Exploring Asia and Oceania!

This year, Year 5 will be focusing their learning all on the continent of Asia and Oceania. We will be learning all about the countries that make up the continent, their history, culture and more!

Chinese Lanterns

This week, year 5 have been learning all about China!

Did you know that China has the largest population in the world, at 1.4 billion people? We found that really surprising! To explore the culture further, we looked at traditional Chinese lanterns, often used to celebrate Chinese New Year, and we created some ourselves!

Origami

To continue exploring the different countries in Asia and their amazing art and culture, the children have explored the art of Origami, Japanese paper folding! We all worked together to make a crane each, some parts were really fiddly and took a lot of resilience and patience! Take a look at our amazing cranes below!

Art week - Cherry blossoms!

The school theme this year for art week was 'a garden of expression'. Year 5 took their inspiration from Asia and Japan, exploring the artwork of Hokusai, and cherry blossom trees. The children sourced a large branch from the woods, and secured it in a plant pot, creating our own cherry blossoms from a variety of papers. The children then also wrote their own cherry blossom inspired haikus!

 

           

Express: Manga inspiration!

For our express activity, we took our inspiration from the children’s interests. Many of the children showed an interest in manga, a Japanese art style often used to create comic books. So the children were given the opportunity to draw and create their own manga characters inspired by existing manga art and books, and some even had a go at making their own comics!

 

Science week - Saving Humpty Dumpty!

During science week, the children were all set the task of working out how best they could help get Humpty Dumpty safely down off of the wall! They explored the effects of gravity, and learnt about air resistance, and designed a series of parachutes, all of different sizes to see how they would affect Humpty's descent. The children all recorded their times and analysed their data in the form of bar charts, coming to the conclusion that the larger the surface area of the parachute, the greater the air resistance. This meant that a big parachute could hopefully save Humpty Dumpty!

Year 5 had a fantastic time being scientists and finding a solution to the problem!

  

    

Stitch and Sew - Creating applique bags!

In DT, year 5 have been exploring textiles, with the brief to design and create a bag as a gift for a friend or family member. The children learnt about different styles, such as tie-dye, embroidery and appliqué, before designing their own pattern inspired by Indian Rangoli!

The children's creative and colourful designs were then brought to life, and we had the wonderful opportunity to invite parents and carers in to work with their children to sew their bags together. Everyone was so resilient and determined, and the finished products look amazing, just take a look!

 

 

 

 

Year 5 Trip to Spice Fusion

On Wednesday, Year 5 went to Spice Fusion to find out about Indian food and customs.  The visit was made to support our learning on India and it was an opportunity to sample some Indian dishes and find out about the ingredients - particularly the spices.

A huge ‘thank you’ to Rajeev and his team for welcoming us to the restaurant – it was a fun and informative afternoon!

 

 

Now I know how many spices Indians put in their food … and they eat with their hands.  Tom

Spice Fusion uses over 400 spices.  They put 80 different spices in their masala sauce!  Maddie

It takes over two hours to make the masala curry sauce – that’s the longest of all the curry sauces.  Lola

At Spice Fusion, I learnt that Indians eat with their hands, especially the right hand.  Molly

We had chicken masala, rice and an onion bhaji on the side of the plate.  We had to eat it with our fingers like they do in India.  Flora.

The restaurant smelt delicious and the food was really tasty.  Esme

The owner told us a bit about Indian culture.  Do you know, over 100 languages are spoken in India?   Zac

 

• Times Table Rockstars
  Practice your times tables in a fun way here.
• Numbots
  A great place for practising mental addition and subtraction. 
• E-Safety
  Learn how to be safe online
• Dance Mat Typing 
  Learn to type the fun way
• Times Tables Check 
  Test yourself on times tables speed and accuracy.
• Hit the Button 
  A game to practice a range of maths skills including doubling, times tables and squared numbers. 
• Maths games 
  A variety of different games to test different maths skills.