Diamond Jubilee Celebration

We had a fantastic afternoon in the sunshine to celebrate the school's Diamond Jubilee. Hundreds of pupils, staff, friends and families, past and present gathered at the school on Saturday 11th June to share memories and reminisce about times gone by. We were joined by members of the village clubs and societies who entertained, informed and fed us delicious cakes. Thank you to everyone who helped to make this special day one to remember.

A Royal Wedding...in Reception!

All the children and staff in Reception had lots of fun last week getting ready to experience a very special wedding.

We learnt all about the Royal family, focussing particularly on the blushing bride, Kate Middleton and the Royal Prince William. However, the Queen attracted plenty of attention too, the children could not believe that her Royal Highness is eighty five!

The children were very excited to receive an invitation to the Royal Wedding and played their parts brilliantly. We even tried to perfect the Royal wave! With your help at home this activity really helped the children engage in the history and culture of our country in a fun, interactive way.

Our role play wedding gave all the children a reason to design and create a crown or tiara. All of which were complete with glitter, gems and vibrant colours. Some children even made their designs symmetrical.

With our Royal attire ready we all took our places in 'Westminster Abbey' for the wedding. Sophie and Louis made a fantastic bride and groom and Oliver delivered the wedding vows with only a few giggles!

Following our wedding photographs we had fun at the wedding reception. After a toast to the happy couple, a piece of wedding cake and plenty of dancing we all agreed that our wedding could compete with the real Royal occasion!

Royal Wedding Design an Advert Competition - Yorkshire Evening Post

Congratulations to Ben G, Year 5, for his Royal Wedding advertisement for local business, Theatretrain, which was selected for publication in the Yorkshire Evening Post on 20.4.11!

It's just a swing - isn't it?

Talk about team work!

Leap for it - if you dare!

Canoeing is a DRY activity!

How much water can you carry around the obstacle course?

Tuesday at Robinwood

It's been a beautiful, sunny day and we've worked very hard. Once again we've had lots of praise from the instructors for our team work, courage and behaviour. We're all tired but very happy and having lots of fun.

Guess who screamed the loudest?

Zipwire

On the climbing wall

Knight's Quest

Some tricky problems to solve, but good team work.

Monday photos

Seem to be only able to upload one photo at a time!

Monday at Robinwood

We arrived safely and so far so good! We've been very busy and we've eaten loads. I am very proud of all the children as they are a credit to Bardsey School. They have all risen to the challenges and everyone has had a go at everything.

Literacy is fun in Reception!
"I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down!"

The children have been really interested in traditional tales and fairytales in Reception recently so we decided to look at the story of the 'Three Little Pigs' in detail.

We enjoyed orally re-telling the traditional tale using story maps to support us. A story map shows the structure of a story by depicting each part in pictures. These will soon be displayed in our classroom.

By working together as a team we discussed the characters of the story and even had the pleasure of meeting the Big Bad Wolf! The wolf managed to give some good excuses for blowing down the pigs' houses which made some of us wonder whether he was so bad after all.

At the end of the week the children were adapting the story in different ways. We extended the ending of the story by sharing our ideas of what the three little pigs would do to the wolf who was stuck in their cooking pot. This led to the children writing fantastic speech bubbles for what they thought the characters would say at the end of the story.

Lots of creative activities also went on during the mini topic. Thanks to Mrs Larking's help some of the children produced great models of the three little pigs houses and during stay and play some brilliant pig masks were made! Finally, we had to use our own 'huff and puff' to paint through straws....very messy!

This week is Book Week and we started with a bang...Reception received a mysterious gift. Can they tell you all about it??

Thanks for your continued support. Please remember the door is always open if you have any questions or concerns about your child.

Chinese New Year in Reception

In Reception we have been joining in with the festivities and celebrations of Chinese New Year. To welcome the year of the rabbit we have explored textures whilst making dragon masks and created a dragon dance in the playground.

We have also learnt the story of the 'Great Race' which explains the animal name given to each year in China. Can your child remember which animal came first in the race across the river? This story has helped us to learn ordinal numbers in maths.

After our Chinese dinner gave us a taste for their tasty cuisine we enjoyed trying other Chinese treats on Friday. I think egg fried rice was the favourite!

This week, we will be encouraging the children to have a go at making a brilliant puppet dragon, brought in by Sophie. In P.E. we will watching a lion dance before creating our own in groups to finish off our fun Chinese celebration.

Photos to follow!

Thanks for your continued support,

The Foundation Stage Team

A busy week for Year 5!

It's going to be a busy week this week for Year 5! We are off to Boston Spa High School to have a 'taster' morning, playing different sports with pupils from other local schools then we will be performing our Class Assembly on Friday. We'll hopefully be posting some photos at the end of the week.

Young Voices

Forty three children and five adults left Bardsey on Wednesday 25th January to arrive at Sheffield Arena for the Young Voices concert 2011. We were all incredibly excited and eager to sing all the songs we had been learning over the past few months.

We had lots of fun singing and dancing amongst hundreds of children, performing to a very large audience.

By the end of the day we were very tired but it was all worth it!

Jack and the Beanstalk

Year 6 worked together to create a stop frame animation of Jack and the Beanstalk. Have a look at our film and watch out for the imaginative ending.

Y6 Scientists enjoyed a day with chocolate!

Four pupils from Y6 took part in a science competition at Gateways school. They found out about how chocolate was made and carried out different investigations into the properties of chocolate. Points were awarded for each investigation and prizes given to the best team in each round. We won two rounds and were the winners overall. Well Done!

WATCH OUT: dinosaurs are let loose in Reception!

This week in Reception we are learning all about dinosaurs. In literacy, the children are learning the features of information texts whilst finding out lots of dinosaur facts. The most memorable being that a t - rex could have eaten a human in one big bite! Once we are dinosaur experts we will be making our own dinosaur information books.

In numeracy, we are sorting dinosaurs by their properties and making comparisons between quantities. We are also moving onto subtraction, as a hungry t - rex will come and eat some of the other dinosaurs!

On the creative side, we are making dinosaurs and a dinosaur setting for their habitat before beginning to make fossils.

Please come and visit us for stay and play on Thursday to see what we are getting upto and to share any ideas/books/fossils you may have.

Thanks for all your support,

The Foundation Stage Team

Reception and the friendly giant!

After our Christmas holidays we found a gigantic letter waiting for us! There was only one person it could be from...the giant in Jack and the Beanstalk. From his letter we found out that he really was a friendly giant who needed our help to say sorry to Jack.

The giant also delivered a very strange kit for growing a beanstalk. The kit included:

• baked beans
• tin opener
• black paper
• and glitter!

Unfortunately, the kit was not very successful for us! We decided we must be missing some of giant's magic to make the beans grow.

Luckily, we had much more success in our other giant themed activities including writing fantastic letters to the Giant and painting different Jack and the Beanstalk characters. Furthermore, using positional language whilst hunting for hidden golden treasure.

The giant provided a brilliant start to the term and the children are still watching the growth of different beans in our classroom in the hope of a huge beanstalk.

Year 3 are architects!!

This week Year 3 have been asked to design a new house for Jack from Jack and the beanstalk. We are working very hard and we are having a great time!