Term 1

In literacy we have been following the route of Marco Polo, which links to our 'Explorers' topic, and have been reading a range of stories from the different countries he visited. We then stopped off in India to read an old folk tale called ' The old Woman and the Red Pumpkin'. We learnt to retell the story using Makaton, understand different characters view points and create our own folk tale from a different country! 

We are now learning all about SEA MONSTERS! Tudor sailors told great stories of colossal sea monsters that lived in the depths of the ocean. We have been creating our own sea monsters, with Pen and Ink (in art), and have used these as inspiration for character descriptions. We are now creating our own sea monster stories! 

In our Topic lessons we are learning about Tudor Explorers! To begin our topic we had to solve some clues to work out who the mystery explorer was on our Topic board - It turned out tot be Christopher Columbus! 

Firstly, we needed to understand who the Tudors were, what jobs they did and how they lived. So we designed and built our own Tudor houses, researched Tudors using IPads, books and laptops and we even visited a real Tudor building in Bristol called The Red Lodge. 

We are now learning more about Tudor Traders and how John Cabot set sail from Bristol, on the Matthew, to find a quicker route to Asia. To get a feel for what life was like on board a ship, we visited a replica of 'The Matthew' and set sail around Bristol Harbourside! We had a fantastic day! 

Today we celebrated the 'Marvellous Middle' of our topic by having a Tudor Banquet Day! The day began with the preparations. First, we learnt all about Tudor music and instruments; how to perform Tudor dances; cooked some Tudor pastry and created some decorative Tudor Roses using sugar paste. 

In the afternoon we greeting the King and Queen and began our Tudor feast! We then performed our dances for the King and Queen and had a fabulous time!

That's all for this term! We'll be back with more updates soon!