Interview

Yesterday we interviewed Mr Bannister, our school handyman, about materials. We had prepared some questions  to ask him about materials and as we were interviewing him we added extra questions in.

We learnt so much about materials (including Mrs Collin and Mrs Thornton who kept saying,' I didn't know that!') and we didn't realise that Mr Bannister was so knowledgable about the subject!

Thank you Mr Bannister for letting us put you in the hotspot!

Materials Trip

This afternoon we went on our materials trip. Unfortunately the weather wasn't kind to us and we got caught in the rain which was a shame. It didn't however dampen our spirits and we had a fantastic time looking at the materials around us, describing their purpose and talking about their properties.

We also used the digital cameras to take photographs of the materials and we have taken some great photos which really capture the material.

Here are some of the photos that we took:

Over the next few days we will be talking about what we found out and making sketches from these photos.

We Won!

STOP PRESS!
We won the challenge of being the class to raise the most money for  the WWF by selling our amazing animal draught excluders.

We are very proud of this and think it reflects all the hard work we put into making our product a success including the research, production, advertising, pricing and selling of our product.

Well done year 3 you budding entrepreneurs!

Amazing Animal Draught Excluders For Sale!!!

Wow-what a success!!! We sold every single one of our amazing colourful animal draught excluders at the enterprise market last Friday afternoon.

Well done to everyone in Class3 who made them. Alot of thought and care went into every single one!

A big thanks to the children who set up the stall and made it look so amazing.  A big well done also to the market stall traders- they did such a great job selling all our stock in such a short space of time!

Graphic designer in Scarlet Macaw Base

Mrs O'Brien's husband Dean is a graphic designer and came to visit us in Year3 during Enterprise week. He showed everyone how he designs the words and pictures for men's and women's tshirts.  A few of the children even modelled some of his designs for the whole class to see.

 Year3 was given a brief to design their very own boys or girls t-shirt. The children had to make sure that the t-shirt had the company name and logo on it, and they also had to draw pictures that involved sufing, skateboarding or snowboarding.  The finished t-shirts are amazing!! Keep checking our blog to see photos of some of the children's completed designs.

The Tunnel by Anthony Browne

In Literacy we are exploring adventure stories. We have been reading a book called The Tunnel written by the award winning Anthony Browne.

Today we discussed the structure of the story and the characters. We then talked about what the adventure was in the story and where it began. To help us understand the feelings of the characters, we used drama to create a series of freeze frames.

We all had our own ideas about what happened in the story but we had to work together to include all these ideas in the freeze frames. Our final freeze frames were all quite similar but the way each group got there was different!

Here are a few photos of our freeze frames:

Material games

Here are two websites with games about materials and their properties that we will be using in class. You could also play them at home.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/scienceclips/ages/7_8/characteristics_materials.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/materials/characteristic_materials/play.shtml

Also Education City- my city Scarlet Macaw Base has some science games to play.

Here you can find out about different materials:

http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks2/science/material_matters/index.htm

Properties of Materials

Our new topic is science based and looks at the properties of materials. We started by discussing what a material was and what a property was. We decided that a material was what something was made out of and a property is an adjective used to describe the material. For example a window is made of glass and two of its properties could be transparent and smooth.

We carried out different activities to inverstigate materials and their properties.

We made observations around the school to see what things were made of.

 We used different words to describe the properities of materials

We described a material hidden in a feely bag using different properties.

Enterprise Week

Yesterday saw us very busily making our draught excluders for the enterprise market. We had loads of fun and really rose to the challenge by making 62 draught excluders. We practised our sewing skills by sewing on buttons and fabric to our stuffed socks.

We were careful to follow the plans that we had made but were also able to adapt them if we needed to. When we had finished making the draught excluders, we evaluated our work and talked about what was successful and what we would change if we were to do it again. Everybody agreed that using feathers to stuff the socks was not such a great idea as they went everywhere! It was good fun though!

We are very proud of our work and when you see them you will realise why.

Stuffing the socks - we think that pillow wadding makes the best stuffing.

Practising our sewing skills sewing on the buttons.

Sewing up the end of the sock.

 

Megan's fantastic blanket stitch sewing.

Fran I's finished product.

A selection of the draught excluders.

We are hoping to do very well at the fair tomorrow and we are particularly proud of the environmental friendliness of our product!

Our Draught Excluders

For enterprise week we are making draught excluders.

This fits in well with our brief of using recycled products because we haven't bought a thing! We are using recycled socks, buttons, material, toilet roll, wadding from pillows and feathers from pillows. This means that our product will be 100% RECYCLED! How great is that! That also means that we stand to make 100% profit at the Enterprise Fair on Friday.

Our designs are great. We carried out a consumer survey and asked other classes what they would like the draught excluder to look like and the most popular choices were snakes and dogs.

We then looked at the materials that we had that were available to use (we have to use only what we've got) and discussed what material would be best to stuff the draught excluder based on its purpose (to keep draughts out).

The added twist is that in addition to our product being 100% recycled, it also helps the environment by saving energy because it keeps the draught out and the warm in. This saves money on energy bills.

Enterprise Week

This week is Enterprise Week. In Scarlet Macaw Base we will be looking at Fair Trade products and what that means and in particular the use of Fair Trade cotton.

Here is a Fair Trade game to play

http://kidzzone.cafod.org.uk/games/shopper

More about the Egyptian Banquet

Our Ancient Egyptian Banquet was a great way to end our topic on the Incredible Egyptians. Lots of effort was put into creating a costume fit for a party and our research into banquet food meant that there was a variety of food on offer:

• pitta bread
• houmous
• cheese
• chicken
• duck
• figs
• grapes
• melon
• yoghurt
• cucumber
• wine and beer (in the form of grape juice and barley water!)

We also wore our clay jewellery that we made last week - can you see these in our photos?

Team building was also one of our task as we wrapped each other up like Mummies using toilet paper (which we are going to recycle during enterprise week!) At first some groups found this easier than others but everyone succeeded in the end and it was a real team effort.

Mrs Thornton shows the Egyptians a fig and Ben has a taste.

Mummy making!

Egyptian Banquet

Just a quick blog to share some of the photos taken at our Egyptian Banquet this morning.

More to follow...

Ancient Egyptian Jewellery

We have made Ancient Egyptian Jewellery from clay. We researched the type of jewellery that they wore and then tried to recreate our own versions and whet a great job we did!

We had to shape the clay and make sure we pierced a hole through the bead shapes. Some of us even added charms with Egyptian style motifs on them to hang from our necklaces.

We painted the beads and then used needles to thread fishing wire through the beads. We still need to put the finishing touches to our work but here are some pictures so far!