Westhouses Summer Fayre!

Three weeks ago year fives and sixes ran some stalls and raised money for some new apparatus for our school. The school was packed with loads of people and loads of stalls. The weather was very sunny and hot yet that didn’t stop the Trailblazers from raising loads of money! Overall, we raised over £500 for our school!

Written by Connor S and Rowan W.

Summer Fair Time!

This Friday Westhouses Primary School are having a summer fair. All of the year 5’s and 6’s are going to be managing the stalls.

Some of the events that are happening are: punishment or prize, painting nails. There are loads of events that are happening on Friday in school time and outside of school time. There will be one hour for the Trailblazers to set up their stall, then when everything is set up, it will be two o’ clock so everyone in school can have a look at some of the events. After school the parents will be allowed to have a look at the stalls and have a go at some of the events.

Every stall will have a minimum of three people so two can go and do some of the events while the other is at the stall waiting.

We hope that our parents/families can come and join us.

By Connor Smith.

Help save the bees

Fun facts about bees:

• If the Queen bee has no more eggs, the other bees will hoard around her until she overheats and dies.
• The type of flowers bees takes their nectar from determines the honeys flavour.
•   The honeybee is the only bee that produces food eaten by man.
• A honeybee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour. It would have to fly around 90000 miles three times around the globe to make one pound of honey.

How you can help:

You can help by planting wildflowers or herbs e.g., lavender.

You can help by giving sugar water to a bee if it looks unwell.

You can use clover in your seed mix because they like the nectar.

Do not cut dandelions, bees love dandelions.

Avoid purchasing plants that have been treated with synthetic pesticides.

Purchase locally grown honey.

Like people, bees need a home. It doesn’t need to be huge, window planters and plant pots are fine.

SEEDBALL:

https://seedball.co.uk/

To promote saving the bees all children have been gifted a wildflower oddball from seedball (link above). We encourage you to plant it in your garden/in a pot.

 This scheme is part of our food for life work. We are now one mark away from achieving our silver award. If you chose to plant your oddball, please send us lots of pictures at [email protected]

Thank you for helping save the bees!

Poster made by Archie, Michaella and Kacey

May

 Look at how dusty this bee is!!! 

What is the dust?

Why is the bee covered in it?

 There are now lots of flowers around.  They are just waiting for the bees and other pollinators to visit them.

If you look closesly inside an open flower you will some this dust.  It is pollen and this is what the bees collect on their back legs, or if there is lots and lots of pollen in the flower, the bees get covered in it as they crawl about inside the flower, looking for nectar.

When the bees fly from flower to flower, some of the pollen falls off them and into the next flower they visit.  This helps the flowers to make seeds and fruit and is called 'pollination'.  The bees and all the other insects that visit flowers are doing a really important job here.  Without the bees and insects doing this, we wouldn't have foods like apples, tomatoes, peas and beans. 

See if you can find out which other foods we wouldn't have if pollination didn't happen.

Different flowers have different coloured pollen – it's not all yellow. 

This is a frame of pollen that the bees have collected and taken back to their hive.  Look at the different colours!!

Next time you are in a garden take a look at the colour of the pollen in the flowers – you will see black pollen in poppies and some tulips, yellow pollen in crocus and dandelions, orange in daffodils. Count how many different coloured pollens you can find.

The bees take their collected pollen back to the hive and use it to make 'bee bread'.  This is a special

food that they feed to the larvae in the nursery.  It makes them grow big and strong and into good healthy bees that can get straight to work once they have hatched out of their cell.

Yum or scum!

On the 7^th April, Trailblazers had been cooking and then trying the food that they made.

One of the groups made leek, potato and onion soup. The soup couldn’t have all of the ingredients because the food was made in WW2 and they had to ration everything. When we tried this a lot of people didn’t like it.

Another group made chocolate spread. It looked amazing but was made with mashed potato, it sounds disgusting. A lot of people also didn’t like this because of the texture.

The next group made bread, it looked really weird. It looked weird, but it wasn’t too bad when people ate it, the only problem was that it didn’t have any flavour.

The last group made apple crumble. It looked like what apple crumble should look like. When trying this a lot of people thought this was the best tasting out of everything. It had sugar in it and cinnamon to give it a lovely flavour.

This was something everyone enjoyed and the day turned out amazing.

We also tried vinegar bread and bread spread with beef dripping!

Kaycie said “The food was sickening!”

Josh said “It was a really fun day.”

Reported Connor.

April

Hurray!!  Spring is here and the weather is getting warmer.  This means that the bees are getting busier.

Now beekeepers can take the roofs off the hives, take a look inside and say 'hello' to the bees again. 

This is what we are hoping to see when we take the roof off  each hive – look at how many bees there are!!  The box is very full.

 The queen has been busy laying eggs since about February and they have all hatched out.  There are a lot more eggs      in there waiting to hatch out and the Queen will carry on laying eggs non-stop until the end of summer.  She will lay up to 2500 eggs each day!!

Do you think there will be enough room for lots more bees?

Definitely not!!  and if we don't give them more room they

will think their house is too small and will swarm.   That means that up to ¾ of the bees will fly off – and take the Queen with them!! The beekeeper will lose them all and the few bees that are left won't make enough honey that summer for the beekeeper to have some.

So this is what we give them each Spring – a clean floor, a clean brood box with a few empty frames, so they can start the new season with a nice clean house with lots of room - and a super of empty frames.

On a warm day the hive roof  is removed carefully. 

The Queen is found and put in the clean box so she is safe while the rest of the work is done.

Then some of the frames from the old box are placed in the new one – we choose the frames that have comb containing eggs and larvae.  The nurse bees cling onto these frames to look after the baby bees so they go in the new box too.  We also put some frames that have honey on them so they don't lose their food stores.

The space that is left is filled up with new empty frames like the one in the picture for the worker bees to build new comb. This gives the queen more room to lay her eggs. 

Above this box, we put a plastic sheet with lots of holes in (called a 'Queen Excluder' ) and then on top of that, another box with more frames.

