Ancient Egypt

The Bluebirds in year 3 are learning about Ancient Egypt. This week we were looking at the importance of the River Nile. We drew posters to illustrate what the River Nile provided Egyptians with. We noticed that all the cities were along the Nile to be close to the water. We learnt that they used the river to get food and for trading items. They used the mud to make bricks for building and the plants, like flax and papyrus, to make clothes and paper.

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Making Music

The Bluebirds are making great progress with their recorders!
We have been learning how to play the notes A and B and putting them into a tune, making sure we are playing our instruments carefully so we don’t squeak.
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Bluebirds – Reporting Live!

This week, the Bluebirds have been looking a newspaper reports. We had different cut outs from papers to read and some in our books where we identified the where, what, when, who and why of the reports.
We watched a news report on the board and discussed what people said and how they presented it. Mrs Moore explained that we were going to write a newspaper report about the witch in our class reader ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ by Carol Duffy.
First, we did a role playing exercise in pairs where one person was the news reporter and the other was an eye witness. Then we presented our roleplay to the class.
In our books we started planning our newspaper report; thinking of a headline, what was happening, where, to who, why and also including a short interview with an eye witness.

Book Plates

The Bluebirds in Year 3 have given in some fantastic entries for the World Book Day paper plate competition. Each child was given a paper plate and could make it into a character from a book.

Ryan made Greg Heffley, Alexus made The Railway Children, Ollie made Harry Potter, Salaf made Stitch and The Rainbow, Olivia made Moana, Poppy made Winnie the Pooh, Shenyar made The Little Fish from the book she wrote, Emma made Ladybug, Rosalea made The Lost Puppy, Isabel made The Little Mermaid, Frankie made Petey, Leah made Dogman (a class favourite) and Jalees wrote a story called There’s a Grinch in Your Book.

Remembering Roots

Judaism – Sabbath and Passover
Bluebirds considered what days and events are commemorated and used to remember other people.  They thought of a huge list!
Afterwards, they talked about occasions when families eat together maybe weekly or at special festivals and birthdays.  They discussed whether these were important events and if they were happy or sad.  Next, Bluebirds watched a video and learnt how Jewish people share a special Sabbath meal.  They recorded what happened throughout the event.
After that, the class moved on to learning about what Passover remembers and watched an animated film about the story of the people of Israel as slaves of Pharoah in Egypt.  God sent ten plagues as the Pharoah would not let the people go.  The final plague passed over the house of slaves or Hebrews, hence the festival is called Passover (Pesach in Hebrew).   The class reflected back to the special days they had listed to remember events at the start of the lesson.  They watched a film of a family sharing a Seder meal for Passover.  Each piece of food had a significance, remembering the suffering and offerings to God.  Salt represented tears. Everyone labelled a plate.

The Dragon Song

Today, Bluebirds listened to their new song for this half term, called The Dragon Song.  The children closed their eyes to concentrate on the lyrics, listen out for which instruments they could hear and use this imagination!
They discovered it was a song with a message about friendship. They compared this to other songs and genres such as reggae and rock.

World Book Week

On Monday morning, Teresa Heapy came into school to help us celebrate World Book Day. We had a whole school assembly and she read one of her books, Very Little Red Riding Hood to us and answered some of our questions.
Later, just year 3 and 4 went into the hall with Teresa Heapy and she read another one of her books to us; Very Little Cinderella. We had the chance to discuss the differences with the original and Teresa’s version. It included children, rather than adults, Cinderella lost a yellow wellie instead of a glass slipper and they played happily at the end.
Teresa also talked about the illustrator of her books, Sue Heap and showed us some of her rough sketches and drawings.
We also got to ask Teresa some questions; Thomas S asked what her favourite non-fiction book was and Teresa said it was Who Eats Who, as it was quirky and funny. Thomas L asked when she first started writing books and Teresa said about 30 years ago! Shenyar asked how many books she’d written and she said about 90! Taylor asked which was her favourite book and she said Loved To Bits as it is about her son’s teddy bear.
In the class, we got to design and draw our own ‘Very Little’ character, we shared some ideas first, which included Ladybug, The Gruffalo, Goldilocks, Ana and Elsa, Matilda, Mario, Moana, Happy Potter, Snow White , Sonic and Paddington.
It was fantastic – thank you Teresa for a great morning!

Paired Reading

The Bluebirds in Year 3 enjoyed a paired reading session with Reception class. Each child chose another child from the different class and read together. We had a great time!