UFFCULME PRIMARY SCHOOL

CHRISTMAS NEWSLETTER 2014

Reception Class Over the last half term the Reception class have enjoyed learning all about Space. We started off with cele-

brating fireworks night and creating some wonderful bonfire and firework themed artwork using paint, glitter

and chalks. We even used tissues to paint with and made some fantastic bonfire pictures. The children also

enjoyed creating a firework dance with scarves and exploring movement to music.

We turned our role-play area into our very own spaceship and made control panels out of recycled materials.

We thought carefully about what the different buttons and levers controlled and wrote labels next to them.

We decided to have our very own picnic on the moon and invited our favourite toys to join us. We wrote invita-

tions to our toys and together wrote a list of the ingredients we needed to make star shaped sandwiches. We

made a set of instructions to follow to make the sandwiches and enjoyed spreading the bread and using the

star shaped cutters. Much fun was had by all and the children particularly enjoyed bringing their toys to

school, introducing them to their friends and talking about how special they are.

Over the last two weeks we have been getting into the Christmas spirit and have been busy making decora-

tions and cards as well as playing the parts of stable animals in our Christmas play. The children all worked

really hard to learn the songs and actions and enjoyed wearing their costumes.

Well done, Reception!

RED – CULM

10 Housepoints:

Natalie Churchward Connor Fisher Jo Davies Oliver Batten Ewan Harkness-Moore Megan Newman Jessica Churchward Blade Chidgey Daniel Harkness-Moore

30 Housepoints: Leland Tanner Seth Furness Jack Jones Christina Orchard Bethany Elston Evelyn Little Caitie Mitchell-Richards Eleanor Maddicks Iona Wilson Isabella Hart Freia Wilson Luke Greenhalgh

GREEN – LOWMAN

10 Housepoints: Poppy McDermid Joshua Long Chloe Oldham Dylan Smith Harley Welch Joe Penfold Henry Woodward Lucy Pryke Millie Lucas Makan Coulibaly Lucy Gardner Alan Adamus Mason Spowart Baylee Wood

30 Housepoints: Bethany Gray Karim Coulibaly Isabelle Margetts Jonah Thomas John Penfold Ryan Farrant Logan Hulatt Jack Middleton Luke Thomas Freya Gray

HOUSEPOINTS THIS TERM

BLUE – OTTER

10 Housepoints: Harry Tidball Leo Clench Ella Tonge Leo Clench Katie Fricker Harley Whitehead Violet Bennellick Cody Alford Caitlin Thompson Amy Tonge Freddie Martin

30 Housepoints: Reuben Tidball Adam Muzik Isabella Jackson Oliver Venn Harrison Hine Cara Broom Laila Howell Ruby Taylor Kaysie Hutchings Isabelle Hine Riley Watts

60 Housepoints: Jessica Swanston

YELLOW – EXE

10 Housepoints:

Cody Piper

Lucy Fewings

Jack Richards

Oliver Squire

Molly Dyer

Harry Ridley

Maya Hurved-Shelley

Tyler Parker

Cody Piper

Cody Takel

Isabella Mactaggart

Ellis Pritchard-Griffin

30 Housepoints:

Minnie Nash

Ruby Richards

Gabriel Hurved-Shelley

Rosie Long

Erin Oliver

Amelia Kujawa

Chelsy Ingram

Ava Yuill

Matthew Bird

Lisa-Marie Penfold

Joy Poynton

Year 1 This half term, our topic has been Out and About. In our science lessons we have been learning about the weather and seasons. We learnt about the village of Uffculme in our geography and we have been making Christmas cards with moving parts for our design

and technology work. It has been a very busy half term because we have also been prac-tising for our Nativity Play! Well done year 1 - you all put on a wonderful performance!

Year 2

Nativity We have enjoyed spending a lot of time practising for our nativity play, learning our words, actions and songs.

We especially loved dressing up in our costumes! Well done to all the children involved in the play for making

it so memorable. We know our teachers were very, very proud! Thank you to all the parents, relatives and

friends who helped us.

