Squirrel Class invited their families to a festive ‘Stay and Play’ afternoon. The activities were based on Christmas but all had an underlying Maths theme.  As you can see from the photos, everyone had a lovely afternoon.

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We had a surprise treat this week at Woodland when Everycloud Entertainment asked if they could preview their pantomime ‘Aladdin’ for our children. Everyone had a whale of a time, but their throats were a bit sore by the end!  You can see this fantastic pantomime at Bishop Auckland Town Hall this weekend or Spennymoor from next Thursday.  A huge thank you to all the cast that took the time to come and entertain us all at Woodland Primary School.

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Following the Remembrance Service at the Bowes Museum where Evan laid the school poppy wreath, the children from Woodland held their own act of Remembrance at the village war memorial on Monday.  Some of the children read their poems they had written as part of the Bowes Museum WW1 project.

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Mrs Bentley has received the full country-wide results from the rocket science experiment that our children took part in. The seeds that went to space (red packet) did slightly less well overall, they suspect that increased radiation levels in space may have contributed, but the red seeds did grow well and this is good news for growing plants in space in the future.

Thank you to everybody that helped and attended the Halloween Party on Thursday night. There were lots of fantastic costumes and some brilliant carved pumpkins. A fun time was had by all!

After a turbulent ride on her broomstick a travelling witch dropped some pumpkins as she flew over Woodland. Squirrel class had great fun discovering the pumpkins, counting them, sorting them, then making various pumpkin creations for our pumpkin café.

On Wednesday the whole school went on a visit to Durham Cathedral. We were involved in two workshops during the day. The first workshop for the older children told us about the history of the Cathedral and the story of St Cuthbert and other Bishops. The Squirrel Class found out more about the signs and symbols of a place of worship and one of the Squirrel children even got to dress up as a Bishop! The second workshop involved some outdoor learning and although we got a bit wet we enjoyed finding out about the geography of Durham and looking for landmarks.

On Friday we were involved in an Art Moves Waterfall Workshop.  We looked at the work of Steve Messam and used his footage of High Force as an inspiration for some poetry. We also found out about the types of rock in Teesdale and how to classify them. We made fossils with plaster and a paper crinoid  and the final activity was to look at how the water cycle works. We all learned a lot and enjoyed the workshop, especially making the fossil. The group who ran the workshop commented on how well behaved our children were and added our poetry was some of the most creative they have seen so far.

On Tuesday, Vicky Holbrough a visual artist came to work with children in Year 2-6 as part of the Bowes Museum WW1 Project. We looked carefully at some poppies and then we made some sketches. We added colour with watercolour pencils, using different shades of red and green. In the afternoon, we made some metal embossed poppies and coloured them with ink. They will be made into a wreath to be presented at the cenotaph in Barnard Castle on Remembrance Sunday. We had a fantastic day and the results of our art projects are very impressive.