Football Team

Here is our Year 5/6 football team ready to start their match against Fir Tree. Thank you to Mr Wilkinson for doing a fantastic job coaching the team.

You may notice that we now have a smart new football strip! Thank you to Mrs Silkstone for helping with this - it makes a big difference.

5/6 Football Friendly

This Monday the year 5/6 football club made their way to Fir Tree School for some friendly football. This consisted of three hard fought 10 minute matches and resulted in scores of 0-1, 1-0 and 0-3 meaning overall a win of 1-4 to Cholsey. The players (Charlie, Charlie, Samuel, Jack, Fran, Jack, Toby, Mackenzie and Henry) all played brilliantly and were a credit to themselves and the school. We all had a great afternoon. Thanks to Katy Heriot and Susie Primmer for their support and help with transport.

Steve Wilkinson

And thank you to Mr Wilkinson for giving up his time to run the club

Maths staff meeting

Three of the governors were able to join our staff meeting this evening. We started with a variety of tips from the maths team and Lisa Mills, and finished off with our three teams meeting to discuss the action plans for this year and how they are going.

Science soil investigations

Following on from our introduction to life in soil with Sophie Wheeler's mummy, the children in Blossom Bats began investigating different soil types looking at the different textures, colour and appearance. The children used some great scientific vocabulary when  writing their observations. They also used their own ideas to solve the tricky problem of separating a mixture of sand, gravel and pebbles. Thanks to Foundation for lending us their sieves and colanders. Have a look, you can see lots of concentration!

More Foundation Science

On Thursday we were very luck to have a visit from Clare Maher (Isla's mummy), who is a geologist, to share her experiences of volcanoes and her rock collection with the children.  She also showed us how the volcano experiment should be done.  The children had a fabulous time and were very enthusiastic about volcanoes.  Thank you Clare.

Thursday Science - Glorious Gases in 3/4

We saw three states of matter:
The first one is solid
The second one is liquid
The third one is gas

John showed us an experiment with Dr Pepper, Cherry Cola and Fanta to find out which one had the biggest fizz. It was Dr Pepper.

He mixed lemon juice and baking powder and collected the gas in a balloon. This one expanded the most.

Finally we weighed the gas in the balloons. The carbon dioxide balloon was the heaviest. We thought it was 'awesome', 'amazing' and 'super cool'.

Thanks to Olly and Katie for writing this blog.

Oxford Gala

Last Friday, our Y5/6 swimming team took part in the ESSA gala in Oxford. It was an exciting opportunity as Cholsey had not taken part before and the children had to demonstrate a high ability including fast times in order to be accepted to compete.

The boys took part in two relay races (medley and freestyle) and progressed through the heats into the finals of both events. Overall, we came 4th in the Medley relay and 2nd in the Freestyle relay! We are waiting to hear if we have progressed to the South Region finals.

The children performed to an exceptional standard against some very difficult schools - well done!

Thank you to the Powis family for helping to transport the children to the venue.

Foundation science - slime

Today in foundation stage we have been trying to make slime.  We used a mixture of pva glue, borax and warm water.  After the food colouring not working in our experiment on Monday, we decided to try powder paint.  We were happy with the results.

Wednesday Science - geology in the churchyard

Years 3/4 were treated to another visit from Martyn Thorne. We all went to the church and the children were able to find 3 different types of sedimentary rocks on the church building. Katie found quartz crystals in amongst the flint and others found calcite crystals on the far side of the porch. Next time you're up at church , have a look!

Martyn challenged the children to find fossils which would look like the cross section of a broken shell (a nice curve). They found lots and lots. Martyn showed us how you can tell if a stone is limestone by pouring a weak acid on it which will make it bubble, giving off carbon dioxide gas. 

Battling against the noise of a very long bell ringing peal, the children's final challenge was to find crystals, searching for straight lines in amongst the grave stones.I'm sure you will be very pleased to hear that the children were very respectful and well behaved in the graveyard.

I would like to give a massive thank you to Martyn for giving up 2 afternoons to share his wonderful geological knowledge with us.

PS The crystals are growing!  Hurrah! I will try to blog a photo of them if I can take a focussed picture.

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9H

Wednesday Science - exploring the Arctic

Years 5/6 and years 1/2 were each treated to a fascinating talk from Helena Malenczuk telling us about her amazing trip to the Arctic as part of a scientific study group. As she says herself, she's just an ordinary person, a teacher, who put forward an idea and was chosen to take part in this once in a lifetime experience. She saw icebergs as large as the Eiffel Tower or a five storey building. Remember only approximately 1/8th of an iceberg is above the water's surface!

She ate an incredible 5000 calories each day. That's  equivalent to approximately 22 burgers and, she still lost weight!  Once in Greenland, if they'd left anything behind, it was tough. Supermarkets were almost totally empty. The Greenlanders live on canned or frozen food as they cannot grow their own and the seas are frozen for months so supplies can only arrive during the summer months.

Native Icelanders wear animal skins, such as polar bear trousers, for warmth. In the tent, Helena dug a trench so the cold air could sink down so that on a balmy day, the temperature was a mere  -10 degrees C . There were so many interesting facts that both the adults and children had many many questions, so many that Helena has very kindly offered, that if we send her our questions, she will answer them. She also left much of the equipment she took with her. Have a look in the library. 

Years 5/6 also sampled the delights of some of the  dehydrated food Helena took with her. The appearance was not terribly appetising and results of the tasting was varied. She had a choice of 3 main courses for 4 weeks!

Thank you to Helena for managing 5 talks within 2 1/2 hours by being so inspiring and entertaining.

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Wednesday Science in Foundation

Here are some more photos for the blog of our science activities today.

The first pictures are of milk painting.  The children added drops of food colouring to a tray of milk and then put paper on the top.  This created a marble painting effect.

The other photos are of Mrs Jackman adding mints to a bottle of coke. This is to create a volcano effect.  Unfortunately it did not fizz as well as hoped.  The children have suggested adding more mints so we will be retesting next week.

Science Oxford in Foundation

The children have been exploring all sorts of aspects of science thanks to some excellent resources from Science Oxford.