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Gretton School Newsletter
Issue 58
Dates for your Diary
Wednesday 18th March – Wednesday 25th March – Book Fair in School
Friday 20th March – Closing Date for the get caught reading competition (see details
below)
Tuesday 24th March - Year 9 Options meeting from 4:00pm to 5:30 pm.
Wednesday 25th March – Gretton Families 1:30pm – 3:00pm
(Gretton Families is a relaxed and informal chance for parents of pupils
at Gretton to meet, swap stories and chat. Tea and coffee is available. It
would be great to see you there!)
For more information please feel free to join the ‘Gretton Families group – Cambridge’ on
Facebook
Wednesday 25th March – Queen of Stories Storyteller in School
Thursday 26th March – Dress up as your favourite Book Character
Friday 27th March – Pupils finish at 1pm for the Easter Holidays
Science Special Interest
On Friday 6th March, Shaun, Oliver, Daisy and David came to science for special
interest. The first of the new term run by Ms Brixey. The aim of the lesson was to
create gymnastic corkscrew models! Ms Brixey spoke about balance and the joints in
the body, demonstrating some gymnastic moves in the science
lab!
Each student received their own box of equipment which had
corkscrews, nails, an instruction sheet and felt tip pens. The
students decided on their own balances in which to re-create
using the cork screws. Shaun
was brilliant and did the whole
model independently, making
the head, limbs and body. Oli
enjoyed the process so much
that he helped Ms Brixey make
another.
The students have decided to
make volcanoes which will take
2 weeks to create. We look
forward to the end project.
Watch this space!
On Friday 13th March, students from Shetland class visited “The Cambridge
Folk Museum” to look at old fashioned games and toys.
In art this term, the KS2 students are currently designing and making a board game
based on a theme of their choice. To give the project a historical context all of the
students will have the opportunity of visiting Cambridge Folk Museum. This week it
was Shetland’s class who visited, next week it will be Newton’s turn.
We had four students from Shetland class attending the trip and they all were
absolutely fantastic. They each engaged well; listening to the Museum curator
Tamsin, putting their hands up to ask lots of questions and responding well to the
exhibits around them. Everyone enjoyed weighing food with the old fashioned scales
and looking at how water would have been heated over fires, using bellows to
provide more oxygen. They learnt that in past everyone would have worn hats
because people didn’t have daily showers or baths as we do now and of course
years ago in the days before we had central heating, hats helped to keep you warm
so wearing a hat became the social norm and it then was considered very rude not
to have one. The students all had fun dressing up and trying on some of the old
fashioned hats. In the Nursery, Daisy and Isaac had a go at drawing chalk onto mini
blackboards like children would have used many years ago. They learnt that a long
time ago people were very superstitious and would bury bones in their gardens to
ward off witches and carry little mole hands or feet as lucky charms to keep arthritis
at bay. Shaun already knew what quite a few of the artefacts were; including the eel
catcher because he remembered seeing similar displays in Ely Museum.
Up in the attic, the students then had fun playing with a range of toys and games
dating back to the Victorian period as well as more current day toys that I remember
playing with. Amongst the old fashioned games, the students tried out the wooden
spinning tops and the wooden ball and hoop games. Isaac and Shaun had fun
playing shove ha’penny and everyone enjoying playing with the wooden, mix and
match faces where you can spin different sides of a cuboid and create a face from
four different choices of the hair and eyes, then four different choices of noses and
ears and finally four different choices of mouths, chins and necks. Another big hit
was the weighted ladder man. They all spent ages rolling him down from one end to
the next and were quite mesmerised; intrigued to find out how it worked. Daisy really
enjoyed looking at the simple but effective flick books which proved to be very
entertaining. Kenzie’s favourite item was the Zoetrope which kept him busy for quite
some time. It would be fair to say that the trip was a big success and everyone got a
lot out of the experience, in fact so much so nobody wanted to leave!