Happy Easter to you all!

It feels very strange that we break up today for Easter. We hope you have a lovely time with your families. There will be a list of fun activities you can dip in to to stop yourselves from being bored!

A New resource for reading online! (with quizzes!)

EPIC READING - Let’s keep growing a love of reading over Easter!

I am very excited because I have found a new reading resource for your child to use - Epic Reading. Epic reading can be used online or on the app. It has a huge selection of ebooks, completely free and the best thing is…you can find books using your child’s ZPD level!

This is brilliant as it means your child can read books that accurately match their reading level. There are also lots of quizzes to do. It’s super easy to set up, using your email.

If you would like to get involved, please email me on a.lyons@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk. I will then link your email to your child’s profile so that you can access the books at home. Miss Hornby has also asked if in the email you send, you can give permission for us to add your email to Texts to Parents; it would be very handy to have your emails saved on our system.

If you are wanting to use this resource, please check back on Monday. Mrs Lyons is going to create short video explaining how to use the website/app which will be found in the ‘How to help your child’ section and I will send the invites to your emails when I have them.

A message for Year 4!

Good morning Year 4. We are just about to break up for Easter - virtually! There will be one page with lots of Easter ideas for you to do if and when you want to next week.

A big shout out to the following children who have met their reading target this week:

Mark, Victor, Adam Clayton and Megan. 8 learning points!!

Here are some of your latest pics and look out for Harvey’s volcano video which I will put on later!:

One super obstacle course!

Video Block

Double-click here to add a video by URL or embed code. Learn more

Hi Year 4! Tuesday 31st March

Betty and Jinxy cat say hello and tell you they are being quite well-behaved (apart from 1 mouse and a couple of spiders)

I have put the latest lovely learning pictures below. I have also been on looking at reading targets this morning. So far this term, these children have met their targets:

Lily A, Faye, Lorna-Jane, Victor, Elise, Sophie, Fin. Well done children - I have set you new targets! Hope I haven’t missed anyone!

A lot of you are nearly there. Don’t forget you can quiz from home and there’s lots of good books you can actually read on screen in Accelerated reader"

Year 4 Latest Home learning pictures

I am so impressed with all your hard wok year 4! Keep in contact with all your lovely activities!

Year 4 photos of home learning

What a wonderful learning community we are! Children, you should feel very proud of yourselves. I love all those rainbows. Enjoy everyone!

Let's get learning Year 4!

Hello my lovely year 4 children. Welcome to a new way of learning! It will seem strange to be learning at home and explaining to your parents what you are learning. However, it is very important to keep up and be excellent learners - just like you are at school! Try to be like all the learning characters and you will become such an independent learner, ready for year 5. It would help you to get into a routine and decide what times of day you are carrying out your home learning and weekly challenges.

How home learning will work.

DAILY LEARNING: Every day at 8.00am , I will post your new daily learning which will involve key Year 4 skills for Maths, English and other subjects. Much of it will be based on the lessons we were going to do in class. This will be in the home learning section of the Year 4 website. So, bright and early each morning - check this and get going! Children who do the Nessy program at home - please keep this up every day.

I will also put some ideas for weekly challenges on this blog here, based on the ideas children gave me in class and also from lovely ideas I have seen from the internet.

Weekly challenges for week beginning Monday 23rd March

Lego rainbow challenge: Many people around the country are putting a rainbow in their window to spread hope to everyone - children can spot them if they are out walking. To be a little different, we would love it if you could make one out of lego and place it in your window at home for all to see. Time to get creative!

Baking challenge: This week, we would love you to bake any kind of cupcake with your family. Weigh out the ingredients yourself and become a proper little baker!

Reading challenge: Read one very good book and collect some vocabulary from it. Think about your reading level - try to challenge yourself. Read for half an hour daily and think about collecting some vocabulary too! We are looking into creating a class blog on Purple Mash - so you will be able to share with everyone what you have read. Maybe it will be like a little book club!

PE challenge

Try to do at least half an hour a day of physical activity. Here are some ideas:

• Go on a nature walk - see the first signs of Spring

• Practise your different rolling and jumping techniques (safely in a space!) that we were doing in gymnastics

• Go for a gentle jog

• Set up an obstacle course in your garden and carry it out

• Joe wicks is doing a daily 30 minute PE session online for children if you really like to challenge yourself!

• If you like dancing, you could find a ‘Just Dance’ online or just put some music on and go wild!

• Do some Yoga together

Emotional challenge

This week, let’s try to look on the bright side and be grateful. Every morning or at a meal time, think of one thing you are thankful for and share these thoughts as a family.

Now it’s time to check out your daily learning in the HOME LEARNING section. Please remember to email me if you have any questions at all. You will need plastic straws on Thursday for Science! Enjoy this exciting new learning journey with your family!

Mrs Lyons

“Start by doing what’s necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you’re doing the impossible.”– Francis of Assisi

May we say a big thank you for all your patience and understanding this week. Although we have missed some of our friends, we have carried on with all our learning and enjoyed learning new things. We are all sending our love and prayers to those families who are already in self isolation and are continually keeping you and your families in our thoughts.

Today, we chatted a lot about uncertainty and we realised that the future may be different for a while, but it also may hold such possibilities! We learned that we need to take each day as it comes and try hard to look on the bright side. Being kind, striving to improve and to be like all our 8 lovely learning characters will help us face adversity and come out smiling! Be resilient and try hard, believe in yourself, keep focusing, co-operate, show curiosity, be brave, get creative and strive to improve yourself and you will thrive!