The holes in the Queen Excluder are big enough for the worker bees to pass through but too small for the Queen. 

This means that she has to stay in the bottom box and can't climb up into the boxes above.  We only want honey in the higher boxes – we don't want baby bees in the honey stores!!

So now the bees have lots of room to build more comb to store their honey, and the queen has lots of room to lay her eggs.  Happy bees!! Happy Queen!!  Happy beekeepeer!!

 EPIC SCIENCE EXPERIMENT!

Enquiry question:

Which substance causes the toughest stain on teeth?

This is Philosophers favourite experiment this entire year! Including myself, everybody enjoyed the experiment because we had lots of fun. We found out that squash stained the egg the most, but vinegar did the most damage. Coffee created the least toughest stain to remove. To make this investigation successful we needed: four beakers, four different substances, four eggs with shells, toothbrushes, cups of water for rinsing, spoons to remove egg from the cup, cola, coffee, water, squash and blackcurrant. The vinegar dissolved the entire shell and when Miss Briggs tried to brush what remained, it popped! The squash made the hardest stain. It also stained the egg shell lilac/grey. Everyone enjoyed this experiment. The reason we used the egg shell was because it is made of a similar material to our teeth. We used the toothbrush to try and remove the stains from the egg.

Reported by Tommy

                                                   BEST EXPERIENCE EVER!

On 29^th March, Philosiphers went on a VERY long journey to Bluebell farm! It took 50 minutes to get after we arrived we got out of the coach and it smelt terrible, it smelt like manure. Any way it smelt terrible….  We did a welcome task, we got a drink and a digestive, a none chocolate biscuit then we had a colouring activity (farm animals). After that we had a talk about cows!! Did you know that cows make 24 litres of milk a day? That is a lot of milk.

ANIMALS

We saw rabbits they were so cute! We wanted to take one home! The colours were: grey, black, white and caramel. Following on from the rabbits we saw birds (peacocks and chickens) but they were locked away due to bird flu, but we did see guinea pigs they were adorable! We stroked them but all we heard was little cries… poor things.

We also saw some goats! One called Pixie escaped, you will have to ask Mrs Davey about this part of the trip! We think that she has been scarred for life (mentally not physically).

It was a cold day for the trip and we ate our lunch in a tent structure – it was freezing!

Tommy: Even though we were very cold, we were THEN given ice-cream. As though we weren’t cold enough but the ice-cream was delicious.

We also got chance to go on the play area, there was even a bouncy pillow.

Report by Maddy.

Wonderous World Book Day!

This year in World Book Day the children have gone all out in their fantastic World Book Day costumes, for example I saw a lot of Harry Potters and more…

For World Book Day the children were split up into 7 groups and these groups were sent all around the school. We spent the whole morning listening to 3 different books and a long with that we did activities linked to the books. You may be wondering are the Year 6's doing this. Well I will say this one thing they were 'taken care of'.

Read the next report to find out how....

To start off the day we had a quick assembly where Mrs Coupe put us into groups and to start of, my group, did potion making, this task was referred to Harry Potter and the Philosopher Stone. Then we had to travel all the way to the room of The Twits in this room we had to make a stinky perfume that made me run away. At last to end it off we did clay models of The run as fast as you can you can’t catch me I’m the Gingerbread man.

Reported by Rory

World Book Day for the year six’s!

World Book Day, it happens every year (except when it was lockdown) everyone did activities but the year sixes did something different to everyone else.

When everyone came in on the day the year fives went to do their activities but the year sixes stayed in the classroom waiting for the Witchby. When the Witchby came in, a chocolate cake was in her hands, then when it was put down at the front of the class. We read a short story, that we would have to carry on from. After the story was read, we all got given a piece of paper to think about some ideas to put into our own story. When that was finished we were told to line up.

When we were lined up we went down to the 'Chokey'. As we went into the Chokey, we took pictures to look at, for when we were writing. Then we all went to the corner and the lights turned off. After the lights were turned back on we all went inside to start the little story off. As we start our story, we had to slow write so there were no spelling errors. When it was close to break we were allowed a slice of chocolate cake. After break we had to carry on our story and get it finished before dinner.

This was how it was for the year sixes on World Book Day.

Reported by Connor.

March

            Hurray -  Spring is almost here!  Beekeepers all over the country are waiting to see if their bees are still OK after the cold winter months but it's still a little too cold to open up the hives to take a look.  We have to be patient a little while longer but it's very hard to wait.  It's exciting too, as we are looking forward to seeing all our bees again. 

While waiting, beekeepers are getting new clean equipment ready – building new hive boxes for the bees to live in, and making new frames for them to store their honey. 

This is a picture of the frame parts ready to be assembled and the tools we use.

You can see the pieces of wood that make the rectangular frame, they are held together with small   nails.

 You can also see the yellow sheet of wax that slots   inside the wooden frame. The bees use this wax to start building the honeycomb.

Inside of the hives can get a bit dirty when so many bees have been living in there all winter.  So once the weather is warm enough to open up the hives, we swap the boxes and some of the frames for nice clean or new ones.

Bees are very clean insects and will not poo or wee inside the hives – they wait until a sunny day then quickly fly outside to 'go to the toilet'.  They don't fly very far as it is still too cold.  If the temperature is less than around 9C, the bees' muscles can't work properly so they get too cold to even fly back to the hive and they die.

During the winter, while the hive is warm, other creatures can sneak in to share the warmth and to shelter from the cold.  Things like spiders, woodlice, and even mice.  Spiders and woodlice are OK – the bees don't mind sharing their hive space as they cause no damage. But mice!!!!  YUK!!!!  

They are smelly, make lots of mess (lots of poo!!).  They also chew and eat all the wax and honey that the bees have spent so much time making in the summer. 

Look at this picture of damage that a mouse has done, you can see that all the wax and honey has been eaten away, and the mouse has dragged in lots of messy nesting materials to sleep in!

