St Teresa's Catholic Primary School

Alternative Henri Rousseau Paintings!

Early this term we painted our own 'jungles' in the style of Henri Rousseau. This half term we used the skills we developed when painting our jungles and our imagination to paint our own 'oceans' in the style of Henri Rousseau. We used our mixing skills to mix a range of blues and added sea animals and plants to our work.

Year 1 and 2 at the beach

As I am sure you can tell from the photographs, we have had the best day at the beach! The children were SUPERSTARS and were a credit to the school and to their parents. They enjoyed paddling, taking part in sandcastle building competitions and enjoyed a delicious ice-cream!

Bouncy Castle Fun

Today we had such an exciting surprise. There were bouncy castles on the school field and we got to have lots of fun on them during our class session. You can tell from the smiles on our faces that we have the BEST time!

Filling My Own Bucket

We read the story 'Have You Filled a Bucket Today' and then thought about how we can fill our own buckets by celebrating ourselves. We wrote about what we are good at and what makes us a good person. Miss Hilton was so proud of our AMAZING work.

Our Partner Prayers

We wrote special 'sorry and thank you' prayers with our talk partners. We challenged ourselves to use key words and then read our prayers to our peers. We hope you enjoy reading our prayers and perhaps saying one of them before bedtime. 

Our Rainforest Habitats

We designed our own rainforest habitats and thought about the materials we would use to create our habitats.

We used a shoebox and a range of materials including paint, tissue paper and string.

Sports Week - Day 5

Today was 'race day' and we took part in the running race, three legged race and egg and spoon race! We had so much fun and were so pleased for our friends who came first, second and third in the events. We had delicious ice lollies and then enjoyed a picnic with our friends and family afterwards.

Sports Week - Day 4

On our final day of team sports we took part in an inter house 'rounders' competition. We were given 3 balls and a tennis racket and we had to try and hit the balls as far as we could before running around the bases. Our opponents had to collect the balls we hit and work together to get them back into the hoop before we got around all the bases. 

Sports Week - Day 1

Today was 'rugby' day and we took part in mini competitions in our house teams. It was so much fun and everyone had a smile on their face (or a determined gaze when running) throughout each match. We enjoyed working in our teams and are looking forward to tomorrow and the football competitions. 

Our Plans

Henri Rousseau - Jungle Paintings

We created plans for our jungle paintings, inspired by Henri Rousseau.

We explored different fruits, flowers and animals and then chose our favourite ones.

We practiced sketching them and then added colour so that we knew the paint colours we would need to mix when

painting our masterpieces!

We explores some of the jungle paintings that Henri Rousseau painted. We looked for key elements that he included in his paintings including flowers, green leaves, animals and fruit! We used our sketch books to sketch some of the features we spotted in the paintings. We then added some colour to our sketches. Next we are going to explore the different animals, fruit and flowers we might included in our own jungle painting in the style of Henri Rousseau.

Our Exhibition and Fire!

We welcomed our families into school for a special exhibition, recital and fire! We shared the amazing work we produced during our Chao Capital curriculum focus. We were so excited to show our fire engines, curriculum books and we even shared our special coded messages. In the music room, we shared a special performance of ‘London’s Burning’ on the Glockenspiel. At the end of the exhibition, we were very lucky to recreate the Great Fire of London, using the wonderful Tudor houses we made at home during February half term. Mr Price helped us to start the fire and was on hand to ensure that everything ran safely. We were so excited to see our houses burn down and Mr Brotherton was the volunteer firefighter who used the fire hook to pull down one of the houses to show how the fire was slowed down during 1666.

Our Fire Engines!

We were so proud of our fire engines and could not wait to take them to the hall to test how well they worked at racing to a fire. We lined them up and used our push force to push them and see which one got to the fire first. We also used our problem solving skills to fix anything that broke or fell off during the races!

Building Our Fire Engines

We used our design plans to help us collect materials in order to build our fire engines. We used 2 pieces of dowel to make the axles, we used black card for the chassis and connected it all together with our 4 wheels. We then painted our boxes red and started to add little details to bring our fire engines to life.

Designing Our Fire Engines

We explored the features of a fire engine and then began designing our own.

We labelled our fire engines and then thought about the different materials we would need to make them.

The Great Fire of London - By Paul Perro

Read by Year 1

We worked with a partner to read and act out part of Paul Perro's 'Great Fire of London' Poem.

We then recorded ourselves reading our part and we put all the parts together!

Fire in the Evening

We took inspiration from Paul Klee's 'Fire in the Evening' and created our own versions. We used rulers to draw rectangles and squares and then using only red, yellow and blue (our primary colours) we mixed a range of different colours to create our own masterpieces.

Our Trip to Layer Marney Tower

We went to Layer Marney Tower for a 'Great Fire of London' day. We dressed up in clothes that would have been worn in London around the time of the fire in 1666. 

