Big Bang! 

To begin our topic we had a Knights and Princesses Tea Party! We dressed up as Princes, Princesses, Knights, Lords and Ladies, and enjoyed decorating (and then eating!) crown shapes biscuits. We were all very excited to begin learning about Castles!

English

We began the half term recapping some of our grammar skills.

Our topic Traditional Tales focused on Jack and the Beanstalk. We became familiar with the story, identifying features of a traditional tale as well as acting out and sequencing the main events.

To conclude our unit, we created our own story maps and wrote the entire story! We included skills we learnt, such as speech, adjectives, and conjunctions. We shared our stories with Rookes Nest, who have also been looking at Traditional tales.

Maths 

On completion of our division unit, we moved onto statistics and place value. We learnt about and used pictograms, block graphs and tally charts. We enjoyed many practical lessons using rulers and metre sticks to measure and compare different objects. Sentence stems support our vocabulary.

Our half term finished looking at shapes, naming, making and sorting 2D and 3D shapes.

Science 

In this unit we have been looking at Uses of everyday materials. We have identified and grouped materials, thinking about their properties and if they are man made or natural. We spent some time looking at how we can move and change materials. We discovered which materials we could bend, stretch, squash and twist, and thought about what properties affected this.

History 

In our History lessons, we have learnt about the history of castles. We began by finding out that castles used to be lived in as homes, and the materials they were made of. Next, we spent some time researching castles using different sources. We have learnt about motte and bailey castles, concentric castles and why some of their features were important. Finally, we compared castles as homes, and our modern houses as homes. We thought about differences in heating, lighting and everyday security.

Class Trip to Mountfitchet Castle

At the end of our topic, we visited Mountfitchet Castle, a Motte and Bailey Castle. We explored the castle and visited the Norman Village hidden behind the castle walls. We were excited to see a catapult, the stocks, and the mill stone which took three children to push round! We visited the Black Smiths, where the soldiers’ helmets and shields would have been made.

We learnt lots of information, including the Bakery fire was only lit once every week or two, it would take 48 hours to bake a loaf of bread.   

We thoroughly enjoyed seeing first hand some of the exciting parts of a castle we’ve learnt all about. Even the rain didn’t stop us!