The bees don't like all this mess at all but it is too much for them to repair and remove on their own so beekeepers have to be ready with new frames and clean boxes like these. 

To stop this from happening in the first place, we put a   metal strip across the hive entrance to prevent mice    from getting in. We do this in Autumn and leave it there until Spring to keep the mice out. Here is a picture of the type I use on my hives. It is made of metal so the mice can't chew a bigger hole  so they can get in the hive.  It has holes that are large enough for the bees to go in  and out, but too small for a mouse to squeeze in.

I feel very lucky that so far I've never found a mouse in one of my hives!!

Bee Joke:

            What sport do bees like playing most?

                                                                                                  Rug-bee!!   HaHa!!!

            See you next month

                                Kathy, Beekeeper

February

This month is the first month of starting to be busy. Things are starting to happen in the bee hive! The bees check the weather and if it is starting to warm up a little and flowers are starting to grow, they will let the Queen know that it's time to start laying her eggs again.

What flowers might you see this month?

These are winter jasmine, snowdrops and crocus and all give good pollen. Pollen is something called a protein and helps to make and grow new bees so bees need lots of it from now on to feed the babies.

The Queen won’t have had very much food during the last few months while she's been in the middle of the cluster of bees. She's only been keeping still and warm, and not laying any eggs. She won’t have felt hungry – it’s just like us when we are in bed and asleep, we don’t get hungry. But by now she will be quite skinny so the bees need to feed her well to give her the energy to start laying eggs. Just like us getting up on a morning, hungry and ready for breakfast!

This is why beekeepers have to make sure that the bees have enough food in the hive to last them until around March. There aren’t many flowers about until then, and we never know what the weather will be like or when exactly the Queen will start laying eggs again.

The bees that hatch out (like this one) from these new eggs will be the first of the summer bees. The bees that hatched in September and October were the winter bees and their only job has been to look after the Queen during the cold months. They are a little fatter than the summer bees so they can cuddle up to her to keep her warm. These old bees have reached the end of their lives as spring arrives so they die, making room in the hive for all the new bees who are all fresh and ready to work hard in the summer!

This month, my job is to start building new equipment.

I have just been given 6 more colonies of bees so now have 14 altogether. This means I have a lot more bees to look after so I need to work out what extra equipment I will need – and then start building it!!

Here's a puzzle for you - I will need a clean box for each hive for the Queens to live in with their bees, and new frames for the Queens to lay their new eggs in. If I have 14 boxes and each one holds 11 frames, can anyone work out how many frames I need to build?

That’s quite a hard question for you to work out so maybe an adult can help?

See you soon

Kathy 🐝

Christmas Countdown

Christmas is celebrated all over the world, and it happens in school as well.

That’s what Westhouses Primary School has been doing. We had a variety of decorations around the school, for an example every class had an advent calendar, which were put up by the staff. The calendars were filled with sweets like lollipops and loads more.

Plenty more happened as well. We had Santa come to school with a book and a chocolate Santa Thanks to Cohens Mum for the chocolate Santa’s. Everyone went up one at a time to collect their present.

Also we went to a pantomime (Dick Whittington) it was performed at Blackwell Community Centre, the whole school went to watch the pantomime. We asked for some opinions on the panto:

Reece declared “It was good because it was really funny.”

Jake remarked “It was funny.”

And Kacey commented “I was happy and excited.”

We had a Christmas party near the end of term where we had loads of fun. Trailblazers brought toys to play with and Philosophers had a movie on like the Explorers. In the Afternoon we had some party food that some people brought in.

Towards the end of term we had Explorers and Philosophers do a play each. Explorers did ‘Wriggly Nativity’ and Philosophers did ‘Bah, Bah, Bethlehem.’ The whole school and parents come to see the performances, something we haven’t been able to do for after 2 years – a bit of normality at last!

At the end of the last day of term, we held a carol service. We all sang a few songs in our class groups. Explorers and Philosophers sang songs from their plays and Trailblazers sang various songs. We had all the parents outside watching, even though it began to rain!

We hope it wasn’t our singing that made it rain!

Reported by Connor.

SHOCKING PUPPY VISIT!

On Friday, we heard the most shocking news. Philosophers were going to have some puppies in our classroom for a whole entire afternoon, which was roughly 2pm to 3:30. We all burst into excitement thinking we were going to see the best puppies ever, and indeed  we did. They were so cute and most of us wanted to hug them. The rest of us were enjoying it that much they started even crying! Even the Trailblazers wanted a bit of the treat, and they came in and had a sweet stroke of the Gordon Setters.

Tommy recommended “it was the best treat ever, I wasn’t expecting this!” Maddy thought “they were so cute, I loved hugging them!” Corey thought “They were lovely, this is the best treat I had ever received!”

Reported by Tommy

Sports Hall Athletics

On Monday 22^nd November 2021, year 3/4 went to the athletics at Fredrick  Gents Secondary School. We were very excited and nervous about the competition against other local schools.

The activities we took part in were: Javelin, long throw, Relay, long jump, the obstacle course and the speed jump.

We are sorry to say we didn’t come first but we did get the Spirit of the Games Award. We believe we were the loudest at cheering our team on and we all enjoyed our athletic experience.

Reported by Maddy.

Our arts mark celebration

On Thursday a few weeks ago, we had an arts mark celebration. On that day we had our year six children teach the rest of the school different ways of doing art – this included printing, collaging, wreath making, sculpting with paper. The children were very delighted with what they had created in the 4 activities. Most enjoyed the printing that was set in class 2. In class 3 the year 6’s taught the children how to collage, and in the hall the children made wreaths to hang from the ceiling of the hallway. Finally, in the KS1 classroom they were paper sculpting.

From one of our year 6’s that were teaching stated, “It was very fun, and wasn’t as hard and    overwhelming as I thought it would be.” One of our year 5’s  also commented on the work, “I really enjoyed the fact that we got to experience what it would be like to see other children teaching instead of the teachers.”

Far away workshop

This month Westhouses Primary school has been doing an African workshop. We worked online and got shown lots of different items like: fruits, a book and even some decorations. This was done by an African lady.

