"They will soar on wings like eagles" (Isaiah 40:31)
Respect / Responsibility / Courage / Trust / Perseverance / Compassion
In Grebes, Children read the poem ‘You See?’ by Matt Goodfellow, all about how kind words stick to us ‘like pollen to the knee of a bee’. Children drew legs on their bees and buzzed around the classroom searching for kind words that might stick to them!
Since the Strangers’ Hall trip, Grebes have developed an obsession for weaving! It was only fitting, when they heard that Mrs Gay – school governor and friend to our school for well over a decade – was weaving us, to get out the looms once more. Here is the card the children made.
Grebes have loved investigating melting points this week, heating various substances and recording the temperature at which each began to melt. Cheese, butter, dark/white/milk chocolate, gummy bears – we melted it all. Children were able to reflect on the results of the investigation and why the first attempt was not a scientifically rigorous fair test – for example, some groups had the heat source further away from the substances being melted, and some had the thermometer in different positions. They have worked together to plan a repeat experiment with variables under strict control.
We took two musical groups to play at this year’s Norfolk County Music Festival: a Year 4/5/6 ukulele orchestra (with a few guitars and a keyboard) and our Salsa Band (veterans of two previous County Music Festivals). As you can see from the videos, the children were incredible. Salsa Band kicked off the show with a Latin medley, before our ukulele orchestra played three songs: ‘So What’ (by Miles Davis), ‘How Great Thou Art’ and ‘House of the Rising Sun/Amazing Grace’.
This was a fantastic opportunity for the children and we are very grateful to our extended musical family: Mr Weitz, Salsa Band leader; Mrs Wright, our choir leader who worked on vocal harmonies; and Mr Bell from the Norfolk Music Hub who taught the children jazz improvisation on the ukulele.
Today we had special performances from Toby and Blossom. Since his last guitar performance, he has passed Grade 1 and is now working on some Grade 2 pieces. Blossom, meanwhile, has been hard at work on the piano and she demonstrated how she likes to sing the notes she is playing on the keys. Finally, Grebes played some jazz ukulele to Miles Davis’s ‘So What’ and Frankie even volunteered to improvise a solo on the spot!
Mrs Church told the story of Jeremiah, an important Old Testament prophet, who was given a very difficult choice: stop telling people about God or else go to prison or even get hurt. What would you do?
Children voted: Jeremiah should show Courage and Perseverance and continue to do what he believed was right, even though it was dangerous.
And that is exactly what Jeremiah did.
Mrs Church interviewed teachers and children with these three questions:
Mrs King has persevered in learning about her ancestry. Noah persevered in a tough football match. Daniil has persevered to learn six languages. (SIX!) How about you?
Currently Grebes are learning to play So What by jazz legend Miles Davis.Â
We have learned to play the chords and are just beginning to learn the C Lydian scale so we can write and improvise our own melodies to go with the backing track. (Click here to hear the backing track.) We also enjoyed this jazzy version of a song we learned before Half-Term, Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’.Â
This week we had a very special singing performance by Year 2 children Jack, Ellen and Charlie, accompanied on ukulele by children from Herons. They chose to perform ‘How Great Thou Art’ and ‘The Wellerman’ and we were all blown away by their confidence and wonderful singing voices! As it is the time of Lent when Christians remember the time leading up to Jesus’s death on the cross, we learned the second verse of How Great Thou Art:
And when I think that God, His Son not sparing
Sent Him to die, I scarce can take it in
That on the cross, my burden gladly bearing
He bled and died to take away my sin
Also, a group of Year 6 children announced a whole-school musical project: each class in our school will be filmed performing a song or piece of music and it will be edited together to showcase all of the wonderful musicians we have here. Stay tuned for forthcoming updates!
Today Grebes played lots of games to develop teamwork skills. They were put in teams and given various problems to solve. At the end children shared some feedback.
“I learned to compromise!”
“I feel like I made new friends.”
Today Mrs Church led our Collective Worship on the theme of ‘Home’. It started off with a bluetit nest found in the Fledglings garden. These birds persevered for weeks to build the nest using little twigs as well as bits of thread, wool and human hair found in the garden. Children reflected on how you make a house into a home, before watching the new animation from Aardman Studios called ‘Home’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJ3mOQaA5nE This is a very powerful film and children had a lot to say about it.
Jake: It got me thinking, it’s really hard to move, hard to be a circle when everyone is a triangle.
Indie: William the Conqueror brought a new language to this country, which is why French and English are quite similar sometimes. The triangle and the circle joining languages made me think about that.
Elodie: When the circle saw the picture she got sad because she had to leave her brother and dad behind.
Frankie: We need to make it easier for people to move when they are escaping danger.
Jack O: There was no one the same as the circle. But then he joined friends. He had lots of friends in the end.
Scarlett: It’s okay to be different.
