Dear Parents/Carers,

As part of their learning linked their core text, Lunch at Pomegranate Street', Reception have been learning about how to present a cooking show. The children watched a good example of a cooking video and then planned their own show. Towards the end of the week, Year R made their own biscuits and filmed their own show. The children were absolutely thrilled to take part in this learning opportunity. We have a few keen chefs in the making!

Year 1 worked particularly hard when writing their own instructions for their model aeroplanes in Design and Technology this week. Throughout the term so far, the children have identified that some materials are better than others to build with and that structures can be made stronger by using stronger materials and adding extra support in particular places. We can not wait to see their finished aeroplane that they make using their set of instructions.

Throughout their English lessons, Year 2 have explored a range of letters and discussed their key features. The children then progressed onto planning their own letter that they are writing to Miss Capes about having a fish in the classroom. This term in RE Year 2 have been learning about Christianity. As part of their lesson this week, the children focused on special events in Churches, including Baptism and Communions. 

Art has been an engaging lesson this week for Year 3. The children used coloured pastels to do leaf rubbings and then experimented with a range of materials to enhance their artwork and make it have a 3D aspect. Year 3 were proud of their final outcomes and enjoyed admiring one another's artwork at the end of their lesson.

The children in Year 4 have worked hard this week to write their own poems about war and evacuation. At the beginning of the week, the children were given a range of free verse poems to explore and they created a checklist of features for a free verse poem that they will use when writing their own version. Explicit lessons were then taught about similes, metaphors, alliteration and emotive language. The children created wordbanks with examples of these which they then added to their own poems at the end of the week. 

Year 5 demonstrated resilience through their computing this week. The children were utilising copy and paste functions to create vector images. The children understand how digital images can be made, either using shapes or pixels and they understand the drawing tools that are available in Google Drawings. In their art lesson, the children were looking at real life hurricanes and discussing what they can see in the background. The children sketched their hurricane using pencil and added shade and tone to their drawings.  

As part of their art learning, Year 6 used watercolours to paint the foreground and background of their final outcome. The children then used black pen to draw their own trees and added a quote underneath which was inspired by the artist, Sam Cannon. The children's artwork links to their Global Theme of Peace and Conflict which relates to the core text that they have been learning about entitled, 'Stella by Starlight'. 

On Wednesday, our Junior Leadership Team were part of a whole school assembly where they shared our School Development Priorities, what they love about Maundene and what they would love to improve and work on this year.  Mrs Jackson is extremely proud of the children in our Leadership Team for doing this as it takes a lot of courage to stand up in front of the whole school and speak. Well done team - keep making us proud!

We hope you have a wonderful weekend, 

Miss Capes, Mrs Jackson and the Maundene Team

Well done to Sophie-Jane in Owls class who took part in her first Christmas ice skating show, Aladdin. Amazing achievement!  

Well done to Amelie in Jays for achieving Star of the Week at her theatre school! Well done to Henry in Falcons who was also star of the week at swimming and for achieving his level 2 swimming certificate.

Poppy in Eagles, Teddie in Swans and Mason in Ospreys were lucky enough to visit the Diversity Studio last weekend. Poppy and Mason even danced with them! What an amazing experience for them all!