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

• Year 2 Titanic trip

  Fri 29 Apr 2022

  Today the year 2's had an exciting trip to the Sea City Museum  in Southampton. This was to help launch our Iceberg Ahead topic, which is all about the Titanic. 

  We got to hear an exciting talk around the museum where we learnt all about life onboard the Titanic. We learnt lots of impressive facts so we hope the children share them with you at home. We also had a workshop where we took part in various activities. These included looking at artefacts, guessing different smells from the Titanic, discovering how the compartments flooded in the Titanic and trying to decide who should be on the lifeboats. After lunch we then got to explore the museum further where we had a go at steering the ship and even got to sit in a real jury room where the Titanic enquiry took place. 

  The children blew the staff away with their engagement in all the tasks and how well they were able to recall the facts. They really were a credit to the school. 

  

• Stone Farm - final morning!

  Fri 29 Apr 2022

  Wow! What an adventure we have had! Last night was SOOOOO much fun with the games evening. The hay maze was a hit and the adults couldn't resist having a race through. We played table football, ping pong and enjoying spending time as Applestone and Farmhouse.

   

  This morning, we woke nice and early to pack our bags and make sure our dorm rooms were ship shape before loading them onto the coach. Miss Hanafin and Miss Grove could barely believe their eyes (or ears!) as the whole process was quick, smooth, easy and quiet. Possibly our quickest 'get packed' morning ever! We showed our Great Binfields value of cooperation in helping to make sure we all packed our own things into our cases and didn't leave anything behind (hopefully)! Today was pancakes for breakfast! Delicious, we couldn't decide between golden syrup or lemon and sugar being our favourite topping. 

   

  We are getting ready to wave goodbye to the farm animals this morning with sadness but with huge smiles! The sun is shining for us again, just as it did when we arrived. We are all so happy to have had such an amazing time getting to know them all. On our way home, we are planning to stop at the beautiful Lydford where we will walk down a steep hill amongst lush, green forest. At the bottom we hope to discover a magical waterfall and loved listening to the sounds and watching it splash at the bottom. 

   

  The whole Year 4 team are incredibly proud of our Y4 children. Residentials always feel a little nerve-wracking, particularly this year after the last 2 years of spending more time at home with families than ever. But wow, these children have been absolute super stars. They have been kind, respectful, supportive, engaged, polite, enthusiastic, cooperative and so much more. Everyone has tried new things, whether that is a new dinner meal, rock pooling, holding an animal or even just sharing a room with friends, and everyone has been bold, brave and brilliant. We know that the children have enjoyed building on their existing relationships with friends but also building budding new friendships that will carry on once we return home. The adults have also really enjoyed getting to know a new side of the children, enjoying dinner time discussions and coach time conversations. It has been a real pleasure to go away on with our Y4s and we hope their adults at home are incredibly proud - a real credit to you all!

   

  As ever, we are very grateful to the whole team at Stone Farm for providing us with such a brilliant week. The food, the farm duties and all the organisation has been fab. Equally, we are super grateful to the staff team (Miss Heath, Mrs Tomkins, Mrs Lowe, Mrs Clarke, Mr Wood and Mrs Fox) who have left their families for the week too so that they can join us here at the farm. How lucky we are at Great Binfields to have such a positive, fun-loving team to come away with us. I think they may be sleeping this whole bank holiday weekend now though! And of course, we are very grateful to Miss Lyddon who, even though she had to stay back at school, has ensured everything is organised and sorted for us to enjoy. 

   

  Now for the BIG coach journey home. Perhaps there will be some snoozing along the way ....

  

• Stone Farm - Day Three

  Thu 28 Apr 2022 Y4 team

  We woke up bright and early ready for farm duties again, we love meeting the owl and visiting the beautiful lake to feed the ducks. Afterwards, we have our delicious breakfast, there's so much choice and variety and lots of excited chatter about our upcoming day. 