The first thing we was shown was a fruit called pawpaw. We were shown the outside first and it looked a bit like a watermelon. The inside was shown next, it had the colour of the inside of a watermelon around the edges. We were told how much it was and why it was that much money (it is cheap because it grows on that continent).

The workshop was moved onto the second item, which was a wooden cut out which was of two people together. It was meant to show not to be selfish and you need to share.

The third item was the book that the African lady wrote and it has been published. It was about a turtle that was in the Indian Ocean.

Reported by Connor Smith

CHRISTMAS CRUMBLE DESSERT READY TO EAT!

Ingredients

100g of frozen or fresh cranberries,

60g of caster sugar,

1 teaspoon ground mixed with spice,

Half of a teaspoon with ground cloves,

For crumble topping

150g of brandy butter,

200g of plain flour,

500g demerara sugar,

This is the most valuable dessert in Christmas time universe!

It takes about 15 minutes prep time with roughly about 6 serves.

Overall, it takes about one hour including the cooling down time so it would be perfect for a chilled Christmas pudding to fill your stomach.

I would recommend you try it, as you could achieve your own custom icing to decorate your crispy, freshly cooked dessert.

This will be your favourite meal this entire year.

Hope you enjoy!

By Tommy - WHOP/SNAG

CHRISTMAS SUGAR COOKIES RECIPE

You will need:

1] 1 ½ cups butter, softened

2] 2 cups white sugar

3] 4 eggs

4] 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract

5] 5 cups all- purpose flour

6] 2 teaspoons baking powder

7] 1 teaspoon salt

Toppings

1] sprinkles

2] blue or any icing

3] Christmas decorations.

THE BEST RECIPE OF THEM ALL, TRY NOW!

DELICIOUS, TASTY TREATS, READY SET EAT!!

By Maddy - Whop/SNAG group 

Did you know the week beginning 15^th November

Is National Nursery Rhyme week?

I thought it would be interesting to find out what our well-known nursery rhymes are all about.

Ring a ring of roses!

This nursery rhyme is about the 1665 plague of London which is also well known as the black death.  Others think of it by a pocket full of roses. Lots of younger children or toddlers play it but older people can also play it and it is a very fun family game for others to play.

Baa baa black sheep!

This common nursery rhyme was sung a long time ago (13 century) this is about sheep farmers who lose their wool 1 to a church 1 to the king and overall, the farmer ended up with 1 bag of wool. He got very angry because he did not get any money out of it. This had been sung due to the amount of wool tax in the world.

Humpty dumpty!

This rhyme is about a clumsy, short man accidently fall off of a brick, solid wall and landed on his poor head BANG!

Reported by Tommy

Remembering The soldiers who died from our village.

Thursday November the 11th 2021

Today all of Westhouses Primary School went to the village Memorial on Tibshelf Road, we did a one-minute silence, after we had the silence we put miniature soldiers that we had made the previous week and we also made poppies on the poem ‘In Flanders fields’ By John McCrae. We also wrote our own messages on the back of the hangings.

‘Thank you for all your hard work, you saved the country and you’ll be remembered as a hero!’ (Tommy)

‘Thank you very much!’ (Israel)

‘Thank you for your sacrifices.’ (Connor)

‘Thank you for saving our lives, we would not have a good country if it wasn’t for you! Thank you so much.’ (Maddy)

Our soldiers were made from lolly-sticks, wool and fabric.

The infants had made a poppy wreath using handprints and paper plates with painted poppies.

Looking at the memorial with all the names of the young men who died made us feel a bit sad. All but one attended our village school before they went to war.

Report by Maddy.

Dear parents/guardians.

I am writing to you about saving energy and saving MONEY and here are some tips to help you do it:

Turn down your heating by 2 degrees it will save you 8kwh per week

Wear a jumper in the winter and it will save you 4kwh per week

Turn of lights when unused it will save you half kwh per week

Air dry laundry will save 1kwh per week

Close bedroom windows at night will save you 1kwh per week

Turn of radiators in an unused room it will save you 1kwh per week

If you aren’t persuaded, doing some of these things will save the earth’s environment and make life better.

Thank you for listening.

If you speak to any year 5’s or 6’s they will be able to tell you how to save money, this has been there topic in geography this half term.

Reported by Rory.

Spectacular Sculpture Park

On Friday 15^th October, Westhouses Junior’s went on a special school trip paid for by Platform 31. We went to Yorkshire sculpture Park – a park which celebrates sculpture (the largest open-air display in Europe). Many of the sculptures are by Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, who were both born in Yorkshire.

We weren’t really sure what to expect as this trip was very different to the trips we usually go on.

We saw a pair of high-heels we were all shocked at how big they were they were so big that it looked like the were about to fall over (we think Mrs. Whitby would have like the shoes). We also saw a big ring which was made out of golden car rims and the diamond made out of glass tumblers. After that, we went to an ice-cream sculpture and we saw it was made out of plastic fruit. The maker of everything we saw was Joana Vasconcelos from Portugal, we also went to an underground gallery called The Underground Gallery (pretty obvious). We saw heads of a cow, horse and bull covered with crochet. Joana uses fabric, metal and yarn for her creations. She had also made a very large metal teapot and jug.

People’s opinion of the trip.

There was a lot of creativity, especially the diamond ring. (Zach)

I enjoyed it, because there was a lot of art (Rupert)

It was amazing, there were a lot of sculptures and I loved it (Harry)

I really liked the mask made with mirrors (Rowan)

I enjoyed walking round looking at the giant sculptures (Rory)

Reported by Maddy.

The      Grand     Trip of            MAGNA

Your children went to Magna at Roth. Magna was a museum about the different elements, fire, water, nature and wind. There were different rooms for different elements. First, we all sat in the ‘red hall.’ We sat on the circular tables to listen to the rules. Then we placed all of our belongings inside these metal cages. The first room we went to was the wind room. The wind room was different to the other rooms. It was high up in a huge ship. In the ship were a load of fans! It made my hair go crazy! In the room next to it was a piano with tubes facing the opposite way, when you pressed them, they blew out air which made a sound. There was a huge tube which blew out air. It was extremely powerful!!!

