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During their Forest School sessions, our Year 4 children have been working towards the Bee Bronze Award from the Bee Conservation Trust. We’re incredibly proud of their efforts to learn about and support these vital pollinators.

To celebrate their achievement and raise awareness, we’d love to share a short video that highlights just how important bees are to our planet and our daily lives.

Southwold remains committed to supporting bee conservation and making our playgrounds more bee-friendly.

Today in Forest School, reception children embraced the outdoors and let their imaginations run wild! Using natural clay and the inspiration around them, they each created their own unique clay models – from animals to magical creatures! 🐾🐍🦄

As they explored the outdoor environment, the children collected natural materials like twigs, leaves, and stones to add special details to their creations. This hands-on activity helped develop their fine motor skills, creativity, and connection with nature.

Today, Year 6 children have completed the first two sessions of the GREAT Project. This stands for ‘Good Relationships are Equal And Trusting’. Throughout the day, children have discussed the differences of a positive and negative relationship before giving advice to various scenarios. The children showed their growing maturity as they discussed sensitive topics sensibly.

This morning, Key Stage 2 children attended the ‘Going for Gold’ running event at Bluecoat Wollaton. Throughout the session, children had to run or walk as many 1km laps as possible. Showing great determination, respect and teamwork, the children completed nearly 500km – a brilliant achievement. Well done to all children who participated!

A further thanks to the parent volunteers who supported the event.

This morning Year 6 have completed their final Into University session. The session was focussed on transition to secondary school. Throughout the session, children discussed subjects, homework, timetables plus much more. Children completed their transition passports and are now ready for secondary school!

Today, we’ve been little engineers! We explored materials, design, and problem-solving as we made our own boats using a variety of materials like cartons, straws, and paper.

Once our boats were built, it was time for the big test: Will it float? We had so much fun placing our creations in water and watching what happened. Some boats floated beautifully, while others needed a few tweaks – perfect opportunities for learning through play!

This hands-on activity helped us explore floating and sinking, prediction and testing, and the importance of resilience and creativity. 🚤🌊

Our Reception children had a truly magical time at Forest School this week! They were busy exploring the great outdoors with imagination, curiosity, and lots of muddy fun!

🔍 We went on a fairy hunt, searching under logs, behind trees, and in the leaves to see if we could spot signs of fairy life — footprints, sparkles, and even tiny fairy houses! 🧚

🍃 In the mud kitchen, the children whipped up marvellous muddy creations — from “fairy soup” to “forest cakes” — using sticks, leaves, and heaps of imagination.

🌞 Some children chose to relax in the hammock, listening to the sounds of the forest and enjoying some peaceful, mindful moments among the trees.

It’s wonderful to see the children connecting with nature, building friendships, and developing their creativity and independence in such a joyful way. Well done, little explorers!

📚 What a magical day of stories and smiles! Our young bookworms were treated to an amazing surprise when National Trust Literacy volunteers and author Jonathan Emmett joined our Browns Books celebration! 🌟

The excitement was contagious as children explored wonderful stories together, and the cherry on top? Every child went home with their very own brand new book! 🎁

Special thanks to Browns Books for spreading the gift of reading and making our little readers’ eyes light up with joy! 📖✨

Today was a very special day in our class — we released our beautiful butterflies! 🐛➡️🦋

The children have loved watching them grow from tiny caterpillars into chrysalides, and finally into butterflies. We talked about the life cycle and how important it is to care for all living things. 🌍

There were lots of smiles and excitement as we said goodbye and watched them flutter away into the big wide world. What a magical moment! ✨

Today we did some amazing independent learning in maths. We practiced  number bonds to 5, wrote different numbers and even played a game on the interactive whiteboard.

Thank you to the parents who braved the heat to attend our final project exhibition of the year. Children displayed a range of photos from summer term events before sharing their writing linked to The Boy at the Back of the Class. Several other activities were completed that linked to our history, geography & art learning.

Our school grounds came alive with delicious aromas and joyful sounds as families from across the globe shared their treasured traditional dishes 🍲

These are the moments that remind us how beautifully diverse and connected our school family is!

Thank you to our families for making our community picnic a true celebration of unity in diversity 🌈 The memories (and amazing food!) will keep us smiling for weeks to come! ✨

This morning, as part of Refugee Week and linked with the National Literacy Trust, Year 5 and 6 children participated in an online workshop with the authors AM Dassu and Linda Fadel. Both authors were hugely inspirational as they discussed this year’s theme of “Community as a Superpower”. Over 10,000 children joined online as AM & Linda shared how they use small bits of inspiration to create poems. Children then created their own poems.

What an exciting day we had in Early Years today. We have been waiting for so long but today our caterpillars finally arrived. They were all sleeping but it didn’t take them long to start to move.  We are going to watch the caterpillars grow and when it is time we will give them some sugar paste. They will then begin to turn into beautiful butterflies. We will release them outside.  😊🐛🦋

Our pupils had the most berry-tastic time picking fresh, juicy strawberries straight from the plants they helped grow.