Following Government guidelines, from Friday afternoon, the school will be closed for the majority of children. Miss Hornby will have been in touch with families in special circumstances whose children will come into school on Monday.

For the majority of children who are not in school, they can begin learning from home. How exciting! Homework has been set for this week as normal. However, from Monday, I will be setting daily learning challenges here on my blog. They will be in line with Year 4 learning objectives and will enable children to continue to develop their skills over the next few weeks. Many children have been giving me ideas of what they would love to learn at home. There will also be weekly ideas for learning and suggested books which children would love to read.

The children have come home with 3 books - one to be used for maths work and jottings, one for English and writing based tasks, and one for general poster and art work. Please take pride in these, as we will be sharing them together as a class when we return to school to see what has been achieved.

Please stay in touch and let me see what children are getting up to. I do not need to mark each piece of work set but I would love to celebrate achievements with you and I will indicate clearly if there is a project for example that could be emailed or shared.

Children in year 4 would like me to set a weekly baking challenge and they also said they would love to keep collecting vocabulary and finding out what it means from reading books. Why not create a home timetable to organise home learning, chores, relaxation time, outdoors time etc? You could even organise a little office area for them (as suggested by one child today - no pressure!)

Contact can be made through my email:
a.lyons@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk, but please do bare in mind that I may still be in school or may be working from home and so might not be able to respond straight away. Parents, feel free to contact me with any questions or queries - I am here to help and support!

This week:

We have been learning all about Sound in Science. We carried out a fair test to see who was the loudest in our class! We also discovered how sound is made by lots of little investigations.

Today, children loved spotting patterns in the 7x tables and the Percy Parker song (see homework section) proved very popular! WE have also finished our class novel - ‘The Butterfly Lion.’ If your child has been off, this is well worth purchasing and reading as a home reader!

Let’s Celebrate

All children received the swimming star this week for being full of enthusiasm.

French star went to Megan for her super bookmark which was covered in French words!

Certificates this week: A Clara Clownfish certificate goes to Bella this week for asking and answering questions (lots of pattern spotting in maths!) and considering all she does very deeply.

A Sadie Spider certificate goes to Georgia for putting her best effort into all she does and always trying hard.

It has been such a pleasure to be back again with your children, even though it was for such a short time. Here’s hoping there will be more chance to teach them this year!

Please keep in touch and enjoy your home learning!

Mrs Lyons

I light up a room without trying. I am a precious treasure but I cost nothing. All love to experience me, especially children! What am I?

It has been such a joy to be back with your lovely children this week. They have really grown both in height and in maturity whilst I have been away. I am now fully recovered and have lots of exciting things planned for the coming weeks!

So far, we have learned how to solve Anglo-saxon riddles which is why I started with the one above. The answer is : A SMILE which we have certainly had a lot of this week!

We have been learning the 9x tables in maths - some children already had some interesting patterns they noticed about the 9x table. Dont forget they can search for Percy Parker on You Tube if they like to learn by song! We had a super lesson at swimming where children learnt how to save lives by a river. They were very loving as they soothed their survivors after retrieving them from the water.

We are also diving into our Science work on sound - children learned (through an investigation) that sounds get fainter as you move away from the sound source. The big question is ‘What is sound?’ and we will be endeavouring to discover this through many investigations and experiments over the next three weeks.

With Miss Edmondson, children wrote some amazing Brer Rabbit stories earlier in the week. They are so funny and full of character!

Thanks so much for all our Lenten donations so far! I was very impressed with children’s lists of jobs that they are doing at home for Lent - make the most of it parents! This week, we would like children to tidy up one room in the house.

Please continue to support their alms giving and bring in those little donations throughout lent.

Let’s Celebrate!

This weeks learning certificates:

Victor received a Kiki Chameleon certificate for bubbling with enthusiasm in all subjects and using creative thought.

Kaya received a Sadie SPider certificate for being so perseverant on her Brer Rabbit story and for never giving up on her tasks.

Well done both of you!

Notices

Swimming: Next week is a normal swimming lesson. Please come with usual swimming kit. The week after, children will be doing life-saving again so will need their pyjamas and swimming costume as they had this week. Then they have one more lesson as normal. After Easter we no longer have swimming lessons. All children have progressed brilliantly!

Please could you continue to write in children’s homework books each week so that they can be rewarded with learning points. This is really helpful, as we can see exactly what they have been up to. Homework is due in on Thursday to give us time to mark it.

PE times the same until Easter - Wednesday - Yoga, Thursday - swimming and Friday - inside PE - children will need shorts under their tracksuits. If any children have verrucas they will need verruca socks.

We do have two school trips coming up. One is a simple trip to the beach to examine rocks and fossils and another will be a trip to Tatton Park on Friday 22nd May to learn about Anglo-saxons and Vikings. This is a trip where we would like children to dress up as an Anglo-Saxon or Viking for the day- I will give more details in upcoming weeks but I thought I would let you know well in advance!

Finally, thanks for your patience regarding parent’s evening. This will now take place on Thursday 16th April and I look forward to sharing their progress with you.

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Lyons

Spellings given out 27.1.2020 to be tested on 3.2.2020

Spellings - we tried giving out spellings on slips of paper last week in the hope they were then ready to stick on fridges, memo boards or on walls ready for practising them however this plan failed when several were lost or eaten by the tray monsters in our classroom! So spellings will be listed on here and the homework page each Monday, these will then be tested the following Monday.

This week our spellings are

they

reign

weight

obey

neighbour

freight

eighth

eight

sleigh

build

height (same letters eigh but different sound so be careful)

island

Thank you for your continued support.

Miss Edmondson