Next, we headed into the water room. It was full of buckets and even 2 little games! One of the games had a stand with 2 buttons, one to go left and the other to go to the right. You’re a turtle and you have to avoid all the dangers that could happen. The other game was that you had to flip the boards with sea creatures on, you had to flip them with a water gun! That was super fun!

There was also a sculpture of some mountains and a valley with water trickling down. The next room was nature with diggers to scoop up the balls. There was a rock disposer and wheelbarrows. There was also an area where you could listen to music, the class wanted to listen to bob the builder on repeat.

The last room was the fire room. In the middle of all the metal artifacts, there was the huge fire tornado. It started with oil poring on the bottom, then wind started and the fire grew so big that you couldn’t see the wind anymore! After looking at all the artifacts we started to head to the park. Then after playing on the park we got onto the bus and drove back.

Cross Country

Westhouses primary school entered a cross country competition with only one goal which was to try and give it your best. With 7 people in the juniors representing our school who were…

Jake did really well and finished will a solid first place.

Arthur came second in the year 3 and 4 race he was about half a meter away from first.

Kai tried really hard and finished with a solid 25 position.

Harry came in a really tight twenty second finish.

Tommy came in a solid third position coming behind Arthur who came second.

Corey came very close to harry but Corey came a solid 20 but with his burst of speed he pulled in 19.

Amelia entered a girls race to finish in a brilliant 22.

Lauren and Amelia came in the same place but Lauren did a second lap round the bottom playground.

Overall Westhouses did very well and everyone are super proud of everyone for giving it a try and doing great. This is something that we all should be proud of everyone that participated. Well done to the whole of Westhouses for coming third in the whole tournament.

WELL DONE!

Reported by Tommy

SCHOOLS NATURE AREA

let`s check out the nature area at school:

We have had a nature area for some years. There are plants and flowers, but watch the nettle`s they can sting you, and lots of trees, they are really healthy for wild bird, such as blackbirds, robins. There is a little shelter, it`s an army-green shelter overhead and it protects the table and yes of course it has chairs!

There are bird boxes and bug hotels and there are wildflowers.

The entrance/exit is through a gate.

At the moment it is quite overgrown, mostly due to Covid, the children have not been using it very much. The wildlife are probably quite pleased about that!

School time

Welcome back everyone a new year has sprung, all of us are new or going up a year and welcome to the new children. Loads of things have changed since we are out of lockdown. We don’t have to be in our own bubbles, we also don’t have to do assembles online and loads more.

Everyone is working hard like we always are. These are the topics for each class: Explorers are doing all aboard it is all about transport. Little Explorers are doing marvelous explorers and it is all about looking at themselves and around the local area. Philosophers are doing rainforests. Trailblazers are doing star gazers and its about space. We have been having a lot of fun in our new years and we are hoping to keep it this way.

On the 28 September 2021 EXPLORERS went to the tram way museum and the weather wasn’t great. Philosophers went to a museum on the 30 September 2021. Trailblazers went to Magna on the 30 September 2021.The Year 5 and 6 have Lea Green in June 2022.

We asked Little Explorers some questions they loved it and they also saw old trams modern trams and more. They even went on a tram.  

Plants around the school!

At Westhouses Primary School, we are very lucky with our plants and nature around our hardworking, determined school. We look after our plants and nature by watering them and giving the plants as much sunlight as possible.

Blackberries are most commonly found in woodlands, hedges and scrub.

Roses have a scientific name called rosa they also are one of the oldest flowers in England.

Celandines are a fluffy, yellow plants that need a lot of care like water and sunlight.

Daffodils take a year to grow to its highest height then need to get replanted to grow back.

Pumpkins are sometimes for Halloween, but you can also use it as decoration for a building.

Sunflowers grow outside in warm air with other flowers like daffodils.

Vegetables are food and also plants that are planted in some everyday lives.

Fruits can be juicy but also very hard to plant.

Willows are beautiful but need to be very careful.

Football

School went to a football competition, everyone that played was very good and at school they all got a medal for their hard work. They also got through to the next stage of the competition.

The people that played were; Jake, Elsie, Rory, Wezley, Cameron, Luke, Luca, Joe, Joe and Mason. They played v loads of teams. They played Morton for an example and won 5-0 when playing. The games where 5-10 minutes and was a 7 a side pitch. Westhouses are all proud of how they have played in the competition. The games were at Tibshelf Secondary School on their football grounds. They are playing their next game on the Thursday 21^st October 2021 and we are all hoping for them to win, GO WESTHOUSES!

Reported by Connor 

Wilder wild flowers

Mr. Peter Knott planted 100’s of seeds in the last days before spring arrived. You may have seen a clear thick wooden fence to tell you where you can park and where you can’t park! The fence is there to protect the plants and tree roots from being damaged by the cars. All you need to do is drive carefully, my mum can do it, so you can too!

Who loves poppies? Who loves flowers? Westhouses Primary School does. We made posters to ask people not to park on the verge. There are some blossom trees and a poppy field next to the MUGA on the park! We think the wildflowers make the road down to our school very special and unique. We hope that the flowers will increase every year and make everyone smile.

We also hope people will enjoy them as much as we enjoy them.

Andrew and Liz at Top Eccles Farm

Hello, 

Let us introduce ourselves, we are Andrew and Liz and we live at Top Eccles Farm here in the High Peak of Derbyshire and we are your new Food for Life Farm Link. I have to say Andrew does usually look more cheerful!

We are a smallholding with just a few acres, but it makes up part of our living. We have converted a stone barn into a holiday cottage for 4 people called Barn Meadow and have 2 cats called Sparkle and Spangle, 2 alpacas called Hercules and Horatio (we spin and sell their fleece), 9 hens which do have names – wellie, nom, HP, grumpy, spotty, leggy, hooky, nooky and speck and 3 beehives – no they don’t have names but produce lots of delicious honey. We currently don’t have any other animals but watch this space!