   

  This morning we got on the bus and headed down to the beach! We were met by the fantastic education team from Plymouth aquarium who showed us all the rock pools and how to look for all the different sea creatures. We loved splashing around in the sunshine even though it was a little windy! We saw lots of crabs and other creatures and found out that some of us were actually super impressive rock poolers! We loved seeing the children's excitement and curiosity whilst also displaying our value of cooperation when working together to scour the rock pools.

   

  We hopped back onto the coach and headed off to the aquarium. We ate our packed lunch, today the favourite sandwich filling was jam! After lunch we got to explore the aquarium. The tour was very interactive and we learnt lots along the way. In the centre there is a huge tank filled with an enormous variety of incredible and huge fish and sharks! We even got to walk through a tunnel amongst all the marine life which was completely breath taking! We saw turtles, jelly fish and so much more. 

   

  After getting the coach home it was time for farm duties again. Brushing the pony and mucking out the pigs amongst other farm jobs! To our delight, some more of the chicks have hatched and we have enjoyed giving them names. This evening, we are looking forward to enjoying the games room - something we have been looking forward to all week. We will also be squeezing in some time to tidy our rooms and start packing our bags ahead of our last day tomorrow. 

  

• Stone Farm - Day Two

  Wed 27 Apr 2022 Y4 team

  What another lovely day we have had here at Stone Farm. We started the day our farm duties that we carried out exceptionally well. The rabbits appear to be a firm favourite so far! We might even get to see some baby bunnies arriving soon. We then enjoyed a hearty breakfast, with our servers making sure they got everyone's orders and requests in correctly.

   

  We then made our way onto our coach with Kev the driver and took the journey to Eden project. We loved looking at the beautiful Devon countryside along the way. Once we arrived at Eden, we were absolutely amazed at the scale of the big biome domes - lots of us had looked at the Eden project before we went on the trip and it was a lovely moment to see it in person. 

   

  We enjoyed some free time exploring in our groups looking at all of the amazing gardens, before stopping for our tasty lunch. We order our lunches the night before and Stone Farm kindly pack them up for us. The top sandwich filling choice so far has been ham! After lunch, we met our discovery centre leader who taught us some WOW facts about the amazing plants and wildlife. We learnt about the jobs of plants and this links fantastically to our previous and future Science learning. Miss Canfield, our Science leader at Great Binfields, will be very impressed with the knowledge we gained. We explored the rainforest biome (we have a rainforest topic coming up in Y5, handy!) and got a little hot and sweaty as we made our way through.

   

  The day doesn't stop there! We came home to the farm for more farm duties with the animals. Then, onto dinner with a tasty choice of Jacket potatoes and a variety of fillings or lasagne. We love how great the food is here at Stone farm and what we love even more, is how polite and courteous our children always are. 

   

  To finish off our jam packed day we are heading into the big barn now to watch the Falconry display. We get to see lots of incredible birds of prey up close swooping among us! It is a truly breath taking experience. We will head to bed after story time, ready for another exciting day at Stone Farm! 

  

• Stone Farm - Day One

  Tue 26 Apr 2022 Y4 team

  Our first day has been a real success. The sun was shining for us as we left Great Binfields and made our way down to Devon. The coach was full of catching up chats after the Easter break as well as conversations about what was to be in store for us over the coming days. Even those of us who felt a little bit nervous were soon caught up in the buzz of excitement and enjoyed the journey down to the farm. We feel very proud of our Y4s as we know this residential trip is a very big step!

   

  We arrived at Buckfast Abbey and enjoyed walking around the beautiful grounds in the sunshine and learning more about the Monks during the exhibition. We met brother Daniel who gave us a thorough and detailed discussion about what it is like to be a monk. The children blew us away with their insightful and thought provoking questions such as 'What inspired you to be a monk?' and 'What is the best thing about being a monk?'. This was a fantastic opportunity for us all! We had a lovely group photo that lots of the children recognised from seeing pictures of previous cohorts attending the farm. 

   

  After a great afternoon at the Abbey, we boarded the coach again and made our way down to the farm. Here we met the wonderful Stone Farm family team who gave us a tour of all buildings, the different areas and animals that live on the farm. This was a very exciting time as it was the moment we have all been looking forward to for many weeks now. The children were amazed by the huge amount of land and space - it was a joy to see. The children’s faces when they first set eyes on the chickens, rabbits and other farm animals were just brilliant! Despite all the excitement, the children have made fantastic first impressions on the Stone Farm team and everyone has shown the value of respect and cooperation throughout our first day.

