Well done everyone and thank you Rachel from The Big Sing.
These are the official photos taken during the concert.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/t8R2osnG5DFEwBro8
Positivity - Respect - Effort - Partnership - Aspiration - Resilience - Enjoyment |
Last week we had the most amazing time at our Big Sing concert - we worked so hard to learn the songs and really built our confidence and positivity in working with Rachel!
Well done everyone and thank you Rachel from The Big Sing. These are the official photos taken during the concert. https://photos.app.goo.gl/t8R2osnG5DFEwBro8
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Sorry we couldn’t post much sooner, the internet at school has been down all day today so the pictures will be uploaded tomorrow.... We hope you have all recovered from our two days at Belchamps! Before I blog what we did at Belchamps, I would like to say well done to you all... All of you made it through your first residential! You were well behaved and a joy to take! We really hope you enjoyed your time as much as we did. When we arrived at Belchamps, some of you were a little worried... it was the first time being away from home for a night for a lot of our year 3s! But we sat with all our things, excited and ready for the day ahead! We didn't waste any time, as soon as the parents had departed we were put into our room groups and taken to our sleeping quarters. Those children who were sleeping in Kath Batts with Miss Mills, Miss Hood and Mrs Lockhart were taken to their cabin in the woods, while the others were taken to the Vincent Lodge. The rooms were full of bunk beds, we chose our beds and unpacked... time was tight as we had so many fun activities ahead! Once our rooms were set up, we went back to the main field ready to meet our team leader for the two days! We chose our team chants! Miss Mills’s groups shouted for Pizza where as Mrs Lockhart’s group were competitively shouting for Ice-Cream... These came in handy when it came to cheering our team or having a team chant battle! First, our team building activity... What a brilliant activity for the children to learn how to work together and be a team! I believe most groups did something a little different here, but I can explain what my group did. We were first faced with a series of ropes, we were told we had to get to the other side without touching the ropes! We tried going under it, going through the middle... but each time we lost our three lives! Then, one child thought outside the box and just walked around the outside of the poles holding the ropes up.... moral of the game, think outside the box! Next, the children were told to get a tyre from the ground and off the pole that it was on without using their hands! The first one was easy.... but soon the poles were taller than us! So it took team work and quick thinking to work our how to do it! After that we were challenged to get from one ‘rooftop’ to another, using two planks that didn’t reach each side! This one took a lot of team work and a lot of problem solving but you will have to ask the children for the answer!! Some groups were asked to get into height order without talking (which I know many found VERY hard - the not talking part anyway!). After that, we were told that we had been stranded on an island. The only way to get across was to use the three planks of wood that had washed up with us, only one was crocodile proof. As for the other two planks, if they fell into the water they were unusable! Only two children were allowed on an island at a time but they were allowed as many children on a plank as they wanted. The children in all groups really enjoyed struggling to get across to the other side, and I believe that all groups made it across. Through these activities, the children bonded with their groups and found that other activities were a lot easier now that they were working as a team. Next, it was time to be brave and climb up high. So many children were so scared before they started the climbing wall, but every single one of them made us proud. They attempted to climb as high as they could, and some pushed themselves even further than they thought they could! Every single child should be so very proud of the effort that they put into this activity and the resilience they showed in their climbing. Braving the heights and going for it, every child showed good partnership and teamwork, as they cheered on their team mates, encouraging them to ‘tickle the turtle’ at the top and help them push themselves further than they ever thought they could. We were then very brave and created our own fires! We were first taught what a fire needs to burn... test your child to see if they remember! We were taught that fires should only be lit when an adult is present to supervise, there is nothing flammable on the floor around us and we aren’t under any trees that could catch fire. We were then taken into the woods to find sticks to make the fire.. we needed to collect thumb thickness sticks, ones as thick as your pinky and hair thin sticks:... with those collected we were ready to go! #fire started us off, putting the sticks into the shape of