Topic

We have started to learn about The

Great Fire of London. So far we have

been looking at the diaries of Samuel

Pepys finding, out why the fire started

and how it eventually stopped. We have

also had a go at writing our own diaries.

In design and technology time we have

made a felt collage each using different

coloured flames. This involved lots of skills like cutting, sticking and design.

A big thank you to Ann and Tyler from Year 6 who came to help us with

these and for the whole week – we loved having you in to help!

Maths

In maths we have been learning

about shapes all around us. We can

now describe shapes by their prop-

erties, e.g. sides, faces, edges and vertices. We can spot

shapes around us in everyday life and we know a lot more

about 3D shapes. We have started to look at shape patterns

and some of us can talk a little about right angles now. We

have started to look at directions as well and are using bee-

bots to learn about left, right, clockwise and anti-clockwise-

watch out for the latest back-seat drivers in your family!

Our new topic is

The Great Fire

of London!

Literacy

We have been focussing on a range

of books in the Katie Morag series.

We have described Katie Morag

characters like Grannie Island and

Grannie Mainland and we have

worked in groups to create our own

Katie Morag story. We also thoroughly enjoyed the Katie Morag day that Mrs Wel-

don arranged as we learnt so much about the books and the setting as well as dress-

ing up as characters from the story. We think we all looked fantastic!

In Science we found out about what things are made of and the properties of objects in our

focus on Materials. We are now looking at

Living Things and their Habitats.

In Music we have enjoyed looking at rhythms used in different pieces of music. We have done really well at singing songs in Spanish and French. At the end of our work on rhythm and pulse we especially enjoyed performing all the songs of the Unit and entertaining Mrs Kerslake!

Term Dates

Spring Term

Monday 5th January– Term Begins

Monday 16th – Friday 20

th February – Half Term

Friday 27th March – Last Day of Term

Summer Term

Monday 13th April – Term Begins

Monday 4th May – Bank Holiday

Monday 25th – Friday 29

th May – Half Term

Friday 17th July – Last Day of Term

Monday 20th

- Wednesday 22nd

July – INSET DAYS (no pupils)

Year 3 Year 3 have really enjoyed learning about the Tudors, particularly Henry VII and Henry VIII. We were all fascinated by the char-

acter of Henry VIII; we were particularly interested in learning about how horrible he was and what happened to his wives. We

have had a lot of discussions about whether he was the most powerful Tudor! Mrs Hayman has been very impressed with all

of the extra research that many of us have completed at home. She has really enjoyed listening to what we found out. As part

of our Tudor topic we will be completing portraits based on the Tudor Kings and Queens. Please look out for the display next

term.

As part of our English work this term, we wrote our own class story based on ‘King of the Birds’ by Helen Ward. We called it

‘King of the Trees’. To help us think of adjectives and descriptive phrases we explored the woodland area behind the school.

We collected leaves of different shapes and colours.

We have also been writing our own poems based on ‘‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’. We found it really tricky to under-

stand to begin with as Clement Clarke Moore used lots of old fashioned words because he wrote it nearly 200 years ago! We

have really enjoyed our unit of work on poetry and lots of us have been writing poems in our spare time, either during wet

plays or at home. Mrs Hayman is very impressed.

What A Merry Christmas

What a Merry Christmas it is. The bells are jingling and the stockings are hung The tinsel is glimmering and the snowflakes are falling The lights are switched on and the children are asleep The decorations are hung on the Christmas Tree with care.

Joe Howell

We had a very exciting week at school last week. We watched the Nativity play performed by KS1, had Christmas dinner and

had our nugget treat as we achieved 25 nuggets. We are now looking forward to making our Christmas cards and completing

other Christmassy activities.

We would like to thank all of our parents for all their help this term and wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New

Year.

Year 4

The Christingle service at

St Mary’s Church on

Wednesday, December

was, as ever, a lovely

evening. Joe played

xylophone, and Cody and

Ewan played drums in

the orchestra.

Molly wowed us with her

singing during assembly

last week. She performed

a song from Matilda and

captivated us with her

voice and actions. Molly

has lessons with Heidi

Gubby.