We have a polytunnel and growing area to grow produce for ourselves and holiday makers. We sell some of our produce from the bottom of our driveway and into local shops. We are quite high up over 1100ft (can you work out how many metres that is?) so our growing season is quite short. We both have other part-time jobs to make ends meet!

We are very lucky to live in such a beautiful place, but it is hard work at times. Here you can see our little world! We have some great neighbours who farm on a slightly larger scale than us. One has lots of sheep and a horse livery and the other is ‘rewilding’ their land and have pigs, sheep and cattle. We will be introducing them over time. At some point it will be great to do a live chat with you so you can ask us questions and see where we live. Watch out for our next update when we will show you how the alpacas are sheared and the wool spun. Hercules and Horatio do like to roll and chill out!

Bye for now

Liz & Andrew

DO YOU COOK WITH YOUR CHILD?

IS YOUR CHILD THE NEXT GORDON RAMSAY?

 
OR THE NEXT BUDDING NADIYA                 

HUSSAIN?

If any of these are you, please send photographs to the school website for us to share: [email protected] Your pictures will help our school towards our ‘food for life silver award’.
 

Here is a recipe for a healthy treat/snack.

My recipe is banana flapjack.

You will need 4 ripe bananas, some porridge oats, honey, coconut oil

                First find 3 ripe bananas (normal bananas) and place them on a tray.

• Then pre heat the oven to 180/160 fan /gas mark4 and line a non stick with grease proof paper.
• Then in a large bowl mash 3 bananas
• After that add oats, honey, coconut oil, then add spices and stir until well mixed.
• When done pour the mixture into the tray and pat it down .

Finally bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.

Captain Sir Tom Moore

Tom Moore

 Tom Moore is famous for walking 100 length of his humongous garden at the age of 99 with the goal of £1,000 by his 100^th birthday for the NHS.  In the 24 days it took him to complete  his fundraising, he made many media appearances and became a popular household name in the UK, earning a number of accolades and attracting over 1.5 million individual donations. On the morning of Tom Moore's hundredth birthday, the total raised by his walk passed £30 million, and by the time the campaign closed at the end of the day it had increased to over £32.79 million (worth almost £39 million with possible tax rebates).  On 17th July 2020, he was knighted by the Queen at Windsor Castle. In recognition of his efforts, he received the  BBC Sports Personality of the Year Helen Rollason Award at the 2020 ceremony. He also performed in a cover version of the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" sung by Michael Ball, with proceeds going to the same charity. The single topped the UK music charts, making him the oldest person to achieve a number one hit. Unfortunately, he died on 2 February 2021 at Bedford Hospital where he was taken after being treated for pneumonia and then testing positive for COVID 19.

Tom Moore never lost his positive attitude and his sayings became well known throughout the country.

‘TOMORROW WILL BE A GOOD DAY.’

‘WE WILL GET THROUGH IT.’.

This modest man inspired many others to follow in his footsteps and raise money for various charities during the pandemic.

He gave hope to many during the first lockdown, as people struggled through and will be remembered for a long time.  

Beautiful birds for spring!

Have you become a bird watcher, during lock down but have no idea what birds you have seen?! Well you have came to the right place, we have seen a few birds at school while in the playground and we will show you and tell you about them.

 Name: Robin

Life span: 13 month

Habitat:  forests, natural wooden areas, hedges, parks and gardens.

Diet: worms, seeds and nut and fruits.

Name: Raven

Life span: 10 – 15 years in the wild

Habitat: forests      

Diet: beetles and caterpillar

 Name: Collared Dove

Life span: usually is around 3 years the longest is 17 years.

Habitat: hedgerows or scrubs

Diet: grains seeds and greens

 Name: Heron

Life span: 5 years   

Habitat: Towns and countryside, on canals, ponds lakes and rivers.

Diet: fish

DO YOU COOK WITH YOUR CHILD?

IS YOUR CHILD THE NEXT GORDON RAMSAY?

OR THE NEXT BUDDING NADIYA HUSSAIN?

If any of these are you, please send photographs to the school website for us to share: [email protected] Your pictures will help our school towards our ‘food for life silver award’.

Here is a recipe for a healthy treat/snack.

My recipe is banana flapjack.

You will need:

4 ripe bananas

Some porridge oats

Honey

coconut oil

• First find 3 ripe bananas (normal bananas) and place them on a tray.

• Then pre heat the oven to 180/160 fan /gas mark4 and line a non stick with grease proof paper.

• After in a large bowl mash 3 bananas

• After that add oats honey coconut oil then add spices and stir until well mixed.

• Wen done pore the mixture into the tray and pat it down .

• Finally bake for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.

Green  Fingers

Is your child getting dirty fingers?

Well I think that your child would love to delete your garden and fill it with plants and food like potatoes! Like with me for example, I’m growing tomatoes in my house. But I think that you should grow plants and food in your garden, because then you won’t get your house covered in compost! In my garden I am also growing some cucumber. Now I really like cucumber!

Anyway, it’s really fun to grow stuff in gardens, houses, green houses, anywhere outside. It’s really fun to grow stuff any time anywhere!  So, I think you and your children should get some fresh air, plant some plants and food.

Just try it and see if you can get the chance to make something grow. How about trying to grow wild life plants and create a wildlife area in your garden, so more wild life animals come!

Please send us some photographs of anything you have grown – flowers or vegetables, let’s see how green fingered you can be.

Busy  Children!

What have your children been doing at school?

Well, you’re thinking why not just ask your child what they have done?

 No! Just read this paper and it will tell you. Isn’t that strange. Not really, it’s just normal for our paper to tell you about stuff because that’s what newspapers tell you, am I right, or am I right?

