Hello and welcome back!

Welcome back, I hope you have all had a wonderful half term. Nearly everyone had completed all their holiday homework to a very high standard which was a fantastic start to the day. Well done 5Magenta!!!

This half term is going to be a short but very busy one. We are starting our History topic of the Tudors and I have been amazed at how much the children aloready know. Any research you could do at home would be fantastic, the BBC have lots of information on their website. Anyone who could find any better or more interesting ones will get a housepoint! We will also be linking our Art with the Tudors and the big outcome is for the children to design and create their own Tudor outfit. They will be using lots of different types of material to do this.

In Science we will be studying the topic of the Human body. Both the National History Museum and the Science Museum have galleries with exhibitions about the body. There is something for all age groups and it is absolutely free. Please try to get along as it will really help the children's learning and understanding and it is a cheap fun day out!!

The WOW words box has been placed and lovingly decorated in the classroom and the best entry will be picked out on Friday and one lucky child will win a prize.

Antarctica trip to NHM!

Today we went on our trip to Antarctica! (Well a special exhibition at the National History Museum anyway!) We were lucky enough to have fantastic weather despite a bad forecast and spent a very enjoyable day where most of Year 5 were absolute super stars!

Ask your child about the activities we did there and about the special talk some of us were lucky to receive on penguins.

Some of us pretended we were penguins and considered how we would keep warm!

We were a little disappointed with the dark room as it wasn't actually very dark, just a video!

We all went around the exhibitions and had a chance to play the games. We can use our ticket to graduate and become ice commanders and receive a real certificate. If your child can do it at home or get to the library that would be fantastic.

How many different activities did you take part in?

This is a real snow-mobile!

Here we had the chance to be deep sea divers! We had to race each other to get to the bottom... it was harder than it looked!

Essential items needed for a trip to Antarctica!

There are lots more photos that I could show you... we will try to put them on display!

Hi everyone,

Thank you to you all for coming to the parent teacher meetings. It has been great that everyone has managed to make it in and have a chance to speak to you about your child's progress. We are right in the middle of our Antarctica project at the moment and are eagerly looking forward to our trip next Friday.

This morning we prepared our triop eggs for hatching so soon will have delightful creatures from the dinosaur age learning with us in class!

I will put some more photos on as soon as they hatch!

I have also spoken to the children about a new display we will be creating in our class. It is called 'WOW' words and we want to find as many interesting words to use in our writing. We want to stretch our vocabulary as much as we can. You can help them by telling them better adjectives or verbs for words they already know or words they find in their reading. They may also like to use a dictionary or ask older brothers and sisters for help.

Antarctica trip

Hi all,
Just a quick blog to let you know that we have managed to book a school trip to the National History Museum where there is a special exhibition about Antarctica. Some of the children were disappointed we weren't going to Antarctica but this was the best we could do!
Letters will be sent out asap and if you could return your money promptly we would be very grateful! If there are any problems with this please come and see one of the Year 5 team.

I have found another website you may like to look at... there are lots of interactive resources. Lots of you are amazing the teachers with your knowledge in class which is brilliant, some children have even taught the teacher's interesting facts. Keep it up!!!

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/about_antarctica/teacher_resources/index.php

Also a quick reminder that parents evenings are next week and one of us will be downstairs in the bottom hall every morning until Wednesday for you to make an appointment. Otherwise you can come to class after school. If neither of these is convenient we will be allocating times but it would be great if you chose your own times as we would like to see as many of you as possible.

Antarctica

Welcome back, I hope you all enjoyed a lovely break over the holidays, lots of you seem to have gone on wonderful holidays, the Year 5 teachers are rather jealous!

This half term is going to be a busy one for us as we are beginning our Antarctica project. We will be learning about it in Literacy, Geography, Science and ICT lessons for the next six weeks so it is really important children don't miss school unnecessarily as they will really suffer and have big gaps in their knowledge.

We have already been impressed about the facts that the children already know about Antarctica so if you could encourage them to continue to find out fascinating facts, it makes our lessons even better. Any trips to the local library would also be appreciated.

