Sandal Castle VA Community Primary School

Learning to read so we can read to learn and gain pleasure is at the heart of all areas of the curriculum. Early reading is therefore our first, foremost and central priority in school so all children are readers. Books are enjoyed and used across all curriculum areas as highly valued hooks, tools and a way of escaping in to other worlds, times, places and situations.

Golden Time

Our children have the opportunity to take part in a wonderful enrichment programme during our Golden Time provision. Children choose to take part in 12 high quality activities throughout the academic year.

Here is the range of opportunities on offer...

• Awesome Art
• Board Games
• Circuits
• Creative RE
• Dance
• Drama
• First Aid
• Forest School
• French
• Garage Band
• History
• Maths Tinker Time
• Orienteering
• Philosophy Box
• Poetry By Heart
• Poetry Challenge
• Debate
• Recorders
• Sewing
• Science Investigations
• Scratch
• Singing
• Swimming
• Technology
• Ukulele
• Mindfulness

Exploring shape through construction in year 6!

Mindfulness

Enjoying meditation, intricate mindful colouring and exploring the books.

Science

Completing a tower challenge using spaghetti and marshmallows. The towers had to hold an egg for 10 seconds.

Science

Making lava lamps.

Orienteering

Dance

6FW enjoying every minute of their Golden Time Dance session

Drama

Year 4 Swimming

Golden Time in the Reading Garden - Year 2

Year 2 Ukulele

Healthy Eating - Making fruit kebabs

In Golden Time today, we took our role as Green Ambassadors very seriously. After watching some of Climate Change- The Facts, we explored our opinions and responses to the global problem. We can't understand why more people aren't as outraged as we are. We used Oliver Jeffers' Earth Day project to inspire us, where we imagined that all of the beautiful things in our natural world had disappeared or had lost their colour and joy by decorating a black and white picture of our school with some of the things we love in our natural world and that we don't want to lose.

Board Games

Art

Mindfulness with meditation /guided relaxation to start followed by colouring with relaxing background music. It was so peaceful!

Science

In this session, the children blew balloons up using bicarbonate of soda and vinegar through the production of carbon dioxide. They worked in science teams, each with their individual role badge, to encourage speaking, listening and cooperation. Children had to discuss, predict, measure and carry out the investigation. We ended the session by evaluating the differences we saw from each group.

We tried two different investigations using the Curiosity Investigation boxes: 'Raining Blood' and 'Scream Maker'. Mrs Wadsworth led this as a demonstration with children coming out to help me. The scream maker worked really well and was very simple - we passed it around and the children all had a go. It was basically a plastic cup with a hole in the top, some thread pushed through and knotted. You then pull down the string with a wet paper towel and it makes a loud 'scream'. The kids were fascinated by it and I chose it as it was something they could easily replicate at home.

Tinker Time

Y5 Circuits

Y6 Forest School

Science

The children in 3KH had a fantastic (and messy!) afternoon making slime as part of our Science Investigations Golden Time Enrichment. Before making our slime, we looked at the properties of the particles in liquids and solids and acted out how they would behave. We then made our own colourful slime using glue, cornflour and glitter paint. We soon realised that slime sometimes behaves like a liquid and sometimes behaves like a solid!

Swimming

6SH's challenge was to try and create a human whirlpool and they also completed an obstacle relay race.

Art

In Year 6 Golden Time, we designed patterns after exploring parallel and perpendicular lines.

Circuits

During 3RW's Golden Time Enrichment session this week, George , Thomas and Srusht used their knowledge of circuits to independently create their own aeroplane masterpiece! They used a motor, propeller, battery, wires and crocodile clips. As you can see from the picture, they were very pleased with themselves! I wonder what they'll come up with next week...

Awesome Art

In preparation for our Awesome Art Golden Time after Christmas, this week we had fun with paint to see what we are already like as painters! Mia was very careful and meticulous with her paint brush, Alfie spent some time blending his colours to achieve a realistic effect for a cosy winter fire and Musa employed a splattering technique- he named his picture ‘an explosion of Christmas’.

