Year 4

Today, the children visited St Nicholas Church for a stained glass window workshop. They learned about the processes used to make stained glass – how to cut pieces of glass, how to colour them and how they are joined using lead.

Afterwards, they had a go themselves, creating beautiful faux stained glass to hang up at home in their windows to catch the light. Those who finished quicker also got the opportunity to go on a treasure hunt around the church, looking for objects, sketching them and writing down what they think the object is used for.

They had great fun and we are so grateful to Teach Me Courses for giving the children this wonderful opportunity.

In Beech class today, we completed the environmental project we have been working on during our six wellbeing days this year. We were inspired from our first session back in September by the actions of environmental activist Greta Thunberg and we have been following the United Nations Sustainability Goal 15 – Life on Land.

Across the year, the children have designed bug and animal shelters; researched types of bugs they would like to attract; and created information panels to inform others about the creatures they might expect to see. They even took part in interviews for an assistant site manager, to ensure they had the skills to help construct the bug shelters following the children’s design brief!

Today, with the bug shelters built, it was time to finish our project and fill the compartments with items to attract beneficial bugs to improve the biodiversity in the school grounds.

And here are the finished shelters ready for hanging on our fences along with their information panels. These panels are temporary ones which will be replaced with professionally printed acrylic boards in the same style! The children made one bug shelter per house team, with information about their saint – St Augustine, St George, St Nicholas and St Peter.

St Augustine

St George

St Nicholas

St Peter

Today, year 4 hosted their very own French Café, Café “l’Hêtre and le Bouleau” (Beech and Birch Café). We had an enormous turnout with parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and siblings all coming along to support the children. The children took orders in French and the parents had a script to reply (subtitled with phonetic spellings to help if needed!).

Year 4 revisited their learning about the Ancient Egyptians with a special Ancient Egyptians Workshop.  They all had an amazing time with a highly interactive day led by the wonderful team at Living History Workshops.

We started with some Ancient Egyptian warm-up dance practice!

Next, we tried to understand exactly how long ago all this took place with our Human Timeline. Starting with 2025, we moved through WW2, the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922 by Howard Carter, the Victorian era with Charles Dickens, sped through the kings and queens of England until we arrived at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 with William and Harold battling it out for the throne. We continued journeying back past Jesus to Cleopatra and finally arriving at the first Egyptian Pharaoh, Narmer.

The rest of the morning was spent engaging in seven different activities from reed weaving to ‘Bookmarks of the Dead’, the Ancient Egyptian board game of Senet to flour grinding. The children even got to hold real artefacts from 3,000 years ago at the ‘Table of Wonders’.

During the afternoon session, the children made a souvenir cartouche, etching their initials in hieroglyphs onto a small piece of flat metal, drawing symbols of Egyptian gods on the reverse and then hanging it on a cord.

The children had a great time dressing up to help them become fully immersed in the Ancient Egyptian lifestyle.

As we head into our final term in year 4, we have plenty to look forward to, with our Ancient Egyptian day, our French Café, a trip to Chatham Dockyards, sports day, Party in the Park and many more activities.  Our learning journey continues with scientific discoveries about the digestive system, the historical importance of 1066, data manipulation using weather information, as well as looking at time, shape, coordinates and statistics in maths and our final book of the year, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. A busy term lies ahead, take a look at what we’re up to below.

Term 6 Overview

Term 6 Overview – Why is 1066 important to us (PDF download)

Key Instant Recall Facts

This term the children will complete the Multiplication Tables Check (MTC) and we continue our focus on 12x table facts, this time looking at the division facts to go with the multiplication facts from last term.

T6 KIRFs Y4 – 12x table division facts (PDF download)

In computing this term, we have been looking at computational thinking, learning how to decompose (break down) problems into smaller chunks, recognise patterns and write clear, simple algorithms to solve problems. We have used Scratch games to identify the key features and have built programs to solve problems using hour of code.

This term, we have been practising our batting and fielding skills and improving our reaction times ready to play rounders.  The children had great fun and everyone really enjoyed playing together and cheering each other on.

Over the course of a 4 days, both classes had the opportunity to spend 2 days and a night at Kench Hill for what for many was their first trip away from home.  The children thoroughly enjoyed all the activities from archery and orienteering, an almost 4-mile stream walk and animal care, to shelter building, bouldering and night-line obstacle course. They had fun in the evening at our camp fire with hot chocolate and cookies. The food was amazing and the Kench Hill staff looked after us fantastically. Truly a trip the children will never forget…

Gardening

The children had an opportunity to harvest some of the vegetables and salads for lunch!

Animal Care and Wildlife Garden

The children learnt how to care for some of the animals at Kench Hill such as the rabbits, guinea pigs and chickens as well as the ponies, Pongo and Chips. They also had the opportunity to try pond dipping and see what they could find in the water, along with bird watching from the hide.

Stream Walk

On the first afternoon for each group, we went on a countryside walk, including wading through a stream running through some local woods. The children absolutely loved this and have talked about it so much since returning to school.

Archery, Bouldering, Nightline and Orienteering

The children took part in various activities on day 2 including archery, bouldering (travelling across a climbing wall), orienteering and an obstacle course with a difference!

Shelter Building

The children absolutely loved building their shelters. They went out in Badgers’ Wood and, using natural materials from around the site along with some tarpaulin and rope, they built themselves a (hopefully!) waterproof shelter. They learnt how to tie reef knots to secure their shelters.

Campfire, Free Time and Food!

Between activities, the children had free time to explore the grounds, play in the playground area, visit the animals, play football – the only rules were “Don’t climb over fences or go through gates.” At the end of the first day before bedtime, we had a campfire and enjoyed hot chocolate and cookies whilst having a sing song together!

This term in science, we have been looking at habitats and how human activities affect them.  We have seen how human actions can have a negative impact and reduce biodiversity across the world and especially in the rainforests. We looked at our own school environment and thought about how we could improve the biodiversity around us.

Welcome back to everyone, we hope you had a wonderful Easter break. This is a short term, but there’s so much to pack in! Our learning in geography, science and English all revolve around rainforests and their importance to the planet. In maths, we will be looking at decimals and comparing them to our previous learning about fractions. In RE, we look at a different world religion – Hindu Dharma. We also have our Kench Hill residential to look forward to as well as swimming. Take a look at the overview for more information.

Why are rainforests so important to us?

Term 5 Overview – Why are rainforests important to us? (PDF download)

Key Instant Recall Facts (KIRFs)

We will be polishing up our skills across all times tables this term, but our focus table will be the 12x table.

12 Times Table

Term 5 KIRF – 12x table (PDF Download)

We are looking forward to a fantastic term.  Any questions, just ask your class teacher.

The Year 4 team
Mr Houghton, Miss Ryan, Miss Wayland and Miss Ellis