In the week we do a lot of different activities. On Monday, all of class 2 (Philosophers), we have to come to school in our PE kits. As well as Thursday. Yesterday we did some P.S.H.E, and we did some learning about the golden rule! I bet I have your attention now. Well, you can’t tell me I’m wrong. The golden rules we learnt yesterday were, “Love your neighbour like yourself.”  And also “Treat your friend like you would treat yourself” Do you know why we have rules? Well, our class had a discussion about it. They said that we need rules to keep us safe. My idea was that we need rules because if we didn’t have them then there would be no police, that means that robbers can just break into your house with a gun and kill you and everybody in your house! That is NOT ok! Now do you think that’s acceptable? What am I saying!? Of course, you don’t think that it is acceptable! Who WOULD THINK that!? You must be crazy to think that robbers are allowed to break into your house, kill everybody and steal you’re precious, most valuable things you have! So that is one reason we have rules. Without rules society would collapse. 

Baking Brilliant Bread!

How to bake brilliant bread  

Ingredients:

1. Salt

2. Yeast

3. Vegetable oil                                                                                             

4. Warm water

5. Strong flour

Method:

1.  Mix the flour, salt and yeast in a large bowl.  Make a well in the centre, add the oil and water, and mix well. If the dough seems a little stiff, add 1-2 tbsp water

2. Tip the dough onto a lightly floured work surface and knead it until the dough becomes satin-smooth    

3. Place it in a lightly oiled bowl to prove. Leave to prove for 1 hour until doubled in size or place in the fridge overnight.

4. Knock back the dough, then gently mould it into a ball. Place it on a baking tray lined with parchment to prove for a further hour until doubled in size

5. Dust the loaf with flour and cut a cross, about 6cm wide, into the top of the loaf.

6. Preheat the oven to 220˚C/fan 200˚C/gas 7 and bake for 25-30 minutes.

7. Bake until golden brown and the loaf sounds hollow when tapped underneath. 

8. Cool on a wire rack.

9. Leave to cool and when cool you will have some brilliantly baked bread!

10. After cooled, you can spread butter or anything on top of the bread and then you can eat it. (Or you can just leave the bread plane)

DIWALI THE FESTIVAL OF LIGHT

In class 2 they made a hand out of clay for Diwali. Diwali is the Hindu Festival of Light.

Here are the instructions how to make your clay hands:

1.  Shape the clay into a ball.
2. Warm the clay so it is easier to roll out.
3. Then you role the clay out.
4. After that you put your fingers together and put them on the clay.
5. After you find a knife to cut out your clay hand.
6. Next you decorate your hand with patterns.
7. Then you let it dry under a radiator.
8. Finally you paint it with primary colours.

Have you heard about Pace Ball?

Well you’re in luck because all of the children in year 3, 4, 5 and 6 have been learning how to play it.

It is an entertaining sport for children and as far as we know all of the children love it. There is a lot of strange rules in Pace Ball. I suppose you want to know what the rules are. Well I’m going to tell you.

1. The first rule in Pace Ball is if you step in your team’s circle the other team will have a free shot.
2. The second rule is if you drop the ball the other team will have possession.
3. Rule number 3 is at the start of a game one of your team mates go to the centre and the referee will throw the ball into the air and you have to try and catch it.
4. Rule number 4 when you have been tug on the shirt you stand still for 3 seconds, you can only pass or shoot if you keep on running and if you don’t pass or shoot you will give away a free shot.
5. Finally have fun.

Hopefully you know the rules of Pace Ball now and this is what one of the students had to say. ‘It helps you work as a team and it makes your heart pumping.’

Rob the instructor said ‘It has been a privilege to teach you and I have really enjoyed the sessions.’

How you can help the environment!

1] You can check your bonfires before you light them for hedgehogs. [ hedgehogs like to live and hibernate in them].

2] You can create some bug homes in your garden. [This helps bugs that have nowhere to live]

3] Plants some flowers for the bees [ They like lavender]

4] Walk to school if you can. [ The cars and vehicles let off gas that destroys the atmosphere]

5] Save water by not leaving the tap on and don’t take too long in the shower. [It means you don’t have to clean things more often with chemicals]

6] Recycle plastic. [ Try not to buy single use plastic]

7] Recycle plastic bags. [They float into the ocean and turtles eat them and it makes them ill]

8] Shop locally. [You don’t have to drive as much this way]

9] Don’t make unnecessary trips. [This reduces gas in the atmosphere]

10] Don’t use peat-based compost. [ this is taken out of the natural world]

11] Don’t plant flowers that need space in pots. [This kills the flowers]

12] Plant trees. [Trees breathe out oxygen that fixes the atmosphere]

13] Donate to charities. [Charities help the environment in ways that you can’t do at home]

14] Reuse old rubbish into things that can help the environment [like bricks and cardboard rolls, not plastic!]

15] Don’t use palm oil. [People cut down the rain forests to get it and if you use it then people need to cut them down more]

How to make a home for a hedgehog!

You will need:

An old box such as a wooden wine crate

Untreated timber [15cm x 2cm, 1.2m length]

Galvanized nails [25mm]

Hosepipe [1m length]

Jig saw [let a grown up use this]

Hammer [let a grown up use this]

Drill [let a grown up use these]

25mm wood drill bit

Remember:

Put this in the quietest point in the garden, hedgehogs like the quiet.

Instructions:

1] Start by making the tunnel, cut the timber into 4 30cm lengths and nail them together lengthways.

2] Use a jig saw to cut an entrance hole 11cm x 15cm out of one side of the crate at the base.

3] Attach the tunnel to the crate by nailing it from the inside.

4] Drill a hole in the back of the crate and insert the hose so they can breathe.

5] Fill the crate with dry leaves, hay or straw and replace the lid. Hide the hedgehog house amongst soil and leaves or bury it beneath logs, ensuring the entrance and air pipe are free of anything that could block it.

We want to see your best nature drawings! Draw your favourite thing about nature, how you helped the planet or your favourite plant! The winner will get a certificate.

