1. family and parenting
2. children

Uffculme Primary SChool
March 2015
Half term in our Classes
‘
Out of an egg’ topic
Reception Class
The Reception class have really enjoyed exploring our topic of ‘out of an egg’
this term and it has been wonderful to see the children so enthusiastic about
their learning.
We started off our topic by thinking about all of the different creatures and
animals that come out of an egg and chose to look at a few in more depth including chickens and penguins.
The children also enjoyed going on our class trip to Pennywell Farm where we mixed the milk
and fed the lambs and cuddled the baby animals including chicks, piglets, and guinea pigs. The
children were also entertained with a puppet show of the well known story ‘Chicken Licken’.
Over the last few weeks we have been looking at the story of ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ by
Eric Carle and learning about the life-cycle of a butterfly. The children enjoyed sequencing the
story and joining in with the repetitive parts. We also looked very closely at the descriptive
language used in the story and thought of our own words to describe the different food that
the caterpillar ate. In P.E we acted out the different stages of the life-cycle and thought carefully about the movements we were making. We curled up tightly and pretended to be inside
eggs, we stretched out and crawled around as caterpillars, we then chose a nice place to settle
down and build cocoons around ourselves. Finally, we enjoyed emerging
out of the cocoons as beautiful butterflies and danced around using
coloured scarves and flapping our wings.
Have a lovely Easter holiday everyone and remember that when we
come back after the holiday, we will be lining up on the playground in
the mornings.
Year 1
We really enjoyed our afternoon of sports at the high school with other local schools. Look at some of the activities we tried:
World Book Day
Everyone did such a
fantastic job to dress up
as a nursery rhyme
character on World
Book Day! We had lots
of fun learning rhymes,
creating pictures and
reading and listening
to stories.
Year 2
Topic—we are enjoying learning all about animals and this has been a feature of a lot of our work this
term. We have used this theme in our Art work as we have designed and sculpted our own African animal
tiles from clay—inspired by photographs of African animals from Mrs Moss’ exciting adventures. We are
looking forward to painting them and bringing them home for you all to see.
Maths—This half term we have been challenging ourselves
with multiplication and division! We have been trying lots of
ways to work out our number sentences, using number lines,
repeated addition and subtraction, groups and arrays. We
found the smarties really helped us to learn about sharing and
division, even though it is a hard lesson to learn when there is chocolate to share out! The children can tell
you which methods they like best and teach you all about it!
English— We have been learning how to write instructions using a fantastic and beautifully illustrated book
called:
‘How to wash a Woolly Mammoth’ by Michelle Robinson.
We now know what a hard job this is. The children have learnt what you need to
make good instructions, including bossy verbs (sorry about that). They have written their own instructions for their own animals, e.g. How to ride a cheetah!
The children have also enjoyed looking at a range of poems, often funny. We
have listened intently to a wonderful CD of Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes and
we now know why Red Riding Hood wears that wolf-skin coat. The children have
all had a go at writing their own poetry in the style of poet Gervase Phinn. We
especially liked this verse of a poem that he wrote:
What I like!
Computing - We have worked with our computer buddies to make a tally chart, bar chart and
pie chart on a computer spreadsheet. The children are becoming computer whizz-kids! Thank
you to Mrs Morgan for helping the children to
produce such fantastic and colourful pieces of
work.
I like spaghetti,
I like cheese, I like pizza with mushy peas!
Spaghetti and cheese and pizza and peas.
That is what I like-
Yea!
Music - We have enjoyed exploring pitch in different songs
and have tried to create sounds of different pitch using our
instruments in school. Karim and Lily-Sue are showing you
the instruments they chose for their song.
Thank you for your continued support at home, Mrs Moss and Mrs Wright.
Year 3
Year 3 have had another really busy half term although we have really enjoyed it. We started
this half term with a visit from the ‘Time Travellers’ and we learnt lots of interesting things
about Egypt. We have learnt lots about pharaohs, Egyptian gods, mummification and the after
life and what it was like to live in Ancient Egypt.
Earlier this month, we participated in World Book Day. Mrs Hayman was very impressed that we all dressed up as a Roald Dahl
character and with the recipes that we wrote for our own marvellous medicines.
Last weekend, we started our pond project. Mrs Hayman and Miss Cookson would like to thank all of the children and their
parents that came to help. We managed to lots of different things. We cleared the brambles, emptied the pond and generally
tidied up the area. We found lots of tadpoles and frogs in the pond and Iona was chief frog catcher! By the end of the day we
had lots of children covered in mud, which was great to see. Iona and Abi and wellies full of water!
Yesterday, as part of the pond project, we worked with Joolz from Wicked Willow to create a willow dome structure. We really enjoyed weaving the willow to strengthen the structure. We are now looking forward to the willow growing so that we can
create an enclosed structure. We would like to say thank you to the PTFA for funding the dome for us.
Year 3 are helping to run from stalls at the Spring bingo on
Thursday 23rd of April to raise funds for the pond project.
Please come and support us.
Year 4
It has been a short but very busy half term!
