BIG TALK

HOMEWORK

By Friday 18th

 Our language focus this half term is story writing and as the children have enjoyed our Castles topic, we have decided to continue the theme through castle fairy tales.

This week we will be looking at the interplay between fantasy and reality. Our visit to Castell Coch will encourage the children to place imaginary characters and events in real-life settings.

While we are at Castell Coch, the children will complete a short activity that aims to develop their ideas and vocabulary about settings. They will then use these to write their own original fairy tale.

Therefore, their talk homework this week is to discuss how Castell Coch could be used as a setting for a fairy tale. The children will need to think about:

* if they would like to keep the setting of Castle Coch 'real'

* if they would like to change some elements of the setting into fantasy e.g.

   a magic / enchanted forest.

* words they could use to describe their setting, e.g. magical, spectacular,  

   beautiful, magnificent, enchanted, peaceful etc.

Even though our trip is Thursday please try to talk about this before the visit as it will help the children to complete their activity and talk about ideas of the setting on the day. It will then be interesting for you to talk about it on Thursday evening as their ideas may have changed and will provide further discussion.

There are many fairy tales set in castles or places, e.g. Sleeping Beauty, Princess and the Pea, Rapunzel,Cinderella, etc, if you have any of these at home sharing them with your child will help to develop their own ideas.

On Friday the children will be writing about the setting they wish to create in their own Fairy Tale.

Have fun and encourage your child to be imaginative!

BIG WRITING!

Today was the first day Class 3 undertook a Big Writing session. They thoroughly enjoyed all parts of the session. Some children commented on how nice it was to have music playing and candles lit when we were writing and how nice and quiet it was so that they could concentrate.

Mrs Best, Mrs Stevens and myself are all very proud of how hard you worked and the good quality of descriptive writing you

produced!

Here are some photographs of us BIG WRITING!





Well done everyone! I know you're all looking forward to our next Big Writing session!





SMART PUPIL

OF THE WEEK

Da iawn Kian Jones!

You are our WORD SMART pupil this week. Your Big Writing today was fantastic. You worked really hard to use lots of describing words and wow words in your writing and the presentation of your work was outstanding! 
You should be really proud of yourself! We certainly are!
Keep it up! 

Big Talk Homework



Monday 7th March



On Friday you will be writing a character description of the Prince from the fairy tale, Princess and the Pea. On Monday you will receive a copy of the story and your bank of character describing words to help you.



Princess and the Pea



After reading the story, please discuss the following with your child:

Appearance of the Prince

* approximate age i.e. young, old  

* hair 
* clothes
* any distinguishing features, etc

What type of person is he?
* kind
* wicked
* gentle
* polite
* thoughtful
* serious
* fun
* determined, etc

Possible likes and dislikes

Hans Christian Andersen

The Princess and the Pea

Once upon a time there was a prince who wanted to marry a princess; but she would have to be a real princess. He travelled all over the world to find one, but nowhere could he get what he wanted. There were princesses enough, but it was difficult to find out whether they were real ones. There was always something about them that was not as it should be. So he came home again and was sad, for he would have liked very much to have a real princess.

One evening a terrible storm came on; there was thunder and lightning, and the rain poured down in torrents. Suddenly a knocking was heard at the city gate, and the old king went to open it.It was a princess standing out there in front of the gate. But, good gracious! what a sight the rain and the wind had made her look. The water ran down from her hair and clothes; it ran down into the toes of her shoes and out again at the heels. And yet she said that she was a real princess.

 

Well, we'll soon find that out, thought the old queen. But she said nothing, went into the bed-room, took all the bedding off the bedstead, and laid a pea on the bottom; then she took twenty mattresses and laid them on the pea, and then twenty eider-down beds on top of the mattresses.

On this the princess had to lie all night. In the morning she was asked how she had slept.

"Oh, very badly!" said she. "I have scarcely closed my eyes all night. Heaven only knows what was in the bed, but I was lying on something hard, so that I am black and blue all over my body. It's horrible!"                                                          

 Now they knew that she was a real princess because she had felt the pea right through the twenty mattresses and the twenty eider-down beds. Nobody but a real princess could be as sensitive as that. So the prince took her for his wife, for now he knew that he had a real princess; and the pea was put in the museum, where it may still be seen, if no one has stolen it.

 There, that is a true story.

 

  

           

WORLD BOOK DAY

What a wonderful day we've had. You all looked fantastic in your costumes! Over the day the children took turns to talk to the class about their character. Together they used many wow words and interesting vocabulary to describe their character. Sam described his character, 'Captain Hook' as mean and Cole also described him as horrid!  Libby described her character, 'Sophie' from the BFG as cheeky, and kind because she looks after the BFG.
Well done everyone, we are beginning to build a lovely bank of wow words to use in our writing.

We enjoyed sharing stories in the book corner.

Using recyclable materials, we made tea cups and saucers

for our Mad Hatter's tea party.

We're so proud at how good our tea cups look!

We worked really hard creating a mind map of words and phrases to describe the character 'Alice in Wonderland'.

Ieuan described her as clumsy because she kept dropping things and McKenzie described her as beautiful and thoughtful.

'Alice' helps us to make jam tarts!

We had to push our rolling pin really hard to roll out the pastry.

We used heart shapped cutters for our tarts.

Here we are decorating our table cloth with hearts, clubs, diamonds and spades ready for our tea party!

We recieved an invitation from The Queen of Hearts to play croquet, minus the flamingos and hedgehogs! 

The Mad Hatter joins us for our tea party.

Yummy scrummy jam tarts! Mmm!

Mrs Best, Mrs Stevens, Miss Jones and myself would like to thank all the children for a truly enjoyable and interesting day!



Welcome Back!

I hope you have all had a lovely half term. We have a very busy and fun week ahead of us!


Our first day back is St. David's Day and we will be celebrating by doing lots of fun activities. The children are looking forward to role playing events from Caerphilly Castle, they will be performing to the rest of the school during the afternoon. If your child has a small number of words to learn please could you help them practise these before Tuesday.


 Maths homework due in by Friday 4th March

Alice In Wonderland

On Thursday, Class 3 will be celebrating World Book Day by listening to the story of Alice in Wonderland. We have many enjoyable activites planned for the children based on the story and the poem 'The Queen of Hearts'.  Some of the activities include writing character descriptions, making invitations, baking and making cups and saucers. We also have a fun tea party planned for them to end the day, but please keep this a secret!

Please revisit the blog at the end of the week to see what we've been up to!

Caerphilly Castle Visit

What an amazing day we've had! I would like to thank our parent volunteers for all their help today, and Audrey Phillips our tour guide, for making our visit very exciting!

Audrey told us many stories about the castle, some of which we had to
re-enact!

Prince Llewellyn and his soldiers attempt to attack the castle! 

We impressed Audrey with our knowledge of features of the castle!

Kakuda really enjoyed looking around Caerphilly Castle.

 Lord Huw Despencer and Lady Eleanor invite King Edward II to stay at the castle.





The Pot Boy has been ordered to catch the many rats running around the Great Hall!

The butler serves Lord Huw and his guests drinks in a goblet.

 What a fantastic banquet we've had!

I would like to say a final thank you to all the children for remembering the safety rules we talked about and their excellent behaviour.
I'm very proud of you all!

Audrey Phillips also commented on the children's good knowledge of the castle, how well they listened, how enthusiastic they were in taking part in role playing and how well they behaved.

Well done boys and girls you can all have 1 jewel for your crown!!!

The children enjoyed re-enacting the events so much that they have asked to perform them on St. David's Day to the rest of the school.