The whole school participated in an exciting day to mark Roald Dahl’s 100th birthday. The children have been reading Roald Dahl stories and writing and creating in response. Badgers have been inventing their own medicines inspired by George’s Marvellous Medicine. Owls have created confectionary after reading extracts from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Squirrels even made ‘frobscottle’ for their afternoon drink! They also discovered a snozzcumber growing in one of our raised beds – amazing!

Over the holidays we have had some further developments to our outdoor learning area and the EYFS outdoor classroom. Our children have been enjoying the new facilities and have had lots of fun over the last week exploring and trying out the new activities. The work was done thanks to a National Lottery Awards for All Grant.

Everyone at Woodland hopes you have had a lovely summer. We have had a great first week back at school and the children are enjoying being in their new classes and seeing all of their friends.  Our new starters have settled in well and are already getting used to the school day.

The children had a great time at the disco on Tuesday night, it was a lovely way to celebrate the end of a fantastic school year and say goodbye to our Year 6’s.

Last Friday, we had a space themed maths day run by the Life Centre in Newcastle. As well as the planetarium show, we investigated space rocks and built and flew rockets. Our brains were put to the test as we used maths to find out more about space! Ingleton Year 5/6 pupils were invited to join us and we all really enjoyed the day.

This week we had a visit from John and Jen who are historians at the Oriental Museum in Durham. They came to school to help us learn about the Ancient Egyptians. John worked with the Badger Class and Jen with the Owls. We started by looking at what it looks like inside a mummy . We looked at an x-ray. We then found out how to mummify a body, including how to remove the organs. We then mummified Pharoah Charlotte and we became Gods. We neededed to decide where Pharoah Charlotte should be sent in the afterlife. We had to ask her questions about things she had said and done while she was alive. We decided she must go to Duat (Ancient Egyptian Hell!) because she had not always been good. She was eaten by Ammit the soul eater. After that we looked at real Ancient Egyptian artefacts and we had to answer questions about they were made of and what they might have been used for. At the end John told us what each one was. We had a really brilliant morning and we learned so much about Ancient Egypt ready for September when this will be our history topic.

We had a wonderful Olympic themed Sports Day at Woodland, and this year the sun shone!  There was a Brazil themed opening ceremony with singing, a parade of athletes, samba drumming and samba dancing. Following this, the children were in mixed age teams and took part in a wide range of events to reflect all the different Olympic sports – from the javelin and discus to the shooting (water pistols) and the equestrian (hobby horses)! Gold medals were awarded at the end to all the children.
We were joined by all our families who supported the teams and thoroughly enjoyed the sports and the Summer Fair that followed.

As with all big summer events in Britain the heavens opened and we had a very wet afternoon for our tea party. However this did not dampen our spirits and all our families joined us for tea and cakes in the hall.  All the children had been very busy baking for the occasion and our centre piece was a giant birthday cake complete with 90 biscuit candles!  The children all received a special Woodland School Queen’s 90^th Birthday mug, very kindly provided by Friends of Woodland School as a memento of the occasion.

Usually weekends in school are very quiet with no one around, but on the night of the 24th June 2016 Woodland Primary School was a hive of activity with the children taking part in our 7th Annual Giant Sleepover.

The evening’s activities started with staff, children and parents etc taking part in a family football followed by supper and bingo. Parents left at 8.30pm and the children and staff then settled down in their pyjamas to watch a bedtime film. Lights were out at 10.30pm and the school began to settle down(!!!) with a little bit of talking, giggling and snoring!!

The next morning the children were up very early!!! The children had their breakfast outside in the sunshine and then enjoyed playing out together on the field. A huge thank you to all the staff that gave up their Friday night, so that we could all have some great fun together.

The children of Badger and Owl Class wrote our summer play, The 12 Labours of Hercules. On Thursday they performed it for family and friends in the school hall.  There was lots of exciting action and Woodland humour! Everyone enjoyed watching the performance and thank you for all the lovely comments.