safety has changed from 1666 to now.

Reminders:

PE is on Thursday so please ensure kit is in on this day.
Reading records are also to come in on Thursday ready to be changed over for the following week.

Year 5/6 visit to Looe Community Academy
Year 5 and 6 spent the morning at LCA to take part in science activities. They looked at the process of fireworks in chemistry, burning foods to look at energy in physics and looking through microscopes in biology.

Wedding bells
Cardinham class are learning about how different religions show love through weddings and this week, the children took part in a Christian wedding. We had our bride, groom, best man, bridesmaid and entourage with Haribo rings and confetti. 

The beauty of nature
I had to share this photo that a parent sent in of one of our Year 5's with his newly born bull calf that he helped come into this world. He was able to show the amazing perseverance farmers go through when a cow is in labour (5 days for this cow!) but we loved the updates and it was a time to reflect on the incredible work farmers do!

Calendar dates
Monday 6th May-Bank holiday
Week com. 13th May-Year 6 SATs week
Thursday 16th May-PTFA School Disco
Tuesday 21st May-Bags2School
Friday 24th May-INSET day

We have started back in the summer term with a bang!

School Vision
After some reflection, we have decided to change our school vision to 'Let your light shine before others'. We wanted to encompass our family ethos where we work together to thrive. We have created a firefly display to show that one firefly can light up but if we have a group of fireflies, they shine even brighter. I have been extremely impressed that by the end of our first week, 100% of the children could articulate our new vision and explain what it means.

Cornwall Library Service
The children were thrilled to have a visit on the library van that arrived. Every child was able to choose a book from the van to have in the school to encourage reading for pleasure. Our KS1 children couldn't believe that a van has been transported into a library!

RNLI assembly
We had a visit from two lifeguards who talked to us about beach safety. They were very impressed with the knowledge the children had about being safe whilst on the beach and in the sea.

St Piran's Day

On Tuesday we had St Piran's day. The whole school created nets using a 3D template and decorated with all things Cornish. They were creating the boxes to hold the scones that they baked in the afternoon. As well as baking, in the afternoon, we also created a Cornish map using collage and the children decorated their own Celtic crosses. We were lucky with the weather and managed to do some orienteering where the children spelt out something very important to Cornish people "Jam first, cream second". 
World Book Day
We had an amazing array of costumes for World Book Day. Cardinham class spent the afternoon creating animations based on popular picture books such as Alien loves Underpants, Handa's Surprise and We're going on a bear hunt. Kilminorth class transformed potatoes into book characters using their art skills. They used their knowledge of mixing paints to get specific colours and created characters like the 3 little pigs, Peter Rabbit and Rapunzel.

A reminder that it is parent consultations next week.

We have had a very busy half term!

NSPCC Day
As part of the annual NSPCC Number Day, we invited the wonderful volunteers in to deliver workshops to Year 2 and 6 whilst the rest of the school took part in a range of activities linking to numbers/maths.

Year 5/6 visits to Looe Community Academy
Looe Community Academy have invited us to two events this half term. One event was linking to languages where the children were learning Spanish. The other event was linking to PSHE where the children took part in a range of activities linking to Safer Internet Week.

School Disco
Our PTFA organised a school disco in the last week. Children enjoyed their usual hot dog, refreshments and tuck shop alongside some dancing. We raised over £100 so thank-you to all parents who supported and a special thank-you to our PTFA for organising the event.

Pop Up Play
We invited our friends from Barbican Pre School and West Looe Playgroup to join us with a Pop Up Play morning. We had a range of role play areas set up to develop the children's imaginative skills. It was also wonderful to see them develop with their communication and social skills across the 3 different settings. We look forward to working with the local pre schools throughout the rest of the year.

Enrichment opportunities
Even though it has been a short half term, we have still been out and about in the community. Kilminorth class visited a Chinese restaurant. Please find below our calendar dates for Spring term 2 with further additional experiences for the children.

We had a fabulous morning with some of our local pre schools joining us for a Pop Up Play experience.

The children were able to take part in a range of role play experiences to develop their imagination, communication and language skills and social skills.

We had a hairdressers, construction site, vets, home area and cafe.

This week, we have had a spirituality day and it was a fabulous day in the beautiful, crisp, cold weather.

We are starting our journey with spirituality where the children are able to articulate this and where we can use it in everyday scenarios.

We define spirituality as:

"Spirituality is not something we can see; it is something we feel inside ourselves. It is about awe and wonder, asking questions and taking time to stop, reflect and focus on the world God has created for us being aware of something 'bigger' outside of ourselves."

Our biggest achievement of the day was starting our spirituality garden. Just some of the skills that were used included: measurement to create a cross-shaped raised flower bed, teamwork, perseverance, patience, resilience, physical strength and creativity and we were blown away with the progress in one day. We will be developing this over this term.

