Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.

• Soul Spaces - Art Festival Exhibition

  Fri 24 May 2019 Mrs Harvey

  The last week of half term has been a busy and exciting one for us here at Great Binfields, it was our annual Art Festival. This year the theme was Soul Spaces and this allowed the children to image a place that makes them feel so relaxed, happy and makes them say 'Wow!' Where was your Soul Space? Did this change over the week?

  The children completed Art activities based around this theme and got to experience new skills and techniques. A real highlight was getting to partake in carousel activities and getting to work with different staff throughout the school.

   

  During the festival we were also lucky to have Mrs Lowe and a her team visit us at school. They worked with our Year 6 children to and transformed our Forest Schools room into our own Soul Space. It was extremely popular amongst our children.

   

  We were also visited by local artist Alison Clement who worked with our Year 4 children to create a stunning water canvas. This piece is displayed in the the Year 4 shared area, if you get a chance please pop by and have a look!

   

  On Friday we then held our magnificent exhibition where all of the work completed throughout the week was displayed around the school. It was a real success and delight to see the effort that everyone had put into the week and a great turnout by our school community - thank you everyone that attended. I particularly enjoyed seeing the creativity and uniqueness that the children put into their Soul Space home learning, well done to those who completed this activity.   Did you have a favourite piece of work on display at the exhibition? 

   

  Finally I would like to say a huge thank you to all our staff, volunteers and children for making this Art Festival another memorable highlight for us at school.

  

• Year 6 SATs Treat

  Fri 17 May 2019 Mrs Osborne
  This morning, Year 6 were visited by Falconry UK who delivered a fantastic and very informative bird show. Each child got to hold one of the birds and were even lucky enough to meet a fluffy baby owl! As well as this, they got to dissect owl pellets which were full of bones and feathers from yesterday’s dinner! Take a look at the photos to see how much fun they all had! 

  

• Ash Class Golden Trail Treat

  Fri 17 May 2019 Miss Hanafin
  A big well done to the wonderful Ash Class who have completed their Golden Trail this half term. They have definitely earned their reward with all the effort, determination and hard work they have put into their learning. It has been lovely watch the children playing together, sharing toys and games and being imaginative with what they do. We even enjoyed a couple of sweet treats as an extra well done! 

  

• Year 3 and 4 Totally Tennis Competition

  Tue 07 May 2019 Miss Lyddon

  Two teams of mixed Year 3 and 4 children represented Great Binfields in the Basingstoke Totally Tennis Tournament. There were 24 teams altogether from many schools across Basingstoke.  The children played singles matches and some children from Costello school helped score the matches.

   

  Miss Lyddon and Miss Crossley were really impressed with the children's behaviour and level of team spirit. All children played really well!

   

  Although Great Binfields didn't make it through to the quarter finals, we still had a great day. Thank you to the 8 children who took part.

  

• Year Four Detective Work

  Tue 07 May 2019 Miss Hanafin and Miss Grove

  As part of our Lights Camera Action topic, Year Four have been doing some detective work today. They heard a story about some suspicious happenings that took place in a local theatre - a range of valuable jewellery was taken from the prop safe from inside of the theatre and is nowhere to be found! The total worth of the jewellery is in the range of £50,000 - £100,000! Four suspects have been named, including the theatre owner, a rival theatre owner, an up and coming actress and an ex-director. The children had to read through a range of evidence sources including some audio recordings taken from the suspects and use their inference skills to form a judgement on who they think did it. They also had to browse the suspect profiles to think about their motives and opportunities, all while justifying their thoughts to their peers. Whilst all of this was happening, they sketched pictures of what was stolen and had their finger prints taken by Detective Ellis. There are lots of theories going around the detective team.. some very detailed and curious minds at work!

   

  Over the next two weeks, the children will be writing their suspense stories about who they think did it and how they did it before the truth is revealed by Detective Grove and Detective Hanafin.

   

  

• Totally Tennis!

  Fri 03 May 2019

  In our Outdoor PE sessions this half term, Year 5 will experience a totally awesome opportunity from the Totally Tennis coaching company. Today the children had their first session where they worked on their forehand technique, coordination and footwork. We loved the exciting and creative games. Take a look at some of the pictures to see how they got on.

  

• Love of ‘The Wonders of the World’ Day

  Wed 01 May 2019 Ms Rogers

  Today our children looked closely and thought deeply about the following question: What makes our world so wonderful? 

  Love of Days are a special part of our whole school curriculum here at GBP. Each one has special foci. This time we were focusing on the social, spiritual and cultural aspects. 

