We've had a busy but fantastic start to the new school year. To immerse ourselves into the world of Charlie and the Chocolate factory we sampled some different sweets to tantalise our tastebuds and get us thinking of some tasty descriptions for our writing. 

In maths we began by looking at Roman Numerals and this week we have moved onto rounding numbers to 10 and 100. 

In Science we thought carefully about how we might choose to classify living things. We also began our Topic work on the Anglo-Saxons and Scots examining artefacts to find out more about their lives, exploring timelines and in Art, starting work on researching and designing our own Anglo-Saxon brooches.

On Friday we went into year 1 to share some books with the younger children as part of National Read a Book Day. 

We are delighted with how well the children have settled into year 4 and hope that they continue to work as hard as they have been! 

On Tuesday year 4 ventured out int he rain to the Earth Trust, to learn about the Anglo-Saxons. I was really impressed with how much the children knew about how the Anglo-Saxons would have lived.

When we arrived, we walked up onto Wittenham CLumps and explored the old Iron Age fortifications, which wuold have also been a Roman fort, and then an Anglo-Saxon fort. The children enjoyed pretending to storm the battlements! After that, we talked about shelter and had a go at building our own wooden shelters in the woods. We only had 40 minutes to build them in teams, but they were surprisingly waterproof!

After lunch we all had a go at lighting a fire using a flint and steel, in a similar way to the Anglo-Saxons. We talked about how important fire would have been to people in those times for warmth, cooking and light. The children made bread and it was cooked on the open fire. We served it with honey, but the children found out that this would have been a very rare treat for the Anglo-Saxons, as bees weren't domesticated in those times. Anglo-Saxons ate the equivalent of 3 teaspoons of sugar per year.

I was really impressed with how well behaved the children were on our trip. There was no moaning despite the very wet weather, and the children were polite to the staff and to other people we met, such as dog walkers. 

Thank you so much to the staff and parents who accompanied us on the trip.
​