Our Literacy work for the last two weeks has focused

on poetry inspired by art work from the book, Paint

Me a Poem by Grace Nichols.

We are working on our own poems inspired by

winter pictures.

Paint Me A Colour

Paint me blue, like the summer sky.

Paint me red, like strawberry jam.

Paint me black ,like the coal on a fire.

Paint me green, like the leaves on a tree.

Paint me white, like a dove in the sky.

Paint me pink, like strawberry ice cream.

Paint me yellow, like the bright shining sun.

By Louisa

Christmas card making

Co-ordinate maths

In Science we have been finding out

about solids, liquids and gasses. One

of our experiments was to predict

what would happen when salt, sugar

and tea leaves were added to cups of

water. We then tried it out—ask me

about what happened...

Our Topic for this half term has been

finding out about volcanoes.

Year 5 Christmas dinner! This year we had an excellent Christmas dinner. In the hall, everybody enjoyed pulling the Christmas crackers and getting little toys to play with. All of the children were

wearing brilliant jumpers and Christmas hats this year, it made it a whole lot more festive. Written by Savanna and Kaysie!

Dance club—Bollywood Comes to Uffculme!: By Rosie & Ava. The whole of Key Stage 2 dance club would like to give a big thank you to Karina Gracia our wonderful dance

teacher and hope she enjoyed working with us. We have also loved learning new moves and have put on a performance to show to adults and children. The songs we performed to were ‘Roar’, ‘Counting Stars’ and ‘Twist’.

THANK YOU! Water and canals: By Seth & Milly We all had fun going down to a meander past the fields over the river, we also enjoyed looking at the erosion in the river/meander. In topic we have been learning about canals. We found out lots of

interesting facts like why the Victorians built them in the first place. Water charities: By Karina Hayman and Daisy Lucas. We have been working extremely hard on our power

point presentations based on water charities. We had to collect information and pictures and put it on our power point presentations. We would like to thank Mrs Hansford for the lovely task that we have been given.

Choir The School Choir went to Tescos in Tiverton to sing Christmas carols this week and raised £57.22 for WaterAid. Well done eve-ryone!

Christingle On the 3rd of December 2014, we had our Christingle at St Mary’s

church. Well done everyone who played an instrument and the choir.

You all did really well! We all sang beautifully and everyone who took part

worked really hard. Megan, Sammy and Ben did some of the readings. All in all

we raised over £200 so children less fortunate than us can have a very Merry

Christmas!

Grenville House On the 8th December, we went to Grenville house in Brix-ham. We went orienteering in the afternoon at Berry Head, which is a 20 minute walk away. We split up into our groups and got a map. There was a point on the map which is where

we had to go and find the post and remember the colours on it.

Everyday each group had a certain activity that we did. The activities were: canoeing, high ropes, abseiling, raft building, caving and a coastal walk. The leaders were very encourag-ing and patient. Many people were nervous of the activities but conquered their fears and felt really proud of themselves afterwards. Most people enjoyed the high ropes the best.

On the last day, it was second chance Friday which meant that people could either have an-other go at abseiling or they could go on the coastal walk.

We will have an after school presentation in the New Year. By Alanah

Ambassador tea Year six ambassadors had a special event on the 5th De-

cember - they had tea, coffee and hot chocolate with

delicious cake. We had lots of fun. We thank Mrs.

Cheetham, Mrs. Mosdell and Mrs. Dentith for helping.

By Jacob and Ben.

Year 6 Assembly On the 4th of December, year 6 held a class assembly for parents and Key Stage 2 about World War Two. (We have been looking at the war in Topic, English and R.E.) There were many roles to act and three songs to learn. We did two scenes, one about an air raid

and one about evacuation. Although Miss Gibbs was unable to be with us, with the help of Mrs Cheetham and Mrs Mosdell, the show went on. We really en-joyed it and so did the audience.

By Isabella Patterson and Jessica Churchward

The Staff

and Pupils

of Uffculme Primary School

wish our parents and friends

a very Happy Christmas

and New Year