Year 4 got up close and personal with volcanoes today! We used Google Cardboard to explore different volcanoes and their surroundings. We identified physical features, volcanic activity and the after effects.  It was amazing.

“Awesome! I’m falling” Year 4 boy.

“Agghhh! Look at that” Year 4 girl.

“It feels like I’m there!” Year 4 pupil.

This inspired us to create our own volcanic art work.

We also heard all about a real volcano from a primary source in school, who witnessed an active volcano in Greece.

What a fantastic day!

90 year ago, Billesley School was founded and it was a very different place. We spent Friday exploring this change and how to make our school even better through a series of P4C based activities which culminated in us sharing our work with other classes. Also, we had our annual spelling bee!

On Thursday, Year 4 delved into the world of Salvador Dali. We learned all about his style and what he was influenced by. We discussed his work during a P4C session and finally we created our own version of one of his paintings. Also we were treated to a series of Shakespeare’s plays performed by year 5.

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The Year 4 Spelling Bee Champion for 2016 is… Maryam Elahi!

Well done Maryam! You are a Superstar Speller! All the children and teachers in Year 4 (especially Mrs. Qamar!) are VERY proud of you!

A very BIG well done also to the runners up, Zahid and Hamza for doing their very best in front of the whole of Year 3 and 4!

(Maryam showing off her trophy!) 🙂

Last week, James from the school canteen showed us how to create our own salads. We got to taste the different salad ingredients and talk about which ones we would include in our own salads.

Once we had planned and drawn out what we wanted in our own healthy salad, we got a chance to make it! We were very, very, very excited about making our own salads and getting to take them home to eat, especially after enjoying the demonstration with James.

Some of us decided that we wanted onions, some of us decided we wanted carrots, some of us wanted extra cheese and beetroot! Everyone planned their own individual, tasty salad, ready to make the next day with fresh, tasty ingredients!

Finally we got to create our tasty salads from a selection of delicious ingredients. We loved every bit of it, from choosing what we wanted to include to grating our own carrots. We made sure we were being hygienic by washing our hands before and after making our salads. We also got to taste different ingredients to see if we wanted to add anything we hadn’t tried before.

This week Year 4 returned to visit Yardley Wood Library!

Once we arrived, we had a lovely story read to us by the Librarian about a little boy whose younger brother who was really an alien!

As we looked around, we could see displays on Anne Frank and World War 2… by Billesley Primary School children!

We chose new books- some of us didn’t have library cards made last time, so we brought our (filled in) application forms with us and got our cards made. Then the hunt was on for the perfect book…

We chose some fantastic books to take home and we knew exactly where to take them to get them signed out.

We also found some amazing information books AND story books which were to do with our ANCIENT GREECE topic! Wow! There were Greek Myth story books and a particular favourite… Percy Jackson!

The sun shone brightly as we walked back to school joyfully carrying fantastic our new books! We can’t wait to start reading them!

Over the next few days Stan’s cafe are going to be working with year 4 to help us develop our understanding of cams and moving parts. 4M Had a brilliant day on Friday creating their own moving toys with the help of Benny! We learned lots of new things and had so much fun in the process! The rest of year 4 are very excited to have a go a creating their own wonderful toys.

We started off by thinking about how things can move. We even had a go at being gears inside a machine!

After that we experimented with gears and cams to see how things move.

Finally we created our own moving toys using cams and what we had learned.

Year 4 had a FANTASTIC Chinese Celebration Day today! There were lots of fantastic activities, excitement, chinese music and smiles all around. We have loved learning about Ancient China in Topic and had waited all week (since the ACTUAL Chinese New Year on Monday!) to celebrate.

So here it is! We’ll let the pictures do all the talking!!!

First off… Our fantastic chinese hats and lanterns for our Morning Parade! Our hats were a choice of an Emperor, a Monkey or a Chinese child. See if you can spot them…

Then we got ready for our Morning Parade! We all lined up as a year group, took hold of our drums and walked around the school grounds. e loved this as we got to shout out ‘Kung Hei Fat Choi to Mrs. Lune and Mrs. Williams- who were mega shocked at how fantastic we looked!

In the afternoon, we had a special visitor from a Martial Arts Academy in Birmingham. He was our ‘Sensei’- our teacher. We talked about the use of martial arts for self-defence as well as for discipline and composure. We were all intrigued by our Sensei as he taught us martial arts moves, body posture and foot work.

Towards the end of the session, we bowed to our ‘Sensei’, which shows respect and thanks. We also bowed to our partners to show our respect for them!

After returning to our classrooms we began making our fantastic Chinese Dragon puppets using our hand prints while listening to calming chinese music. We made some outstanding, colourful fire-breathing dragons!

Alas! It was the end of the day and the start of the half term holidays! We all had a memorable, fun-filled day and look forward to learning more about Ancient China after the half term holidays! 🙂

This morning five of our Fantastic Footballers went with Mr. Deakin and Mr. Foster to the Birmingham Futsal Centre to play in a competition. They really looked the part in their brilliant football uniforms… better than any professional team I have ever seen! We wish them the best of luck today! Good Luck! Make Billesley proud! 🙂

Year 4 had a fantastic time at Birmingham Cathedral yesterday morning. We are learning about Christianity in R.E, so we got a chance to ask lots of questions from the Reverend, the Vicar and the guides! This was truly an eye-opening experience as the Cathedral has just celebrated its 300th anniversary and had been recently renovated. We were especially drawn to the beautiful stained glass windows depicting the life of Jesus from his birth to his ascension to the Heavens. The children behaved extremely well and asked some fantastic, interesting questions to help them further with their research on Christianity.

We got a chance to Baptise a baby doll- who we Christened ‘Daniel’. His forehead was sprinkled in holy water from the font and we were shown how the sign of the cross was made on the baby’s forehead to welcome it into the Church. We also got to dress up as the parents and god-parents!