We have been to Tiverton High School to
listen to a wonderful orchestral performance of Peter and the Wolf………..
We dressed up as
characters from
Roald Dahl’s books
on World Book Day
and joined in with
the fun on Red
Nose Day…...
And of course, the eclipse! We were really
excited watching this from a safe place in the
classroom and on the live webcam.
In DT, we have been busy sewing.
We have designed and made
some fabulous money containers
In Art, we are currently in
the process of making Roman masks and will share
these with you in our next
newsletter, so watch this
space!!!!!
Year 5
Book Fair
If you like books it was your lucky day, lots of new adventure,
action and a lot more of brilliant books were on sale.
As classes we took it in turns to go down into the hall and look
at different books . After school a few adults volunteered to
sell books to enthusiastic children. All shapes and sizes of
different books were on show for children. Cheap was easily
done by getting a magazine for different books but luckily a 1
pound voucher kept the price range low. Funny exaggerating
descriptive language made them want the book. Personally I
loved the book fair. I bought three brilliant books which kept
me really quiet and was really, really cheap, the cheapest
books I’ve seen in a long time.
By Henry W and Riley
Yr5/6 Cage-Football
Well done to yr5 and 6 for their cage football tournament at Uffculme top school. The first round
we played 5 different schools and we beat all of them with 54 goals and only conceded 9. The top
three teams went through to the finals the next week and they were Webbers, Hemyock, and Uffculme who came 1st. The next week all the teams that qualified in the Uffculme cluster played for
the shield with the teams name engraved into the trophy. We came second in that round because unfortunately on our second to last game we lost against Willand 3-2 although we still did
very well. Well done to these people who participated in the tournament, Ellis Pritchard, John
Penfold, Henry Woodward, Harrison Hine, Alex Venn, Sammy Broom head, Max Oliver, Dylan
Croft, Zack Ingram and Jay Tanner.
By John Penfold and Ellis Pritchard.
Our Trip to Sidmouth
We were lucky enough to go on a trip to Sidmouth and see the beautiful sites; we saw all
the amazing views from up above in the Connaught Gardens. Year five had an amazing time
doing all the fun activities on the sea front, the beach and the busy town. Everyone enjoyed
exploring the stunning, ablaze Gardens with striking flower. We all had a breath taking day.
By Daisy and Ava.
Year 6
We have been learning about the
Maya civilisation and have been making ‘plates 'in art. First we used a
compass to make a circle on cardboard. We chose different materials
such as tiles, wool, matchsticks,
seeds and cardboard to create repeating and symmetrical patterns.
You will be able to see the final results early next term!
By Megan
Last week we had a mock Sats week, that was interrupted a bit
by Ofsted’s visit, so we finished it this week. We had grammar,
punctuation and spelling, reading and maths tests. Lots of people were very happy with their scores and it has prepared us for
the real Sats in May.
By Alanah and Max
Wellington Coding Challenge
On Monday 16th a group of us, including
Lucy who was a last minute reserve,
went to Wellington School to compete in
a coding challenge, involving 15 other
teams from other local primary schools.
We had to complete 5 challenges ,programming computers to follow
instructions that we input. We came first
overall and were very proud of our
achievements. We would like to thank
Mr Wilson for his support before and
during the event.
By Isabella, Sammy, Daniel and Lucy
OUR LEARNING LEAVES
Presented in our Achievement
Assemblies to children who have
impressed their teachers with
Reception: Charlie, Morgan
their learning in the previous
week.
They are on display on our
Learning Tree in the Hall if you
would like to see them.
Year 1:
Havana
Marie
Year 2:
Minnie
Year 3:
Whole Class
Year 4:
Finlay
Year 5:
Whole Class
Year 6:
Whole Class
RED – CULM
10 Housepoints:
Havana Croft
30 Housepoints:
Meske Kempster-Weldon
Oliver Batten
60 Housepoints:
Charlie Elliott
Isabella Hart
Iona Wilson
GREEN – LOWMAN
10 Housepoints:
Joel Margetts
30 Housepoints:
Megan-Louise Jackson
Harley Welch
Louis Sutton
Henry Woodward
Lucy Gardner
BLUE – OTTER
30 Housepoints:
Robert Legg
Cody Alford
60 Housepoints:
Kaysie Hutchings
Oliver Venn
Isabella Jackson
Isabelle Hine
Isabelle Dunster
YELLOW – EXE
10 Housepoints:
Max Oliver
Isla Chaplin
30 Housepoints:
Keira Turton
Jack Richards
Molly Dyer
60 Housepoints:
Gabriel Hurved-Shelley
Joy Poynton
Amelia Kujawa
PTFA News
Thank you to everyone who supported our Easter disco on Thursday 26 March. W e had a big turn
out with nearly all of KS2 children
attending the 7pm disco. Keiran
Palfrey, an ex pupil of Uffculme Primary himself, came
along to provide an excellent disco for us which was
enjoyed by all the children. Thank you Keiran. Not only
was fun had by all but we raised £271.15.