Malawi Day

Sue Eagle and Carol Champion came to speak to the school about Malawi. We will be sending some information about ourselves to our partner school, the Chisiri School in Malawi, and they will be returning information to us.

We started the day by being measured and while Mr Porter was doing this the children coloured in African designs for a display.

We then played an African game, Mancala...

... and then we had a go at making our own!

Here are the rules:

Carol and Sue came into Class 3 to share some of their experiences and knowledge about Africa, Malawi and Chisiri.

Checheywa is the language in Malawi and we learnt some new words...

Muli Bwanji - how are you?

Ndili Bwino - I'm fine!

Kaya Enu - how about you?

Zicomo - thank you

People in Malawi shake hands in a special way when they greet each other. They also sing a lot and use rhythm. We sang our greetings to each other.

Sue and Carol talked to us about what children in Malawi have to do before they go to school. Girls have to collect water, boys collect wood for the fire and mothers make porridge. Most places don't have electricity. A lot of trees have been cut down for fire wood. Children sit on the floor at primary school and children at secondary school have metal desks which can't be taken away and used for firewood. 

Children in Malawi look at the floor to show respect, not into their teacher's eyes. We had a go at sweeping the floor, Malawian style. 

Then we had a look at lots of Malawian objects.

What an interesting morning!

Animal Presentations

Today we started listening to everyone's presentations about animals. Everyone listened really well and asked interesting questions.

We learnt about pandas who are blind when they are born -  they eat bamboo and sometimes small animals and birds.

Leopards are the strongest of the big cats and they sometimes take their prey and young up into trees to keep them safe from other predators. They can run at speeds of up to 58 km per hour! 

Tigers are the largest big cat and can kill prey up to twice their size. They are carnivores and sometimes eat snakes! They live to 10-15 years of age and are endangered and several species are now extinct.

The blob fish is a deep sea fish that lives 2,000-3,900 feet deep in the ocean around Australia and New Zealand. It is gelatinous - 90% water - and shrivels up when exposed to the air. It was voted the ugliest animal in the world! It is nearly extinct and The Blues Brothers thought it came from outer space!

Guinea pigs come from South America and will eat any plants and vegetables they can find. They only sleep for around 4 hours a day and their eyes stay open when they do so they can watch out for danger. We learnt about how guinea pigs do pop-corning too!

Capybaras are the largest rodent species in the world. They can make lots of different noises and are quite big - the size of a big dog. They eat mainly grass and plants.

We were really impressed by the quality of the presentations and the range of animals that were chosen, well done. 

Election Results!

Mr King told us about the results of the General Election - it looks as though The Conservative Party has won.

Mr King showed us a bar chart with the results of the school election; interestingly, The Conservatives won in Bressingham as well and UKIP got the least number of votes.

Food Groups.

Last week Class 3 wrote about food groups and discussed nutrition and diet. The display shows some of their work and you can see which types of food fall into which category.

Can you see where the following foods fit on the diagram?

The Life Cycle of a Frog

Mrs Andrew mounted a display in our classroom showing the life cycle of a frog. Do you know where she got the photographs from?

Adventure Writing Display

Here is the new display Mrs Andrew put up in our classroom using the phrases children decorated last week.

The silhouettes were drawn using profiles of children from Class 3. Can you see who they are?

The General Election at Bressingham!

This morning we had an assembly about the General Election.

Members of staff represented the different main parties in England. The children will be able to vote for their favourite on their ballot form on Thursday, Election Day.

Mrs Fisher took the part of Natalie Bennett leader of the Green Party.

Mr Porter represented Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party.

Mrs Segovia represented David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party.

Miss Jones represented Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats.

Mrs Andrew represented Ed Milliband, leader of the Labour Party.

Who was your favourite? Who do you think will win? 

DON'T FORGET TO VOTE!

Our Garden

Today we started work on our garden plot.

This is what the plot looked like before we started...

There were lots of weeds and also netting left over from last year. We started to weed the patch and this is what it looked like afterwards:

A great improvement thanks to our enthusiastic gardeners!