Year 1 Cooking

Wraps

Pizza

Sing and Sign

Our children in 4HF have been extending their understanding of BSL by using this powerful knowledge during their singing Golden Time activities. They performed ' Perfect' by Ed Sheeran to Mrs Russell and Donna Richardson, Chair Of Governors and are now teaching signing to children across their year group. They will be signing some of the songs in their Christmas performances.

Year 4 Dance

KS1 Forest School

Yoga

Recorders

The children in 3KH loved their first Recorders Golden Time session! We focused on learning how to hold the recorder correctly and play the note B, reading the music as we played along to different melodies. We are looking forward to learning how to play more notes next week and preparing for a performance at the end of our block!

Golden Time - Courageous Advocacy

For the next three weeks, 6FW’s Golden Time Enrichment is Politics. They will be responding to the World Wildlife Foundation’s report for young people. Here is a snippet:

We already know that climate change threatens one in six species with extinction, that plastics could outnumber fish in the sea by 2050, and that an area of forest the same size as a football pitch is lost every two seconds. But WWF’s latest Living Planet Report tells us that wildlife populations globally have declined by 60% in less than 50 years.

These are shocking facts, but there is hope: we can reverse the damage and protect our planet for the future if we act now.

As part of our work on this, they will be recycling plastic to make models of endangered animals with a view to adopting an animal at the end of our sessions.

If you have any plastic needing recycling, please send it in with your child so we can make some fantastic models!

WWF

In 6FW in Golden Time, we started our journey towards becoming Green Ambassadors for the WWF. We learnt about how Orang-utans are rapidly becoming an endangered species- if we don’t act now, they could become extinct in the next ten years. We worked in teams to research what we could do as a class to help and then used recycled card to make our own Orang-utans!

Dance

Ukulele

Forest School and poetry...

After reading a poem from this beautiful book about Autumn leaves, we headed outdoors. Each group of children were given four sticks of bamboo, told they were allowed string and to use anything they could find around them to build something using their Forest School skills so far! We had some wonderful, imaginative creations including a castle, a deer, a wigwam, a car, a painting in a frame, a Stone Age tool and lots of imaginative play too! What a wonderful afternoon it was!

Tinker Time

'K’Nex is really fun to play with; you can be very creative and make anything you desire.'

Arnold

'K’Nex is amazing; You can use you’re imagination when constructing. I wish they were life size!'

Chloe

Swimming

6FW have chosen for their first Golden Time enrichment activity. This afternoon, they played a number of exciting games which not only developed their swimming skills but also their communication skills, team work, problem solving and number work. They supported each other and had a brilliant time! Roll on next week!

Forest School and Poetry links

Children and staff are really enjoying their Forest School Golden Time- this week they used the leaves from their tree survey to create their own impressions of the Jabberwocky from Mr Skelton’s favourite poem!

Maths TinkerTime

Year 5 are working with a range of construction materials, resources and kits.

1. Sharpen Focus and Patience - Building toys sharpens focus and establishes patience, two very important life skills that your little one should develop on their journey through life!
2. Build Fine Motor Skills and Strength - Fine motor skills are those little movements we usually take for granted like feeding ourselves, buttoning a shirt, or zippering a jacket. These small muscles that control the hand are put to good use when your child is playing with building toys. Essentially, children have to grasp big and tiny pieces alike—which strengthens hand muscles—as well as move and manipulate them to create different shapes.
3. Encourage Mind Usage - Building toys are hands on and teach your child to use his or her mind and fosters creativity by sparking imaginative thoughts. This increase in imagination has also shown to boost cognitive, social, and academic growth.
4. Develop Problem-Solving Skills - Problem-solving is a critical life skill .When using building toys, children will come to learn this skill quickly as it’s needed to decide what will and what will not work in the designs. The mental process of problem-solving also teaches children to analyse different options.
5. Introduce Different Subjects - Building toys introduces children to maths, science, arts, and even engineering.