Learning in the school garden.

Learning in the School Garden.

The Autumn has arrived in all its beauty. Last week, the children from the gardening club collected samples of coloured leaves from the trees growing around the school playgrounds.

We dried them and used to make snap cards. We stuck the leaves to cards, found out the names of the trees they came from and labelled them. 

Playing the snap game, we could learn the names of 12 trees and one climber from our surroundings,

such as ash: crab apple, birch, wild cherry, maple, prunus, oak, hazel, lime tree, sycamore, willow, cypress and ivy.

National Space Week in KS1 music lessons

Did you know this week was National Space Week?

We were sent a song to sing which was written for children in Southampton. It had a fabulous chant in the middle with all of the planets named in it.

The children from KS1 learnt the chant and the chorus while Mrs Williams sang the verse. We made up actions and then sang to our teachers in singing assembly.

Mrs Williams was very impressed as she brought in an inflatable "Jupiter" and many children in KS1 knew which planet it was.

Could you recognise any of the planets?

Gardening club have been harvesting!

After school last week the gardening club harvested potatoes which they had planted and this week it was onions. I could smell those onions from a mile away!

They washed and prepared the vegetables so cooking club can use them to make potato rosti's tomorrow, yummy!

Watch this space for pictures of the delicious, fresh food they will be making and eating.

Keep on using the environment to learn :) 

Could you plant with you children? Could you harvest and wash vegetables at home? 

Why not give it a try?!

Well done to our amazing gardeners!

Wow! Well done to Shirley Warren School, Mrs Wilk and the gardening club, you have achieved a silver award in the category of 'Garden for Learning'.

Southampton in Bloom was a whole school project with children from all year groups planting, nurturing and helping to grow their patches.

Year 1 planted lettuces, Year 2 broad beans, Year 3 spinach and green peas, Years 4 and 5 aubergines and a gooseberry stub.

Gardening club expressed their joy: 'We learnt how to look after vegetables by watering them, tieing them up and removing green flies and caterpillars'.

KS1 planted: beans, onions, tomatoes, courgettes, sweet pepper and sowed beetroots, carrots, marigolds, nasturtium and cosmos.

KS2 planted potatoes, strawberries, courgettes, pumpkins, sunflowers, french beans. they also made a herb garden of dill, parsley, coriander and basil.

Who would like to join gardening club next half term?...

Sound work in Science in Year 4

Today we have been learning about sound: how it is made and how it travels.

Today we designed and carried out an experiment to find out which material made the egg shaker silent with the least number of layers.

Here are our wrapped up egg shakers. 

Can you tell the materials we used?

We used (top row l-r) brown paper, fabric (socks), tin foil; (front row l-r) paper towels, tissue paper and bubble wrap.

Many people predicted the tin foil would have the least layers because you can wrap it really tight and it doesn't have holes in. But actually it made the metal egg shaker just as loud. Our experiment showed that the brown paper had the least number of layers - 7 - and we thought perhaps that is why is is used for wrapping items to post.

Everyone enjoyed this experiment and we are going to explore pitch next week in science.

Science Week

The 11th-15th March was Science and DT week in Shirley Warren!  The theme of the week was Journeys with each year group having their own stimulus to explore.

Year R - Looked at tunnels: thinking about what makes a good one before constructing their own.

Year 1 - Looked at bridges: thinking about what materials would be best before creating their own that would have to carry the weight of a beebot.

Year 2 - Looked at static electricity and how it could transport the paper animals they made.

Year 3 - Found out about the important role bees play in pollination and then created their own digital animations to show this.

Year 4 - Investigated forces and the effect they had on the fabulous flying machines they created.  They then used iPads to create their own explanation videos.

Year 5 - Found out all about scientists that had visited space.

Year 6 - Had two mini projects of their own; 6L investigated natural disasters whilst 6W looked at the journey of diseases before creating their own viral videos.

The children thoroughly enjoyed practically investigating these areas and learnt lots during the week! Special mention needs to go to the ambassadors from each class that stood up in a special assembly at the end of the week and shared what they had been doing; they were fantastic.

If you want to find out more, why not ask your child what they discovered during this week or try and carry out your own experiment at home!

Our most exciting post yet...

Report by RH:
"In Science we have been learning about how plastic affects the world. We wrote to lots of different restaurants around Southampton to praise them about plastic they don't use. I wrote to Nando's. They sent us some things like a glass drinks bottle, recycled pencils, chilli seeds and a pencil case made from cardboard!"

Miss Dickinson and 5D are looking forward to planting our chilli seeds in the classroom! Thank you Nando's!

Third reply!

See above - our third company reply from KFC about what they are doing to reduce their use of single-use plastic :)

Forces and Flight in 4C

Today, Class 4C experimented with forces and flight.

We made paper planes to see which could stay in the air longest.
We learned about forces and we also sang a song about forces.
We wanted to show the school our video in assembly but it wasn't working by that time - but now here it is!

Our second reply!

Miss Dickinson received this message from Lush last night, after JB wrote a very complimentary letter to them to praise them for all they do to help eradicate plastic pollution!

Our first reply!

5D have been learning all about plastic pollution and the impact of our waste on the environment. We chose our favourite companies to write to, discussing their corporate impact and what could be done.

