This week Green class completed their diva lamps by choosing bright, eye catching colours of paint to enhance their clay work.

It has been a busy week in Green class this week with lots of art and design technology enhancing our learning. Miss Shryane worked with Green class to create volcano models. Hopefully the models will dry over the weekend and then we will paint them and make them erupt!

With our Religious Education learning being all about Diwali, Year 3 have also made their own diva lamps from clay. Divali means “rows of lighted lamps”.People light lots of small oil lamps called diyas or divas.  They are placed around the home and in gardens to remember how Rama and Sita were welcomed home.

Hindus believe that by lighting these lamps, the goddess Lakshmi will visit them and bring them wealth.

We used a ‘thumb pot’  design and are now patiently waiting for them to dry so they can be painted in bright, eye catching colours next week.

Read our blog next week to find out how well our volcano models erupted and how we decorated our diva lamps.

Our topic this half term is called Tremors and this week Green class have travelled back in time to 79AD and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii.

Y3 have explored this event through freeze frames and hot seating and discussed how they would have felt witnessing the thunderous blast from the volcano and seeing the pillar of ash shooting from the throat of Vesuvius. Then the raining down of red-hot rocks and thick poisonous gas cloud that engulfed and destroyed the city and its entire population of 20,000 people.

Have a look at our freeze frames and see if you can work out the feelings of Green class.

During Art week Year 3 have been using different mediums to create different styles of foxes. We used the tile printing method to create some wanted posters. We looked at the famous Artist Andy Warhol and recreated his famous Pop Art style. First we had to draw our own fox, Mrs Hall and Miss Groom made this really easy by giving us step by step instructions to follow. Then we had to choose really bright, bold colours to make the fox pop and stand out. We also made some origami fox heads, this was our favourite activity of the week.

We also wrote some descriptions of Fantastic Mr Fox and the three mean farmers in our writing lessons and in maths we had to help the farmers create a safety fence for the the chicken house and work out the perimeter of the fence.

During our reading lessons we read and answered questions about the book fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl, who was born 100 years ago.

Today is a special day held to celebrate him and remember all the books he wrote, so at St Clement’s we decided to dress up for this special day

During this week we have looking at what will help us to be successful in Year 3.  We discussed all the positive personal qualities such as respectfulness, kindness, understanding, sharing and working together.

We had an assembly by Miss Shryane about when we help others we become at peace with ourselves.

After the assembly we talked lots about the meaning of Peace and what it means to us as individuals, a class, as a St Clement’s family, a family at home, a community in Nechells and as a world wide community.  We then created a display using the symbol of peace, the dove.  We learnt that for peace  to be spread it needs to start from with in us, so that was the theme of our display ‘Peace begins with me’.  If I smile at someone, they will smile back, if I am kind to my friend, they will be kind back.  When I show calmness, calmness will be reflected back.

What can you do today to let peace begin with you?

Have a look at our pictures and talk to Year 3 about what Peace means to them.

As this week draws to a close Year 3 have been thinking about all the things we have enjoyed doing this year.  They have discussed what they would like to do again, what they would like to change and what they would didn’t really like doing and why.  They have also thought about what tips they would like to pass on to the new Green Class next year.  We took this opportunity to look back over the multitude of photographs that have been taken.  Here are some of our favourites.

Why not ask Green Class about them and their favourite memories?

Year 4 took their maths outside to investigate if people with longer arms can throw further. Each person threw the beanbag three times and recorded their measurements. We then found the average distance thrown for each child and recorded this data on a bar chart. We measured each others arms to see if people with longer arms did throw the furthest.

During Creativity Week Y3 have been exploring the music from Brazil and being a samba band. A samba band normally consists of Tamborims , Snare drums (Caixa), Agogô bells, Surdos, Ganzás / Chocalho (shakers), Cuíca, Timbal,Pandeiro, and the Repinique (often played by the leader for calls) whistles (at the beginning to give the samba a beat).

We used words and phrases to help each part of the band play their own pulse so when playing together we sounded like a real samba band!