  The day started with a launch assembly where the children were encouraged to use and think about their senses to explore the beauty of our world. We also explained that our children will feel surprise, curiosity, amazement, excitement and will experience beauty as well as awe and wonder throughout the day. We shared photos of some of the most beautiful places on Earth and we agreed that all of these wonderful places, scenes and experiences can take our breath away and are awaiting for us to explore them!

  The children then went back to their classrooms to discover The 7 Wonders of the World. Check out this video clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_00CC7BIHhg. Whilst watching this clip, our children secretly wrote down their favourite 3 ‘New Wonders of the World’ and discussed why this was the case.

  The children dived deep to answer many of the following questions throughout the day.

  • Why are these places so special?

  • How do they make you feel? Why?

  • Why do they need to be protected?

  • Why do they need to be explored?

  • How can we share them?

  • How are they protected?

  • Why do they make us feel happy?

  • Why do we feel peaceful at some of these places?

  • How do they make us whisper when when we are there?

  • Why do our eyes widen in surprise and make us say wow??

  • Why do they make us emotional and make you tingle down your spine?

   

  We didn't want to focus on what is bad about our world... there is too much bad press about it currently. We wanted our children to only hear positive things about it. So our whole school made a pact to only be positive….Yes, some people believe that the world isn’t a nice place…but we we were going to prove to everyone that our world is wonderful!!

   

  In addition to the 7 Wonders of the world, we discovered that there are actually many different types of wonders of the World…

  • Natural,

  • Religious,

  • Ancient Wonders,

  • Wonders of Medieval and Early Modern Architecture,

  • Modern Architecture,

  • Wonders of Engineering

  • …..and Human Wonders too.

   

  Each year group in our school looked deeply into one of these sections and took part in various activities linked to this.  With their partner class, our children shared their learning with each other at the end of the afternoon. Our children successfully taught each other something new. All of our children tried to think of something positive to say about what was being shared. All children were asked to think of an open ended question to ask like: Why do you think that? How did you end up thinking that? How did you find that out? The children talked about how they felt about today’s 'Love of Day' focus.

  They also answered some of the following questions at the end of the day: 

  • If you had the chance to travel anywhere in the world tomorrow – where would you want to go?

  • Discuss why it is important to love our world and explore it.

  Our Teachers and LSAs helped the children sum up the special day by sharing and reading some of the quotes found about our wonders of world made by famous people, etc. The children explained their thoughts. Back in the children's own classes – they listened to 'What a wonderful world' by Louis Armstrong. Here is the link if you want to listen to this famous song too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=21LGv8Cf0us. Our children reflected on the lyrics outlined below:

   

  I see trees of green, red roses too
  I see them bloom for me and you
  And I think to myself what a wonderful world
  I see skies of blue and clouds of white…

  I see trees of green, red roses too
  I see them bloom for me and you
  And I think to myself what a wonderful world

  I see skies of blue and clouds of white
  The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
  And I think to myself what a wonderful world

  The colours of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
  Are also on the faces of people going by
  I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do
  They're really saying I love you

  I hear babies crying, I watch them grow
  They'll learn much more than I'll never know
  And I think to myself what a wonderful world
  Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world

   

  A final reflection was had at the end of the day and our children found out what a soul space was:

   

  Your own wonderful and special space or place

  Somewhere you feel so, so, so happy

  Somewhere magical

  Somewhere that makes you feel safe

  Somewhere that makes you go ‘wow’

  Somewhere that makes you peaceful!

   

  We asked: Could one of the places you have seen today be a future soul space for you or do you have one place that is already incredibly special to you? Our teachers chose some lovely relaxation music… and the children were asked to take themselves to one of the wonders of the world they had seen .. or take themselves to a special place that they love to go to regularly… This is their own special soul space.

  This day was remarkably special for us all and will link to our forthcoming Art Festival Week as the theme is going to be ‘Soul Spaces’. Watch this space and I hope your children came home and told you all about this Love of Day. 

   

  

• Year 4 swimming

  Wed 01 May 2019 Miss Hanafin and Miss Grove

  We are so proud of year 4 and their excellent effort and values they demonstrated today during their first swimming class. All the children had a go at practising some different swimming techniques and were very excited to be in the pool. There were lots of happy faces and proud children who tried their best. The children did an excellent job of representing Great Binfields out and about on the way to the swimming pool. The swimming instructors also commented what a wonderful and confident cohort they are. Don't forget to share with your families what we got up to.

   

  Overall the morning went swimmingly!