Today we received our first reply - from Domino's Pizza!

They said that they enjoyed reading the letters that were sent and they understand our concern for the environment and oceans.

They also reported that they are aiming to send zero waste to landfill.

Result!

5D's adventure to the universe and beyond!

Yesterday, 5D went on a trip to Winchester Science Centre to explore more about our solar system, universe, galaxy and beyond!

We started by exploring how light travels in space and we were shocked to find out that although light may look white, it's actually made up of five colours which can be split by refraction. Check out what we saw when we put on some special glasses and looked at white light!

After our workshop, we were able to explore the centre's exhibits and activities. Here's a few pictures to show what we got up to!

We finished up the day with a 'wow' moment in the planetarium. What a fabulous time we had!

Is it a solid? Is it a liquid?! NO! It's a non-Newtonian fluid!!!!!

Year 5 have been busy exploring solids, liquids and gases. Today we came across a substance which can be both a solid AND a liquid! These are called non-Newtonian fluids and it's all to do with the particles.

When the fluid is free to move by itself, the particles have time to move freely past each other. But when the fluid is impacted quickly, the particles don't have time to move and they get locked, meaning it behaves like a solid!

We were wowed by this and really enjoyed getting messy experimenting with it!

Miss Dickinson had a question. As solids are more protective than liquids, would a non-Newtonian liquid protect an egg when dropped from a height?!

Of course, we had to test this...

Miss Dickinson bravely scaled the climbing frame (no mean feat when you're older than 10!). After enclosing our egg in the non-Newtonian fluid in a zip-lock bag, she dropped it from the very top.

What do you think happened?

Spoiler: it was completely still in-tact!

Maybe we should all carry our eggs home from the supermarket in non-Newtonian fluid from now on...

Busy times in Year 6!

Year 6 have been kept very busy this week! Not only have we been learning about derived facts in Maths and writing short stories based on 'Alma' in English, but we have also managed to pack in two new topics in Geography and Science!

In Science, we have been recapping what we learnt in Year 4 about electricity and building on this to experiment with making and debugging circuits. We came up with our own research questions and investigated these. We were surprised by our findings!

In Geography, we have been learning about mountain formation using what we learnt about tectonic plates last half term. Did you know that there are five key types of mountains? In the first picture, Miss Dixon is pushing her hands together on the towel, maintaining pressure; this creates folds in the towel, just like what happens with the Earth's crust!
In the second, the balloon represented swollen magma underneath the crust which creates a dome mountain.


We're looking forward to learning more about mountains next week... that is, when we're not busy at Woodmill! Hope the packing is going well, Year 6!

Test on Volcanic Eruptions By CA

Today Class 6C did an experiment about volcanoes in our playground, so that we wouldn't cause too much mess in the classroom!

So we took a bottle of Coke and some polos. Then we set everything up, making sure we had a bucket of water for afterwards.

We used the bottle to represent the crust. The liquid coke we used to represent the magma. 

Then we all went a safe distance away from the experiment and our teacher dropped in the polos to create the eruption.

The experiment ended up being successful, although I think next time we would add something so we could drop in the polos quicker, as you can see from the video how we didn't get it in quick enough.

By CA in 6C

Amazing animals!!

Year 1 went to Marwell Zoo and had lots of fun observing all the amazing animals.

Marwell knew we were coming as we had written a letter telling them how excited we were and which animals we wanted to see.

The weather was lovely and we had a workshop where we had the chance to touch a snake and a rat.

We were all so brave!

We will now write a recount.

Science week in 1L

Are birds or people better at making bird nests?...

1L have enjoyed planning, designing, making and evaluating bird nests to test this question.

The materials they used were leaves, feathers, straw, sticks and clay to make the nests.

They tested whether their nests would keep birds safe on a windy day.

The results were that birds are better at making nests... as some of them blew away but 1L still had fun investigating!

Parents were invited into class to look at all their children's 

Some parents even tried to make a nest their selves :)

Thank you for coming!

Science Week in Reception

Last week was Science week!  In Reception we did lots of exploring and discovering.

We looked at what happened to water when we put it in the freezer and then once it was frozen, we thought about how to get the objects out.  We then discovered that when the ice warmed up, it turned back into water!

We also made bubbles and used different shaped objects to blow them - but the bubbles were still round!

Finally, we made a balloon rocket!  We used the materials pictured and we talked about what makes the balloon move.  Try it yourself!

Reception loved being scientists! Well done!

RG Planting Potatoes!

This week we planted our potatoes. We talked about what the potatoes need to grow. These were... the soil, light and water. 

We are looking forward to watching them grow and especially eating them once they are ready. Yum!

1S are Building Surveyors !!

Little Pig 1 was so excited when he received the pictures of the houses 1S built that he wrote back asking for a bit more information to help him and his brother choose which house would keep them safe. He wanted to know the materials each house was made of and why the properties of those materials would help keep him safe and dry.

We discovered that building surveyors help people by writing reports for houses advising what materials they are made of, if they are safe and how they could be improved. So, armed with our safety jackets and clipboards, we made notes as we investigated each of the houses Little Pig 1 was interested in to help us decide which house would be most suitable. After this we chose the house we thought would keep the pigs safe and wrote to them explaining why.