A Message from Mr Forrester!

Hello everyone!

I hope you’re all keeping well.

As you know, your teacher in Year 4 will be Mr Forrester, and he has recorded a special message for you, which you can find on the main school website, or by following this link.  I know he is really looking forward to getting to know you all better, and is planning lots of exciting lessons for you in the autumn!

I'll be back tomorrow morning with the final blog update for this week - take care and look after yourselves.

Best wishes

Mrs Vaqueiro

Thursday 9th July

Bonjour!

Can you guess what the theme of today's home learning might be?  If we were in school this week, we would be having our usual French lesson with Madame Evans, so I thought it might be good fun to include some ideas to help you brush up your French today!

A good place to start is with BBC Bitesize which has a sequence of lessons and games for you to follow, covering the basics in French.  If you'd like to combine your French practice with some PE moves, you could try this activity from BBC Supermovers, or this French disco workout from YouTube (there are Spanish versions of both as well if you really get into languages!).

Have fun and enjoy practising your French skills with your family.

Au revoir!

Mrs Vaqueiro

Wednesday 8th July

Hello everyone!

How are you today?  I hope you are all well and enjoying your week.

Normally, on a Wednesday, we would have Guided Reading at school, so today's challenge is for you to complete a reading comprehension based on the fairy tale 'The Princess and the Pea.'  You can find the text and the questions here.  

There are plenty of different activities there to keep you out of mischief, but if you need an extra challenge, maybe you could also take the story as your inspiration and create a new cover design for the book?  Make it really bright and colourful, so that people are interested and want to find out more, and then see if you can write a short summary of the story for the 'blurb' on the back, to really tempt the reader (without giving away the ending!).

Have a brilliant day!

Best wishes

Mrs Vaqueiro

Tuesday 7th July

Hello everyone!

I hope you are all still keeping safe and well.  I am at home today, and was wondering what on earth to put on the blog... So I did a quick Google and discovered that 7th July is Chocolate Day!  Yes, really!   Now, you may be thinking that every day is Chocolate Day - and you would be right - but today we have a genuine excuse to indulge.

So, with that in mind, here's a delicious chocolate-based recipe for you to try.  You will need an adult to help you because you will need to melt the chocolate.

Chocolate Rice Krispie Cakes

You will need:

150g chocolate, broken into squares (I like a mixture of plain and milk chocolate, but it doesn't really matter - it's all good!)

100g butter

4 tablespoons golden syrup

100g Rice Krispies

12 paper fairy cake cases

To decorate:

50g melted chocolate, plus any decorations you might want to use - mini marshmallows, sprinkles, Smarties, chocolate drops etc

Method:

1.    Put the chocolate, butter and syrup into a heatproof bowl.  

2.    You can either melt them together over a pan of simmering water on the hob, or melt it in the microwave (do this in short 20 second bursts, stirring in between, otherwise the mixture might burn).  You must ask an adult to help with this.

3.    Stir the melted mixture together until it is smooth, and then mix in the Rice Krispies until they are completely covered with the chocolate mixture.

4.    Spoon the mixture into the paper cases and decorate each cake as you like - drizzle the cakes with melted chocolate and add your chosen decorations.  Do this quickly before the chocolate starts to cool and set, otherwise the decorations won't stick properly.

5.    Pop the cakes into the fridge for about an hour to cool completely, and then serve.

6.    Apparently these will keep for up to 5 days in an airtight tin, but to be honest I've never met anyone who can resist them for that long.

Have a wonderful day!

Best wishes

Mrs Vaqueiro

Monday 6th July

Good morning everyone!

Welcome to your 13th week of home learning - hopefully it will be a lucky one!

I have updated the 3V Google Drive with this week's suggested home learning activities.  Our theme this week is 'Celebrations' and there are plenty of different ideas for you to try.   There are also some more literacy activities from Talk for Writing, as well as our usual maths and English tasks.

Hopefully, by now you should all have received your school reports, which also included information about your new teacher in September - Mr Forrester!  Keep an eye on the website this week for a special video welcome message from him.  I know he is really looking forward to teaching you all in September, and I am sure you will have a brilliant time with him in 4F.

That's all from me for today - I will keep adding new activities through the week so do keep checking the blog for updates.

Best wishes

Mrs Vaqueiro

Friday 3rd July

Hello everyone and a happy Friday to you all!

As promised, today's challenge is one of Year 3's '50 Things to Do at Swan Lane' - it's time to have a go at making some ice cream!

You might think that in order to make ice cream you would need a fancy ice cream maker or lots of special equipment - but there is a really simple and fun way for you to make it at home!

Although the Chinese are originally said to have invented ice cream, historians know that the Ancient Romans also enjoyed tasty frozen desserts.  Their ice creams were made using  snow (from the mountain tops) mixed with fruit juice and sometimes milk, and they were strictly reserved for the very rich.  Luckily, we don't have to be Roman royalty to try making our version!

In order to make ice cream at home, you will need:

300 ml semi-skimmed milk

1 tablespoon caster sugar

1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract

1kg ice cubes (that's a lot of ice cubes - you can buy them ready frozen from a supermarket or just fill up a lot of ice trays at home!)

6 tablespoons salt

2 medium zip lock freezer bags

1 very large zip lock freezer bag

Sticky tape

Sprinkles and ice cream sauce, to serve.

Method:

1.    Put the milk, sugar and vanilla into a medium zip lock bag, and tape up the seal.  

2.    Put this bag of ingredients into the second medium sized zip lock bag, and tape up the seal again.

3.     Tip the ice and salt into the large zip lock bag, and then place the doubled up ingredients bags inside.  Seal the large bag with sticky tape as well.  

4.    Now for the fun bit: you have to keep the bag moving for 15 minutes!  You can keep turning it over in your hands and shaking it, or if you are outside, you can play catch with it (carefully!). Your hands will get quite chilly so you might need to pop your winter gloves on to protect them.

5.    Keep moving the bag until you notice the milk is starting to thicken and freeze - this usually takes about 15 minutes but you might need to keep going for a bit longer.

6.    When the ice cream is ready, carefully remove it from the bags - make sure you don't get the salty, icy water in it as that would be disgusting!  The ice cream won't be as solid as the ice cream that you buy in the shops, but it is still very tasty as well as being fun to make.  Decorate your ice cream with sprinkles and sauce, and eat it quickly before it melts!

Buon appetito!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Mrs Vaqueiro

Thursday 2nd July

Good morning everyone!

How did you get on with the Archimedes Puzzle?  I hope you enjoyed creating some different shapes and maybe challenging your family too.

Today I've got another challenge for you!  You might remember earlier in the school year, when we are all still in the classroom, we began to learn how to program a computer using code.  We began by using the Minecraft Coding game, and then a few weeks ago I shared a link to Star Wars coding.  Now I have a different coding activity for you to try.

Here is a link to the Scratch coding website.  You can use Scratch to create different backgrounds and to write a program commanding a character to do different things.  You can write your own cartoon or set challenges for your family.  Begin with the tutorials so you can get to grips with the basics, and then enjoy playing around with it!

Have fun, and I'll be back tomorrow with another one of our '50 Things to Do at Swan Lane' - to give you a clue, it's the one you were all most disappointed to miss out on!

Best wishes,

Mrs Vaqueiro