Forest School Sessions

15th May 2023Adam Hodges

Western Park have had a brilliant start to their Forest School sessions. The children have been busy planting and creating objects from natural materials as well as playing games such as ‘123 where are you’ and ‘ladybirds’.

Pupils have used the tools: palm drills, loppers and bowsaws. For each tool they learnt a tool talk so they can be used safely and learnt the ways in which these tools can be used. They used the palm drills to drill holes for their woodland necklaces, they used loppers to chop wood to make frames and used bow saws to make ‘log dogs’.

The children have also learnt ‘square lashing’ and have applied this skill to make scarecrows and frames. Pupils learnt about the Japanese art of Hapa Zome and created beautiful pieces of art using leaf dye. They have had to apply their maths skills of measuring as well as their art skills of colour to create these pieces.

Throughout the sessions the children have shown brilliant REACH IT skills, especially their resilience and teamwork skills. We are incredibly proud of how hard the children have worked during their Forest School sessions and look forward to our future sessions!

Coronation Celebration

9th May 2023Adam Hodges

It was lovely to see so many parents supporting the Year 6s during the open afternoon.Ā  Everyone worked really hard on decorating their coronation nets.

At the end of the week, the children used their completed nets to create a carry case for their coronation cup cakes – which were delicious!

Let’s hope that King Charles III had as much fun on his special day as we did.

World Earth Day 2023

24th April 2023Adam Hodges

The theme for World Earth Day 2023 was “Invest In Our Planet”. To celebrate this, on Friday 21st April, the Eco-Ambassadors went to City Hall in Leicester for a Plastic Clever Schools Conference. The conference was the first of its kind, providing schools the opportunity to start their journey towards reducing single use plastics!

During the day, the ambassadors learnt a lot about single use plastics and started to develop a campaign to reduce plastic in our school community.

If you have any ideas on how we could reduce single use plastics at BFPA, please let the Eco-Ambassadors know at [email protected]

Ā 

We Are Conservationists

17th April 2023Adam Hodges

Year 4 pupils recently took on a Real LiFE mission to become conservationists.Ā 

The children visited the forest school area to find out the school grounds’ habitat. Year 4 also worked with Earthwatch to plant over 600 trees and shrubs which will create a tiny forest within our school grounds.

Our Real LiFE Missions link childrenā€™s learning across the curriculum and in Year 4 Design and Technology, the children have enjoyed designing and building bug hotels in their mini-crews. They had to use many of the REACH-IT attributes in order to successfully achieve the goal together.

The Year 4 pupils brought their computer learning to LiFE by creating Blogs about their Real LiFE Mission. A blog, short for weblog, is a frequently updated web page used for personal commentary or business content.

Our Real LiFE Conservationist Mission has allowed Year 4 children to become advocates for the protection of our local habitats by all taking part in a showcase event where the children shared their learning with their parents/carers.

When the parents of Year 4 came to the showcase event, they were impressed by the childrenā€™s passion about being conservationists and protecting local habitats.

Year 1 Storytellers

17th April 2023Adam Hodges

Children in Year 1 recently took on a REAL LiFE mission to become storytellers. They thought of different ways they could entertain their community and watched a puppet show for inspiration.Ā 

The children then prepared for their Teddy Bearsā€™ Picnic by filming themselves making sandwiches. Afterwards they edited their films on iMovie, snipping their clips and adding a voice over.

To further prepare for their REAL LiFE mission of becoming Storytellers, Year 1 children worked hard in DT to join fabrics and create their own puppets ready for their show which was performed to parents/carers who visited the school.

After the performance children shared their knowledge of animals and how they made their glove puppets with the grown ups.

Eco Ambassadors

27th March 2023Adam Hodges

Our Eco Ambassadors recently met with Liz Kendall (who is Labour MP for Leicester West) to showcase the work we have been doing so far this year. She enjoyed learning about our aims to improve biodiversity and how we are going to promote recycling at school. She even tweeted about us afterwards!

The Eco Ambassadors,

Henry, Alfie, Leroy, Sanaia, Yigit, Navin, Grace, Henos, Scarlett, Arhaan, Paige and Iona.

Climate Guardians

27th March 2023Adam Hodges

On Tuesday 21st March the children in Year 3 celebratedĀ becoming Real LiFE arborists.

They showed their families around our Tiny Forest’ and explained why trees are important. The presentation showcased their wider curriculum learning and ended with visitors planting an acorn and leaving with the knowledge of how to help all plants thrive.

Science Show

20th March 2023Adam Hodges

Did you know that if the Earth was the size of a marble, the Sun would be a 6 metre wide ball and that they would need to be a distance of 25 football pitches apart?Ā  Year 5 and 6 pupils know this because they were visited by representatives from the Royal Air Force, Royal Navy and BAE systems for an amazing Science Show that explored technology used in our deepest oceans and above us in space.

The children learnt how important communication is when you live in a submarine or a space shuttle but also played games which demonstrated how tricky that communication actually is.

We love our Science at Braunstone Frith Primary Academy so it is always nice to be able to share our enthusiasm and knowledge with visitors: they were really impressed with the questions the pupils asked – we may even have some budding engineers for the future.