Here are some good websites, you may like to look at if you have a computer at home, we will also be using them in school.

http://library.thinkquest.org/CR0215022/animals.htm

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/

http://www.classroomantarctica.aad.gov.au/

You may also like to check the google or bbc websites...

Can you find out any information about the animals that live in Antarctica? Housepoints will be given out on Thursday's lesson for those that teach the teachers!!! It will be particularly helpful for writing our non-chronological reports on different Antarctic animals.

Happy New Year!

Divali recipes

We have been studying Divali this half term and in our last lesson we made some amazing Rangoli patterns, I am in the middle of creating a display so check back for pictures soon! Or come to the class and see them for yourselves!Here are some recipes for food that you might like to make!

DIVALI

DIVALI DISHES
Date sweets

Ingredients: 400g condensed milk; 75g desiccated coconut; 200g dates; I OOg glacé cherries.

Utensils: knife (adult use); saucepan; mixing spoon; cooker (adult use); non-stick baking tray.

• Chop up the dates.
• Place in a saucepan with the coconut,condensed milk and cherries.
• Cook on a low heat stirringcontinuously until a soft lump is formed.
• Remove from the heat and allow tocool.
• Grease hands and roll teaspoonfuls of dough into small date-sized shapes.
• Sprinkle with coconut.

Raita

Ingredients: 5OOg plain yoghurt; half a cucumber; carrot; banana; coriander leaves; black pepper.

Utensils: knife (adult use); grater (adult use); scissors; bowl; plate.

• Remove the skin from the cucumberand chop into small pieces.
• Wash and grate the carrot.
• Slice the banana.
• Snip the coriander leaves into small pieces.
• Stir all ingredients into the yoghurt. Season with black pepper.
• Serve with salad and crisps.

Spicy cheese rolls (makes 25)

Ingredients: 25g butter; 1OOg self-raising flour; 75g porridge oats; 170m1 milk; I 50g grated cheese; 1 tsp curry powder to taste.

Utensils: bowl; grater (adult use); mixing spoon; non- stick baking tray; oven (adult use).

• Rub the butter into the flour until it resembles breadcrumbs.
• Grate the cheese and add most of it with the oats and curry powder to the breadcrumb mix.
• Add milk and mix.
• Roll small amounts into sausage shapes.
• Place on a baking sheet, sprinkle with the remaining cheese, and bake at 200°C, Gas Mark 6, for 25 minutes.

Edible divas (makes 10)

Ingredients: I50g cooking milk chocolate; 3 tbsp golden syrup; 2 tbsp icing sugar; water; liquorice.

Utensils: bowl; microwave (adult use); tablespoon; cling film; fridge; knife (adult use);jug; teaspoon.
• Break the chocolate into a bowl andwarm in a microwave until melted.
• Stir in the golden syrup until themixture comes away from side of the bowl.
• Wrap in cling film and refrigerate forhalf an hour.
• Cut into 10 pieces. Mould each piece into a hollow diva shape with a small spout.
• Mix icing sugar into a firm pouring consistency and spoon a little into each diva. Add a liquorice wick.

On Friday 23rd November, we went on our London walk to visit some London attractions. It was a fleeting visit as we had a lot of walking to do and not a lot of time!! Ask your children about some of the places they liked the best as there are lots of free places to visit! (However there are also lots of expensive places that could be visited as well!)
We were so lucky with the weather and I was very proud of the children for behaving so sensibly whilst out and about. Here are some pictures of our trip. The next stage of our geography project is to make a leaflet about the tourist attractions so keep an eye out for that!
The children all remembered this view from last year when we went to the Tate!

Unfortunately we didn't get to go inside the Houses of Parliament but the teachers were very impressed with how knowledgable some children were about our Government and politics in general!

Lots of children were amazed by the size of the London Eye and really wanted to go, we looked really carefully to see it moving slowly around the sky.
The children were rather impressed by this! Ask them why they were there!

I couldn't take anymore pictures here as the police on duty didn't like it!

The children were amazed that the soldier's weren't allowed to talk whilst on duty! I'm not sure I would last very long being silent!

We finished up at Trafalgar Square by the National Gallery and then got our train home. We were really glad it was lunchtime as we were all hungry!
Miss Thavarajah has even more photos of our daytrip so we may try to create a display or some record of it!