Linked to this year’s Big Garden Bird Watch, here are some photos from Year 6’s bird watching activities in Outdoor Learning this morning. Children enjoyed constructing their own bird hides, watercolour painting and making bird feeders.
QHYear6
Year 6 New Arrivals
This week, Year 6 have acquired some new members- two baby guinea pigs, who have been named Stormy and Hazel. The children are very excited about having class pets and the opportunity to look after the fur babies at the weekends. Look out for a letter providing more information about the new arrivals.
Year 6 Mandarin
This week in their languages lesson, the Year 6 children have been learning about the traditions of Chinese New Year. Miss Chen brought in a traditional lion’s head and body and the children had the opportunity to try these on and pretend that they were part of this animal. They also created special red envelopes that bring good fortunes in line with Chinese New Year traditions.
Hapazome: Outdoor Learning inspired by Japanese art
In Outdoor Learning, to tie in with our art topic about dying materials, we learned the Japanese craft of hapazome. The Year 6s collected fresh leaves and safely used mallets to bash the colour onto triangles of cotton material. Some children made their own tools out of chunks of bark and stones to hold down the material in the wind. They discovered the lighter they tapped with the mallets the more detail their prints revealed.
Quite literally meaning ‘leaf dye’, hapa-zome is the Japanese technique of smashing flowers and leaves into fabric. The plant matter is often arranged into a mandala, but you can create any pattern you like. Be sure to use fresh, juicy plants though; these will leave the best imprint.
Maya: Ancient to today!
Across our subjects we have started our new Topic: the Maya. In Art we learned about the importance of art in Mayan culture and how they were prolific storytellers, and one of the reasons we know so much about this ancient culture is because of their frescoes and sculptures.
In History, we looked at where the Maya live today, what sort of climate and landscape they live in, and then detailed what we already know and what we would like to know.
Festive Fun in Year 6!
Year 6 have had a festive-filled end of term! They have all worked so incredibly hard this term and us teachers are very proud of them! Wishing all of our wonderful Year 6’s and their families a joyful and restful Christmas – we look forward to welcoming everyone back in the new year for another busy and exciting term ahead!
Shadow Investigation
Year 6 carried out a Science investigation to discover how the size of an object’s shadow depends on the distance between the light source and the object. Before the investigation, children made a prediction, explained the method, noted the apparatus needed and drew scientific diagrams. They then drew up a results table and used this to plot a graph to show their findings as well as writing a conclusion.
What did we find out?
The size of the object’s shadow increases as the distance between the light source and the object decreases. This is because light
travels in straight lines, so objects closer to the light source block light travelling in a greater range of different directions. As a wide light source moves towards an object, the shadow’s edges become less sharp (as it actually consists of overlapping shadows due to different parts of the light source). We only changed one variable to make it a fair test.
Year 6 History
Year 6 have produced some wonderful double-page spreads to celebrate all of their hard work in History over the Autumn term. Children collated a range of different ideas under subheadings to show their understanding, including: rationing, the role of women, key dates and countries involved and VE Day. Have a look at these brilliant examples!
Periscopes!
Year 6 made their very own periscopes today as part of their learning about light and reflection. They used mirrors in their periscope and observed how the mirrors in the periscope reflected the light to enable them to see an image of an object around a corner or over the top of another object. Grit and determination were needed as well as independence and concentration whilst following the instructions!
Levers and Fulcrums!
In Year 6 this week we have started our Design and Technology unit for this term. In this unit on ‘Mechanisms’, we have started by learning about levers and fulcrums. We learned that Archimedes discovered this concept that we can adjust how much weight we can lift by pivoting on a fulcrum. We learned how changing the distance of the ‘effort arm’ from the fulcrum can make a big difference to the weight we can lift.
During the lesson, we talked about the examples of levers we can see in our everyday lives; seesaws, nutcrackers, hammers, bottle opener and balancing scales. Using a fulcrum doesn’t make the item lighter, it just changes how we can apply pressure to lift the weight. Maybe you can have a go at home building your own lever systems. Send some photos if you make anything!