The excitement was contagious as their hands carefully selected the ripest berries, and thanks to Mrs Sonanvane’s magic touch, these garden treasures transformed into a mouth-watering fruit salad that had everyone asking for seconds! 🥗✨

Nothing beats the joy of eating food you’ve grown yourself – from garden to plate, making learning deliciously fun! 🌱 These are the moments that make school memories extra special. 🌟

Year 5 and 6 have had a fantastic day out at The National Space Centre, exploring lots of interactive exhibits and watching an amazing planetarium show!

Year 3 and 4 had an amazing time at Twycross Zoo! We visited all the enclosures and saw so many amazing creatures; zebra’s, giraffe’s, flamingos and a very friendly Sumatran tiger. We also had a workshop about rain forests. We learnt about the four layers of the rain forest and the animals that live in each one. We also learnt about what we can all do to protect the rain forests through the choices we make.

This afternoon, it was our half-termly CrossTeach assembly led by the CrossTeach Explorers. The focus of the assembly was the story of ‘Feeding  the Five Thousand’ where children reflected on the importance of sharing and caring for each other.

Wow… look at what our architects and engineers have transformed using crates, tubes, cardboard and crates into an incredible world of transportation and adventure! 🚂 From choo-choo trains to zooming airplanes, and even a cosy café for pit stops – their creativity knows no bounds! ✨

The playground turned into a bustling city today, complete with houses, slides, and yes, even a rollercoaster (because why not?)! 🎢

It’s amazing to see how a simple cardboard box can become anything in the hands of these imaginative minds! 🌟 Who knew recycling could be this much fun? 🎉

Our Green Team Ambassadors have been busy planning for Walk to School Week.

They have launched the event in assembly, inspiring all pupils to take part in the event. They discussed the benefits of walking to school for to improve their mental and physical health, local environment and the planet.

Our children are looking forward to taking part and making a positive contribution to help reduce pollution. Whilst exercising to feel happier and healthier!

This is an event for everyone in the family. Don’t forget to complete your child’s weekly diary and get walking, cycling or scooter!

Thank you so much to Steve at MiRiCal Emblems Limited for his generosity and kindness.

Steve kindly purchased and printed our new waistcoats for our Opal Play Leaders and Play Team

Don’t they look great 🙂

In Early Years we are starting to brush our teeth. We listen to a tooth brushing song for 2 minutes and follow the instructions making sure we clean all our teeth. We have talked about the importance of having clean hands before we start and washing our brush afterwards. It is great fun!

Year 6 have been busy programming using Crumble kits this afternoon as we started our new Design and Technology project. We managed to power sparkles (lights) and motors with our algorithms (as well as lots of perseverance and resilience)!

Class 3 had a wonderful day commemorating the 80^th anniversary of VE Day. We began by completing a reading activity then listened to some songs of the era. We watched the events of the day on BBC Newsround.  Later we looked at commemorative plates from previous VE Day anniversaries and then designed and made our own which were amazing!

Rainbows really enjoyed welly Wednesday with lots of extra activities: potion making, the hammock, tree painting, using mallets to build a hedgehog house and the slack line.

This afternoon we have had a visit from MHST our local Mental Health team to talk about SATs stress and how to cope with it. The children were given excellent tips like, getting a good night’s sleep, eating a hearty breakfast, sharing our worries with trusted friends and adults. We discussed our Stress Buckets, what fills them and how we can turn on the taps and empty them. If anyone is experiencing any worries please come and talk to the Year 6 Team.

🌟 What an incredible first day at Opal Play! Our children let their imaginations soar as they transformed our space into a world of endless possibilities! 🎨

From master architects building cosy dens to chefs whipping up pretend culinary delights in our play kitchen – the creativity was off the charts! 🏠 👩‍🍳 The playground buzzed with giggles and teamwork as budding engineers crafted their own cars and artists brought their visions to life through colourful drawings.

The best part? Watching friendships bloom through collaborative play and seeing those determined faces tackle new challenges with such enthusiasm! 🌈 These magical moments of pure joy and discovery are what make early learning so special. Can’t wait to see what tomorrow’s adventures bring! ✨

This morning we launched our summer project – who would you put on a banknote? Children had to consider who they would put on a new banknote, anti-forgery techniques and different denominations. The class also started their summer read – The Boy at the Back of the Class. We read and discussed the first chapter before listing information about the main characters.

In Religious Education, Trekkers looked a little more at spring. We had some pictures of baby animals and a mummy animal. We matched them up, which was tricky moving our fingers with the pictures on the board. We also looked at the life cycle of a butterfly, putting them in the correct order – egg, caterpillar, cocoon and butterfly. We then cut out the pictures and made our own life cycles.