Hand your drawing in to Mrs. Russell when you have finished by the 11^th January 2021. [Monday]. The judge will judge by year group. [ Little Explores will have 1 winner, year 1 will have 1 winner, year 2 will have 1 winner, year 3 will have 1 winner, year 4 will have 1 winner, year 5 will have 1 winner and year 6 will have 1 winner.] Under your drawing, put your year group but not your name, this will make sure all judgement is fair.

Class: _______________________________.

A healthy planet means less bad weather and less natural disasters for other countries. If you want to help, follow some of the tips above. 

Tips to help to spread the word on how to save the planet:

1] A banner.

2] A poster.

3] A window display.

4] A blog.

5] A website

I hope you can help to help the environment, everything you do [no matter how small]  helps a family of bees, hedgehogs or other endangered [ Nearly gone] animals.

Reporter: Lilly.

When she arrived we stood and looked in bewilderment at her broken leg! She showed resilience and came to see us. We all felt downhearted for her as she would not be able to play until next season.

To start us off, we all introduced ourselves to her: our first question was to ask her how she got into football and she said a couple of her friends played it so she started playing at school as a result she enjoyed playing the game. She started wanting to be a professional at the age of 12. She has always wanted to play for Arsenal but ended up starting off her career at Bristol City, at the age of 16 she joined Chesterfield Ladies FC. To achieve this dream she had to go through 10 years of football. She trains at Shirebrook Academy twice a week and playing a tiring game once a week.

She got her dreadful injury by trying to skip past the defender but they reached a leg out for the ball, but she got caught on the shin. Within a second she was on the floor in pain!

If you would like to be a super star like Gina, she said ‘never stop practicing.’ We all enjoyed interviewing her and wish her the best to get back playing and scoring again.

Mason Y6

Happy and Healthy Pets

 On the 12^th March 2020 Shauna from PDSA   told us how to look after our pets properly. At first she went into the Explorers to inform them how to look after their pets. Then the whole school got together so she could give us all an assembly. She talked to us about the history of the PDSA and who created the charity, (Maria Dickin). She told us about two cases that they had successfully treated, We were shocked to learn that it costs over a million pounds each week to treat sick and injured pets like Shinji [a kitten]who fell three floors and Shadow[a dog] who got ran over by a bicycle ; cut open his liver. They treat an animal every 5 seconds.

During the workshops in the classes, she taught us the 5 Welfare needs so we can keep our pets safe .They are: a home, care, food, water exercise, friends/family unfortunately they have a high possibility of dying if they don’t have these obligatory needs. Cats, dogs and rabbits are the most common pets PDSA treat so Shauna taught us how to look after these pets .Dogs are the UK’s number 1 pet as they’re really energetic and fun animals to play with.

As a school we are working towards the Pet Wise bronze award and we already have 400 points – we need to get 600 more points to achieve our goal of 1000 .We have already done some activities which should give us another 350 points.

Reported by Mason Y6 and Liam Y5.

On the 9th January 2020 a lady from Ghana came into our school and she taught us African dances.

At one point we did a mating call from West Africa and it involved lots of squealing, humming and looking and sounding like a bull. We also acted like we were basketball players, football players, runners & Usain Bolt. Doing the rain dance involved running around in circles and squealing and jumping.

Later in the day, we did a painting inspired by a type painting called Batik. We used blue in lines and then purple over it. The blue still bled through and it made a lovely Galaxy pattern. Then we did a black border and if we had time a few patterns, you could do whatever pattern you wanted, but it had to fit on the piece of cloth, some people put zig zags or made up symbols or even random lines and curves.  Some people had one big pattern others had 10 small patterns.

One child in year 3 said “fun”

Another in year 2 quoted “crazy”!

Also a boy in year 4 replied “weird”!

Food Will (Maybe) Destroy The World…

Food Pollution is when food travels from distant countries using vehicles that pollute the environment. It is a problem we should be more worried about. The more we pollute, the more we destroy the earth’s shield against meteorites and the Sun’s UV light.  The more UV light that comes through the atmosphere the more likely people will get severe sun burn and sun burn can lead to skin cancer, which can be lethal. So if we don’t stop it, it could get out of control and burn up our atmosphere and we might end up like Mercury (about 435C) or Mars or Venus!! This is a very serious situation since there isn’t any water, food, air, life!! So try and get food from local places not places like Brazil, Australia and other places far away. It won’t matter if you have Brazilian food in Brazil or Australian food in Australia but try not to have things from places far away from where you are. So eat local things instead of things from abroad. Support our farmers and food producers!

Reporter George Y5

Green energy

What is green energy?                         

Green energy is electricity, but not all electricity is green energy.

Green energy is natural energy from solar panels, wind turbines and hydro.

Fossil Fuel

The other type of electricity, is made of coals, oils, and natural gasses, these will eventually run out but meanwhile they are polluting our planet. Our world needs to think about the future before it is too LATE.

OFTEN FESIVAL

The often festival was on the 27^th of September and had art everywhere: mythical clay eggs in a prison, a mermeration in a church, we also watched a play about King Alfred because Alfreton is named after him. Laila, Liam and James also played a little game and James won so he got to sit on the golden toilet and became king Alfred’s knight ,he also got into prison and he had to ‘scoop the poop’ but so did the other contestants. James came out on top (of the golden toilet) leaving the other phoney knights (and the burnt cakes) in the dust.

Brilliant Bus Making

to make them roll .”They worked pretty well and looked great, “Said Mrs Coupe the infant teacher. The finished product had more glitter on the buses than in the pot.

Reporters: MasonY6, GeorgeY5 and CarterY1.

Macmillan Coffee Afternoon

On Wednesday 18^th of September we raised £242.71p for Macmillan cancer support. James and Grace were going mad selling cakes. All the parents and carers thankfully donated cakes for the whole school to have one .Tea and coffee was made by Mrs Russel and Mrs Tucker. Macmillan try to raise money to help people with cancer have a good time. Cancer can affect any part of the body and any-one.  The Macmillan nurses help people with the dreadful disease by making them have a good time and forget their illness.

Reporters: Mason Y6, George Y5 and  Carter Y1