Senses Garden Club

The Senses Garden at school has long been in need of some TLC, so our new club members are going to be working hard to get it back to its former glory. We plan to weed all the overgrown areas, repaint the fences and benches, replenish the bird feeders and add new smells and sounds to the garden with wind-chimes and fragrant shrubs.
Here are this term’s club members hard at work!

Our senses garden also has a beautiful (but sadly broken) water feature. If any parents would like to volunteer to investigate the cause or fix it for us, it would be most appreciated!

Inspired by Hockney

As part of ‘Take One Picture’ the whole school has been inspired by work from David Hockney.
In Goshawks they have been creating trees from wire and beads after looking at some of his work which includes trees.

The Eagles class have been using their iPads to create photo collages in the style of Hockney’s work. Their first attempts show real promise – look out for a large-scale photo collage outside the Eagles class soon!

Art club

The children at art club were painting flowers today, using fine brush strokes and water colours.

Spring has Sprung

Spring is well and truely here – this group of girls have been busy creating ‘record breaking’ daisy chains!

Let’s go fly a kite…

As part of our whole school topic on ‘Weather and the Seasons’, the Peregrines have been thinking about windy weather and what fun it can be. Today the Peregrines all made their own paper kites, then took them out to the school field to test them.

Gastrells’ D&T Expo

School was brimming with expectant parents and excited children during our annual Design and Technology Expo this afternoon. Each class had very different examples of how children had applied their knowledge and skills in D&T.

The Owls had designed and made spectacular spectacles and used their sewing skills to make hand puppets.

The Peregrines had designed pumpkin coaches for Cinderella with working wheels and axles.

Ospreys Class had designed batik African animals, sewn snowman puppets and even cooked paella (it must have been yummy as it was all gone before I could get a picture!).

The Sparrowhawks had also been using batik to make Australian designs, and had used their woodworking skills to make Roman-style ballistas.

Goshawks Class had designed and made ear defenders to suit a variety of noisy professions!

Eagles Class had used the school’s new iPads to design and make their own working computer games.

The afternoon was a great opportunity to show off all the hard work that children and teachers put in to making D&T at Gastrells extra special. Thanks to everyone who helped and to all our visitors who came to look around the expo.

Signs of Spring

It may have been a dull day weather-wise, but the Peregrines ventured out to find some of the colourful clues that Spring is really here. As we searched around the field, we found lots of spring flowers and learnt their names, as well as looking for buds on tree-branches, blossom and catkins.