The Bitterns have been busily measuring and comparing lengths and heights with metre sticks this week.
Classes
Roald Dahl
The Bitterns have Roald Dahl in our spotlight this half term. This week we have enjoyed a few amusing extracts from The Twits, sketching whilst listening to Dahl’s entertaining description, in preparation for our character profiles next week.
Coots Science
This week in Science we began our learning about our amazing bodies. We started by naming body parts. The children drew around each other and then labelled the body parts. A few tricky challenge ones were added in too!
Coots Computing
In Computing this week, we were exploring the virtual bee-bot. We had to use the programming buttons to make the bee-bot move to a certain letter. Whilst exploring, we realised that the directions needed to be in the correct order. We had to predict, test and review to ensure the bee-bot ended up in the correct place.
Spring Half Term 1 2025
We started the year off by learning all about the season winter. We explored different materials such as ice, discussing the process of making ice and how it melts. The children also got to paint various sized pieces of ice, observing how it melted as they continued to paint it. We looked at the changes that were happening in our environment, such as frozen leaves, frosty grass and the fact that the trees no longer have leaves! The children investigated these with different resources such as binoculars and magnifying glasses. We also practiced our counting and number recognition with a snowball activity.
We have also been focusing on various fairy tales, including ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ and ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. The children have taken part in craft activities and different group time tasks focusing on building our vocabularies with learning new describing words, as well as retelling the stories from our memories.
We celebrated Chinese New Year! The children really enjoyed trying noodles and prawn crackers for snack. We’ve listened to traditional stories, made dragon masks and took part in dragon dances on the playground! We also learnt ‘hello’ in Chinese/Mandarin – Ni hao!
 We finished off the half term by celebrating Valentine’s day, focusing on what ‘love’ means to us. We had lots of meaningful conversations where the children told us who, and what they love. When asked what colour the children think love is, one child replied “love is all of the colours!” The children had the opportunity to take part in lots of sensory activities as well as making ‘perfume’ with flowers and coloured water.
Making Christmas hats
The children enjoyed making their Christmas hats ready to wear during our School Christmas lunch.
Forest School
This week in Forest School children built sturdier dens using the reef knot and the round turn and two half hitches; made a grave for a hedgehog and learned to whittle and knit.
Electricity
Year 4 have been exploring electricity, learning that it is a form of energy and that it can be generated in many ways. They learned about the National Grid and how electricity makes its way from the power stations into our schools, businesses and homes. Now they are building and testing circuits of their own.
Gressenhall Trip
Grebes went to Gressenhall Workhouse and Farm to deepen their understanding of what childhood was like in Victorian times for both rich and poor. Under the strict schoolmistress’s eye, they set the table, shone shoes and polished brass. Children also made candy canes and dolls, as well as enjoying some traditional dance, song and drama. A HUGE thanks to FOSS for funding this trip!
Learning together through play
In Coots we have lots of time to learn and play together. These children are learning to take turns and follow game playing rules, others are mark making and exploring writing with their friends.Â
