Science - animals including humans

This term we have started our new topic; Animals including humans. 

We started our topic looking at nutrition and why it is important to follow a balanced nutritional diet, before exploring how animals have different nutritional needs. 

The children have been really eager to learn all about the skeletal systems of humans, and how some skeletal systems are different in animals. We have learned that some animals have exoskeletons where their bones are on the outside of their bodies, and humans and some animals have an endoskeleton as they have bones inside their bodies. We have conducted an experiment to see if the children with the longest femur jump the furthest. We first measured the length of our femur bones and then measured how far we jumped to test our experiment. 

Art - Starry night Van Gogh

Year 3 have been studying the artist Vincent Van Gogh in art this half term. 

We have studied the painting 'Starry night', and used it to begin creating our whole class version of the painting. We began by colour matching a section of the painting to use as our plan. We then used this plan to sketch the patterns of the painting onto some card and then proceeded to use oil pastels to use the impressionism technique to show the colour and windy effects of 'Starry night'. Finally, we have washed over the pictures with water colours to represent the method that Vincent Van Gogh used to create his painting.  

Light

The children have been thinking about how the sun produces light, as well as using torches in science in our topic of light. We have been learning about how light can reflect off of some surfaces, and that darkness is the absence of light. We conducted an experiment to check which surfaces reflect light and which surfaces do not. First we travelled through a tunnel with various coloured materials to see if they reflected any light. We noticed that in the darkness, the absence of light meant that we could not see or differentiate the materials. We then travelled through the tunnel again and noticed that shiny materials reflected the light source. 

History - Shang Dynasty

This week we have started learning our new topics for the half term!

In history, we have started to learn about the ancient Shang Dynasty, which took place during the bronze age in ancient China! 

We have learned about how the Shang Dynasty greatly impacted the world by inventing the solar and lunar calander, a government, and how they were one of the civilisations to begin writing using oracle bones. We learned how the Shang Dynasty came to rise and rule over the tribes by the yellow river in China, as well as how the Dynasty fell and lost their ruling power.  

Year 3 Art Week

Soap sculptures

Year 3 have enjoyed art week this week! We focused on the abstract sculptor Barbera Hepworth, who was influenced by nature to carve sculptures from bronze, stone and wood.

We planned our own sculpture by drawing our design in our books, using Barbera Hepworth to influence our design. We thought of a second design, and some of us changed our first design because we thought it would be difficult to carve into soap. We then used playdough to shape the dough into our design so that we had a clear idea of our abstract sculpture shape and size.

We then practiced our carving techniques using a flat edged tool and a pointed tool.  At the end of the week, we carved our soap into the shape of our design.