We had lots of fun exploring the tower and surrounding buildings. We climbed to the top of the tower and saw the view of Mersea in the distance. 

For our first module, we acted out parts of Samuel Pepy's diary. We had lots of fun passing the water bucket along the line, just like they would have done in the first. We also loved imagining putting out gunpowder and setting it alight to blow up the houses!

We then learnt about fire and what caused the fire to spread. Hillary, our teacher explained that for a fire to burn it needs: 

• Heat
• Fuel
• Oxygen

Hillary lit a candle and then covered it with a glass jar. After a while, the flame went out. We realised that that was because there was no more oxygen in the jar. We then thought about how blowing up the houses with gunpowder caused the fire to stop because there was no more fuel for the fire to burn! Hillary lit the fire to show us what the fire would have looked like during the Great Fire of London and we couldn't believe all the different colours we could see!

It was such a sunny day, so we enjoyed a picnic packed lunch on the steps in front of the tower. After we had eaten, we had fun in the garden.

After lunch we worked hard to create out own silhouettes of the houses on Pudding Lane. We then used chalk and pastels to create a picture of fire and then stuck the silhouette of our houses to create our fire scenes. 

World Book Day 2022

We really enjoyed choosing books from the library and spending time with our friends reading books in our outdoor area. We read stories and told our friends what we enjoyed about the books.

We loved dressing up as our favourite book / film characters!

We read the story Supertato - Run, Veggies, Run! and were challenged to create our own Superhero characters to join Supertato's crew. We enjoyed bringing our characters to life with googly eyes, tissue paper capes and pens. We then wrote application forms, describing our character and the powers they possess.

Authors and Illustrators

We had a go at becoming authors and illustrators on World Book Day. We were challenged to use the pictures from a book to create our own story, using our imagination to bring the story to life. We enjoyed reading our stories to our peers and other teachers.

We also became illustrators and read a short story before illustrating it to bring the words to life! 

We then thought about whether we preferred being authors or illustrators and most of us preferred being authors!

Christmas Dinner Day!

Anti-Bullying Week

To mark the start of ‘Anti-Bullying Week, we were inspired by Andy and the Odd-Socks song ‘One Kind Word’ and decided to think about all the kind words we could use and all the kind things we could do to make each other happy. We remembered the importance of being kind and recorded this video to help others remember as well.

I belong to the family of God

Remembrance Day

Some of us wrote special thank you notes to those who risk their lives each day for us.

We hope you enjoy reading our notes.

We used watercolours to create our own field of poppies or just a single poppy. We used photographs of the poppies that grew in our school vegetable patch recently. We really focused on observing the key features of the poppy and some of use chose background colours to make our poppies stand out!

Black History Month

ONE LOVE - BOB MARLEY

Our Autumn Walk

We went on an Autumn walk and looked for signs of Autumn. We found yellow, red and orange leaves as well as pine cones, acorns and berries. We saw squirrels searching for food and we found lots of fallen leaves to have fun with. 

We used the autumn treasures that we collected from our Autumn walk to create our own self portraits!

Our Sunflower Leaf Sketches and Watercolour Paintings

We started by observing the leaves of a sunflower and understanding the role of the veins in each leaf. We compared them to the veins in our bodies and thought about what the veins in a leaf may carry. We then used sketch pencils and sketched the leaves in our sketchbooks. We tried adding veins to our sketches and some of us even did more than one sketch. 

After we practised sketching the leaves in our sketchbooks, we then sketched our 'favourite' leaf, making sure to use our observational skills to add detail to our artwork. Finally, we used our watercolour paints to bring our sketches to life! After everyone had completed their masterpieces, we turned our classroom into an art gallery and enjoyed looking at everyone else's work.

French 

This week the children have been practising asking each other their names in french and then replying. The children have loved saying 'Comment t'appelles-tu?' and then replying 'Je m'appelle ..." They also loved using chalk to write their name in response to the question - 'Comment t'appelles-tu?'

Click below to hear some of us asking each other a question and answering in French!

Our Sunflowers

The children worked confidently to use their observational skills and art skills to create paintings of the sunflowers growing in the outdoor area using the Pointillism technique.

Supporting Macmillan Coffee Morning

Many thanks to all of you for supporting Year 5's Coffee Morning, by either attending or giving your child a donation for a cake and some juice.

A small gesture that will go a long way to supporting such an incredibly special and important charity.

European Languages Day

We had such an exciting day with year 2. The children were put into groups and spent time making pizzas, fruit salads, painting using the Pointillism technique and learning a Polish dance. It was fantastic being able to work alongside Year 2 after all this time of being in bubbles. The children were incredible and really enjoyed the different activities. I am sure you can see from their faces, they also loved dressing up for the day.