a hashtag twice allows for oxygen to get into the fire... we then used cotton wool soaked in vaseline as fuel remembering to leave a tail so that we could light our fires safely. We then built up our fires with the other sized sticks. To light our fires we weren’t allowed to use matches! We had to be like Stone Age people and use a flint and steel... we found these rather challenging but the groups managed to get a fire lit... Once we had got the fire lit, it was our challenge to keep it alight! This was a great challenge that many of us found tricky! We were then taught how to put the fire out safely. In our free time we had lunch or dinner and played some amazing camp games! The teachers had so much fun seeing the children in a different environment, and the children very much enjoyed getting to play with all their friends. The favourite game was SPLAT! We also played some rhythm games, 'wink murder' and the old classic - duck duck goose! Our lunches and dinners were amazing! We had our own special dietitian who cooked our meals from scratch, looking at our dietary requirements and checking that we had 'balanced' our meals from the salad bar! We all tried something new - like the tortilla lasagne! Campfire time!! We had SO much fun with Our group leaders as they lit a campfire and sung us campfire songs! We stood up, we sang, we danced and we had the best time! We sang songs like ‘I hate bugs’, ‘boogaloo’, ‘the day I went to sea’... classic camp songs! The children loved singing and dancing along with the Belchamps staff. After the campfire, we were lucky and were given a hot chocolate before bed... We then went to our rooms to sleep (or not sleep). The next morning we woke up bright and early ready for a fun filled day of activities. Our breakfast was lovely, we had sausages, baked beans and toast... on top of that we had cereal, yogurts and fruit if we wanted it! We were certainly given a lot of energy for the day ahead! We got into our groups, singing our group chants ready for our next activity. Next up... water rollers or Water Zorbing ... Now, water rollers are essentially a giant hamster ball on water, and they really wore the children out!! Now the assault course was my personal favourite... I apologise to the parents of anyone in my group because our team leader was encouraging them to jump and roll in the mud as they went! They were 95% mud monsters!! The children had great fun running through the assault course, climbing over and ducking under things as well as being a commando and sliding like a snake under apparatus! Crate stacking was so much fun! The children competed against each other to see which group could get the highest! The children were told to work as a team to stack the crates... when one child fell from the wobbly tower the whole thing came crashing to the ground and the children were dangling from their ropes which they found very amusing! The children worked really well as a team during these activities and we are very proud of how high they all managed to climb working together! Over the trip all the children showed all of our school values! They were all resilient, and tried new things, be it a new food or an activity that they were scared of! They all showed good partnership, cheering on their team mates for the various activities... but most of all, they all enjoyed their time at Belchamps. We had such an amazing time that we are now writing thank you letters to Belchamps! Mrs V's maths group have learned how to use a spreadsheet to make magic squares today! What a challenge! Mrs V's maths group took the Tangram Triangle Challenge today - wow, it was tricky but we showed great resilience! It was 3M's turn to visit Rayleigh Library today to learn more about the Romans! In English today, we tried to put ourselves in the positions of different Roman or Celtic characters who may have been involved in Boudicca's rebellion. We had to consider how the events may have affected us and the decisions we may have made! We showed some brilliant speaking and listening skills! In Maths today, Mrs V's group have been learning how to create graphs, tables and charts using 2Graph! We had a lovely visit to Rayleigh Library today to help us learn more about our Romans topic. We are so lucky to have such a brilliant library in our town and Linda is always so helpful! Hopefully lots of us will take part in the Summer Reading Challenge too! Today we had Rayleigh Tennis Club come in to do a mini tournament with us! We had so much fun playing a friendly game against each other and giving tennis a try. In DT this week, we have been using the skills we learned on DT Day to design and make a Roman Chariot! We had to create a prototype first to see if it worked, make changes and then make our final product. We will test the chariots to see if they can hold a Playmobil charioteer and be pulled along by the 2 horses! |
About our blog...This blog is an ongoing record of the learning journey that the EFPS intake of 2015-16 are taking throughout their school lives at EFPS. We hope you enjoy sharing our experiences with us over the years. Please feel free to leave a positive comment on any of the posts! |