On Monday 29th April, the learning champions from KS2 visited the Houses of Parliament.

We watched an educational video all about the history of parliament up to present day. After this, we saw the House of Commons and the House of Lords and found out that green and red are the colours for each house.

We learnt about the lords, baroness' and MPs roles in making our laws including how they vote using ay and no.

Within the House of Lords, we found out about the Queen's speech and saw the ornate throne she sits on during the opening of parliament.

During the tour, we saw many statues of former prime ministers as well as Kings and Queens.

The architecture of the building was beautiful with lots of detailed stain glass windows; huge portrait paintings; chandeliers and woodcarvings.

In The Reception and Nursery classes, we have been busy learning to read, write and count. We have been busy investigating and keeping active. There are always lots of things to keep us busy!

Year six have been learning about the Mayan civilisation this term. We found out where the Mayans lived and how their civilisation was discovered. We enjoyed finding out how they used masks in their culture. We designed our masks after looking at different types. We then made our masks out of clay, which we air dried and then painted.

At the beginning of this term, something very exciting happened…. we found a dragon’s egg in our outdoor play area! We were worried that a dragon may have dropped it when flying past the school, so we decided to take care of it. Luckily, we had been learning all about which materials help to keep things warm, so we made a nest for the egg out of twigs and wrapped it in tin foil to incubate it. A couple of weeks later, the egg hatched! It hatched at around the same time as the chicks we have in school. We learned all about how to look after these baby animals, and how gentle we need to be with them. We now take the baby dragon for walks every day so that it can get lots of exercise, and wrap him up to keep him warm when he sleeps. We wonder how big he will grow!

This term, year 3 have been learning about Ancient Egypt. We were lucky enough to go on a school trip to Layer Marney in Colchester where we all took part in four different activities in order to learn more about the Egyptians. The first activity involved looking at different artefacts from this period of history. One of the oldest artefacts was 4000 years old! We looked at the fans they would have used, some of the jewellery and discussed how it was made from lapis lazuli and we talked about the significance of crocodiles in Egypt. The second activity gave us all a chance to make our own Rosetta Stone wheels as we looked at Egyptian hieroglyphics. We used the wheel to solve some Egyptian code as well as having a go at writing our names. After that, we discussed Egyptian housing and what the Egyptians would have eaten for breakfast lunch and dinner. We were even given the opportunity to try some of the foods they would have enjoyed, such as radishes, spring onions and flat breads. Our final activity of the day was all about the importance of masks. We learned that a person’s body was preserved during the process of mummification. This meant that the soul would have somewhere to return to after death. A death mask was created so that the soul would recognise its body, and return to it safely. Death masks were also believed to help to guard a dead person from evil spirits in the afterlife. The death masks we looked at and had a go at making were the Pharoah, Anubis, Ammit and Bastet. Once our death masks were made, we were then able to partake in our own funeral procession.
It was an amazing day out and we all learned lots about Ancient Egypt!