Jackdaws Class

The focus during today’s Art session is to ‘paint without a paintbrush’. The children learnt that we don’t have to just use paintbrushes to create a painting. We can use all different kinds of objects - things we have around the house, things we find in nature, and our own hands.

Using this technique, the children learnt about Abstract Art. Abstract art is a non-lifelike portrayal of real-world objects, people and scenes that are usually difficult for other people to recognise. It portrays what an artist feels and thinks, rather than what he or she sees, and often expresses emotions and ideas. Just as we do not know other people’s thoughts, we do not always know what abstract art portrays but if you ask the artist, he or she can explain the painting to you.

We explored what actions were used in a variety of paintings, eg. tapping, dripping, scraping, dabbing, flicking, swiping, and spraying, and created a collaborative abstract painting as a class.

^{Charlie Mackesy}

As part of our Artsmark journey, we have been discussing the artwork of Charlie Mackesy and have looked specifically his book 'The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse'.

During PSHE, we talked about the importance of believing in ourselves and how we should speak to ourselves with kindness and positivity. 

Following on from this, the children designed their own quote and piece of artwork in the style of Charlie Mackesy which will be exhibited on Friday 3rd February! 

^{Our Art in Action}

During Art, we experimented with how we could add watercolour to our Charlie Mackesy designs.
The children tried spreading, flicking and even blowing the paints to achieve their desired effect!

Our visit to the Baptist Church

Year 4 travelled to the Baptist Church in Eynsham to find out more about the Church at Christmas time.  The Reverend discussed many of the symbols (decorations) found within the church, including the Christmas tree with a star on top, advent candles and a cross.  We discussed their decorative nature but also their significant connection to Christian beliefs about the birth of Jesus, who came to Earth as a child.  We also explored the idea of Communion and how bread represents Jesus’ body and wine represents his blood.  This was a good introduction to further work on symbolism where we discussed the Christian significance of other Christmas symbols as well as the commercial nature of others.

Viking Day!

We had an amazing day as mighty Viking warriors! We learnt how to write in Viking runes and wrote each other messages to decipher. We explored and re enacted the events at Lindisfarne and got to freeze frame from the perspective of the monks and the Vikings. To show off our creativity we designed our own Viking shields and built a model long ship with the main features of: an animal's head, a sail, shields and a long narrow shape. 

The Exchange Game

In Maths, we have been exploring the idea of ‘exchanging’ when adding multiples of 1, 10, 100 and 1000 to a 4-digit number.  We played ‘The Exchange Game’ to help us explore further.  We used a place value grid and place value counters to carryout the exchanges.

Hill End

What an amazing trip! We had such a fun time dressing up and learning about the Anglo Saxon way of life. We got to practice being a Anglo Saxon warrior and even challenged the Viking Woodpeckers to a battle. We got to attend a Viking Queen's funeral and learn about what they took with them to Valhalla.

Have a look at some of the pictures to see what else we got up to!

Being Detectives!

We have been extremely busy since returning to school...

During our first week back, Mr Clack burst into our classroom and announced that something strange had been happening in the Marsh.  It had been reported that the ground and trees were shaking and that we had being selected to investigate the scene! As we approached the Marsh, we noticed that the trees and leaves were calm; the ground was still.  However, there was an unusual atmosphere.  As we silently walked in through the opening, we created a circle and discussed how we were going to investigate.  Our two classes were then split up and we carefully searched the wet ground, making thoughtful notes about our findings.

As we inspected the scene, we discovered:

• A slimy, blue, green, purple and pink egg
• A shiny, purple egg covered in hard, circular scales
• A large, metal pipe
• A bag containing sand
• Burnt paper with a star on it
• Huge footprints
• Pieces of burnt wood (various sizes).

Following an exciting discussion, we deduced that a dragon had created a nesting place within the Marsh.

Our writing in English lessons, over the next few weeks, will be all about dragons...