   

  Tomorrow we look forward to our first day out in Devon - keep your eyes peeled for our next update. 

  

• Lights, Camera ... torches!

  Thu 07 Apr 2022

  Year 4 have been enjoying a real DT focus this week. On Monday, they worked in small groups to effectively measure the card components of their torches. Today, they read the two audience profile briefs and thought of how they could target that market with their design. They thought carefully about the colours, images and font style they would use to best attract their audience. They then applied their design to their final products, using careful measurements in order to ensure the sizing was correct. In the afternoon, it was time to jump into the learning pit and piece together the electrical components to get the torch to work. Lots of team work and resilience was needed to complete this stage. We are super proud of what the Y4s have created and hope they are too.

  

• Easter Service and Spring Festivals

  Wed 06 Apr 2022

  Yesterday, we had the pleasure of welcoming Reverend Jonathan to school, via Zoom, who led our Easter Service. 

  Jonathan shared with us the Christian story of Easter and we listened to some fantastic songs too. 

  All the children were in awe of one particular song, which was a rewording of a famous pop song that retold the Easter story. 

   

  The whole school then spent the day learning about other festivals that occur around the world in Spring. Year 2 learnt about the festival of Holi and year 1 drew beautiful abstract flowers, as they had been learning about The Tulip Festival in the USA. Year 4 looked at the celebrations in  Bulgaria called Baba Marta and made Martenisa, whilst Year 3 discovered the how Thailand celebrate their New Year with the festival of Songkran. 

   

  All of the children had a fabulous day!

  

• Let's Go Fly A Kite!

  Tue 05 Apr 2022

  As part of their Design and Technology learning over the last few weeks, Year 1 have been designing and making kites. They have looked at suitable materials, learned how to join the different parts and designed super colourful kites. Today was the final stage when they made a diamond shaped kite. This involved listening carefully to instructions, working cooperatively step by step and demonstrating perseverance when it got a little tricky! Then they all had a wonderful time flying their kites on the field. It was lovely to see the exuberance and delight on the children’s faces as they raced around with the kites swooping, twirling and diving behind them!

  

• Year 4 Easter trail at Christ Church

  Tue 05 Apr 2022

  Yesterday, the Year 4s were lucky enough to be invited down to Christ Church to take part in their Easter trail. The team at Christ Church set up an interesting, interactive trail that shared the key points of the Easter story in great detail, allowing the children to think and ask questions about each stage. The children were able to engage with the various items on display and were even able to contribute to the trail in the form of adding wooden hearts to the tree, to show the love shared between God and Christians, and adding flowers to the cross.

   

  Despite the drizzly weather, the children represented the school wonderfully and listened respectfully and calmly in a very special place. We are very grateful for the ongoing support from Christ Church. 

  

• Year 4 Geography in our grounds

  Fri 01 Apr 2022

  This half term, our Year 4s have been working extremely hard in our Lights, Camera, Action topic. In Geography, we have been working to answer the question 'How accurate are movie settings?' and to explore this, we have been thinking about Encanto and Colombia. We have seen wonderful accuracies in the human and physical features in our learning so far and we are looking forward to extending this into next half term. In Art, we have been working on our photography skills, thinking about angles, space and focus. We decided to combine these two sessions and we took our very own Mirabels (a character from Encanto) out into our school grounds. The job of our Y4 children was to use their photography skills to take interesting and well thought out photos that highlighted how different our local Geography is to that of the Geography in Encanto.

   

  The child had to get into all sorts of positions to capture the right angle and we heard lots of conversations about where to position Mirabel - in the centre third or off to the side? Initially, the weather was gloomy but the sun soon came out for us and we were left with the challenge of using the light effectively in our photos.

   

  We will be using these images next week in Geography. A great session had by all, exploring the wonderful grounds of Great Binfields.