In the classrooms, were looking at managing our 'fizz' (times when we might be anxious, angry, worried etc.) and then identified strategies such as yoga, mindfulness, calm areas, music etc. to reduce the fizz. We also came up with further designs using our IT skills to create a collage of ideas that can be added in our spirituality garden.

A huge thank-you to Kelly Edwards (our forest school specialist) who came in and supported the children with our new outdoor learning challenge.

Welcome back and we hope you had a lovely Christmas break!

Animation to celebrate the 10th anniversary of Bridge Schools
Although it was a short week, we ended the week celebrating the 10th anniversary of Bridge Schools. As part of this, all 14 schools in the trust created a short animation to show our trust values. This was then shared on a whole trust Teams meeting on Friday afternoon where we could watch the animation and hear from each school.

Afterschool clubs
Monday-Wellbeing club through creative arts with Miss Crabb
Tuesday-Eco/global neighbour club with Mrs. Pike
Thursday-Basketball club with Pro20
Friday-Cross country club with Mr. Abraham

Please ensure you email or speak to the office to book your child into the club.

Dates for your diary
A letter had been sent out today with all key dates for this half term.

Upcoming dates are:
Friday 19th January-East Cornwall Harriers cross country race
Wednesday 24th January-Cross country event at Looe Community Academy

This term we have been looking at Vikings and how they used to raid monasteries for more money. The Vikings even visited our class and raided the things most precious to us...our Dojos! We have written diary entries as if we were a young Viking doing their first raid. The class were divided in their opinions on how the young person would feel about it. 'There was a real juxtaposition of thrill and repulse within the raids.' The children also learnt about Viking long boats and researched facts about them and presented their findings.

Cardinham class, at Trenode Primary, have had a lot of changes over the academic year already. Lots of new adults to get used to and build relationships with, as well as getting to grips with a new way of learning through Seesaw. They have done brilliantly in taking it all in their stride and adapting to each day. Showing perseverance and resilience every day. We have been learning lots about invaders and settlers in History and how the Anglo Saxons lived their lives. We are excited to move onto how the Vikings took over Britain and will be doing our own writing on Norse Myths and Legends. Lots of the class have also tried their hands in a variety of different sports that they have had little competitive experience in. We have attended football, netball and cross-country trust events which they all showed a real ‘give it a go’ attitude. Very proud of all the children in Cardinham class!

A great start to the year. Cardinham class have had a new teacher start this September... Mr Abraham. The children have been very welcoming and kind to Mr Abraham. It can be hard when things change but the children have taken this in his stride and we are all looking forward to a good year ahead. 

Our big questions for RE is 'Why does Christmas matter to Christians?' and we have been learning about the Christmas story. As part of their learning, they were to understand Mary's important job of looking after the Baby Jesus.

We invited a special guest into school so Mrs. Lister (who is on maternity leave) came in with her daughter to talk to the children about how to look after a baby. The children asked excellent questions to understand the important role of a parent and we talked about what would have been similar with Mary and baby Jesus.

The children will be doing their nativity to show their understanding of the Christmas story and we are working hard to finish putting it all together.

As part of our DT learning, we have planned, made and evaluated our healthy picnic we created. The children learnt about the different food groups and then made sandwiches with healthier options such as brown bread and reduced fat butter. They then made salad, carrot sticks and fruit salad.

The children learnt the skills of chopping, cutting, grating, peeling and spreading.

We invited our family members in for a teddy bear picnic where we tasted our finished meal and they went down very well!

Open the Book
We welcomed in Open the Book this week who showed the traditional Christmas story. Lots of the children were involved with this and we discussed the similarities and differences between this and our nativity (Boogie Woogie Nativity). 

Christmas Tree festival at St Wenna's Church
A couple of our children helped decorate our school Christmas tree for the festival at St Wenna's church. All children in the school made a wooden decoration for the tree so look out for it at the Christingle Service next week.

Christmas carols and crafts at Hillcrest
On Tuesday afternoon, the whole school visited Hillcrest Nursing Home where we sang some Christmas songs and completed some Christmas crafts with the residents. My favourite moment was seeing a couple of children make a paper chain necklace which one of the residents then wore around her neck. I was extremely proud of the children for representing our school so well and I know we definitely brought the Christmas spirit.

Final dates for this half term
Tuesday 12th December-Christingle Service at St Wenna at 5pm
Thursday 14th December-Nativity production at 1:30pm and 5:00pm
Monday 18th December-Christmas dinner, Christmas jumper day and PTFA Christmas film club (2-4pm)
Tuesday 19th December-Last day of term and mufti day