BIC Sant Agustí Weekly News - World Book Day (03/05/21)

Dear families,

Despite current restrictions, at BIC Sant Agustí we are determined to try to carry on as normally as we possibly can, so as part of this week the children have had an amazing time celebrating World Book Day. Their costumes were wonderful and we enjoyed a socially distanced parade in the main playground so everyone could see all the brilliant costumes. The children made up class stories, guessed book characters and played quizzes to find out the names of books - to name just a few of the activities.

Reading is such an important part of education and as an avid reader, I would love to pass my love of reading to all the children. Children need to learn to read but also need to appreciate books and hopefully to develop a love of reading. If children are reading, it is the first step on their way to discovering so much more - it often does not matter what they are reading, as long as they are reading. While some children prefer a novel, others will prefer picture books and others will prefer reading the sports news - whatever they are reading, it is valuable as they are learning as they read.

Many people have a favourite author or genre - the style of the book. Listening to the children discussing their favourite books and authors it is fascinating to hear the range of authors and books which the children enjoy. Some of the more popular authors are David Walliams, Jacquline Wilson, Julia Donaldson, Jeff Kinney and Roald Dahl, while favourite books are The Gruffalo, We’re Going on a Bear Hunt, Famous Five and The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Which is your favourite book? I am sure it is not “The World’s Worst Parents” by David Walliams, and hopefully not his “The World’s Worst Children” either!

Reading with other people is always a lovely experience, whether it is reading together or listening to someone else reading. Helping your child at home is such an important part of your child learning to read, especially to foster a love of reading.

Try to find some time this weekend to sit and read - both with your child and for yourself!

Have a lovely weekend, happy reading

Warm regards,

Mrs Short

Principal

What a busy start of the second half term we’ve had! Last week we had such a fantastic day celebrating ‘Illes Balears’ Day with different workshops and activities. We created our own collages inspired by Joan Miro’s art, we made our own ‘siurell’ clay models and we even learnt to dance ‘Ball de bot’ with the dancers of the show! That was really great fun!

Yesterday, we celebrated World’s Book Day! The children loved coming to school wearing their favourite characters’ costumes and they all looked really cute. We went really creative making colourful bookmarks to take home!

In between these two special days, we have continued with our learning journey, spending a lot of time outside enjoying the sun and the lovely weather. Starfish have just started their new topic “Animals around the world” while in Seahorses we’ve learnt a few more things about Spring time, this time with more focus on plants.

Last but not least we would like to welcome our new Starfish friend that has just joined us this week. On behalf of the Early Years team, have an amazing and safe weekend!

Last week we celebrated Dia De Baleares and the school became even more colourful and vibrant than normal! The children enjoyed lots of activities including making traditional siurell from clay. These ancient Mallorcan objects were traditionally used as whistles to help farmers gather their animals high up in the mountains.

We are reading lots now in this class! We can sound out lots of words and we even know some tricky words by heart!

We know some tips on how to become a good reader! Can you see our 10 tips?

We continued our theme of wild plants by drawing some objects from nature. We used many shades of green to create our big green leaves! We learned that some leaves, especially in the rainforest can grow to be as big as a car!

We also welcomed a new Seal to our class!

A shorter than usual week, but what a busy week it has been! The children were very excited to take their beans and cress heads home as we are getting ready for the next unit of learning in science - Super Healthy Me! They have also continued to investigate where we are in the world and our Me on the Map nest books are coming along brilliantly. We were really surprised to see the children use Google Earth and Google Maps to find the school and then where they live!

Our quest continues in English and across the curriculum. Our skills at story mapping have been very helpful during World Book Day too! We have used our amazing adjective knowledge to describe different locations as a story setting to answer the question of WHERE our quest stories might take place.

World Book Day was WONDERFUL… We had a class focus on ´Blown Away´ by Rob Biddulph. We had a whole day of activities which kept very busy. The parade in the morning gave us the chance to show off our great costumes and to see everyone elses. Blown Away is jam-packed with rhyming words so we played Rhyming Bingo as well as `I hear with my little ear...´. We also had penguin maths, art and an afternoon of design and technology making our own kites.

We have started to learn about Florence Nightingale as our significant person. We explored why she is famous and how she has changed hospitals. We all agreed that the job of a nurse has changed and that at this time nurses are definitely heroes. Quite a few of us would like to be a nurse (a midwife, a doctor or a vet) when we are adults.

Have a restful weekend, ready for a fabulous 5 days next week.

World Book Day!

Dolphins class had a very exciting Thursday, this is what we got up to…….

To start the day off we strutted our stuff and paraded around the playground to show our impressive costumes to the school. It was great to also see everyone else’s costumes too as there had been a lot of effort put in. We saw bears, flowers, tin men, wimpy kids and more!

In the morning, we took part in a whole school writing competition where we had to write a story including certain items. There were some very imaginative ideas and we are very proud of the story we wrote.

In the afternoon, we talked about our favourite book characters and then designed and made our own wall of fame to include them.

What a way to spend a Thursday!

It’s always non stop fun and learning while we’re at school. Before the long weekend we had a thoroughly great day enjoying the Balearic Day Celebrations, especially the visit from the Ball de Bot dancers. We certainly learnt some great moves and nifty footwork from them!

Fast forward one week and yet another celebration...Thursday being World Book Day. Firstly we would like to say thank you to all the children, and parents, for the fantastic costumes. The first activity of the day was a school parade where the children had the opportunity to show off their amazing costumes! A BIG well done to Eva who won the class fancy dress competition as Mary Poppins. We certainly recognised a lot of our favourite book characters. Thursday morning saw the Jellyfish taking part in a short story inter-class competition. We used our collective thoughts and imagination as we wrote a short story about a teacher, a parrot, a time machine and a magic wand. It never ceases to amaze us the variety of stories that can be made by using just 2 characters and 2 objects, the joy of a childs’ imagination! We also used the day to celebrate all things about books, including Guess the book, using emojis.

You may ask yourself how on earth do we have time to do fit in all our other learning? It’s all about the hard work and dedication. In a snapshot, this week the Jellyfish have also learnt about multiplying and dividing using numbers with decimal points, possessive apostrophes and pronouns, more poems and capital cities of Europe.

Phew, time for a break and some fun! Enjoy the photos of our last weeks’ celebrations and have a great weekend!

It comes as no surprise I am sure that it has been another jam packed week in year 5! Last Friday the children all had a great day celebrating Baleares Day. Miss Campos and Miss Ainhoa had organised lots of fun activities for the children to do with lots of learning about the islands. I learnt about lots of new places I would like to visit around the islands.

In maths we have been continuing to work with decimals and our numbers are getting more decimal places but we are coping well! In art we have now finished our Lowry landscapes and this week experimented with colours and abstract art in the style of Steven Brown, a Scottish artist. We used paint and oil pastels with our fingers to create texture on the animals including his most famous work, the ´Mc Coos ´- the beautiful highland cows. It was messy but fun!

World book day Year 5 - some great imaginative costumes, well done to everyone and particularly Leo for winning the class prize!

Another great art lesson as the Sharks continue to learn about landscape painting techniques, this time focusing on how Monet used colour and shade to show light reflecting off water. Each child had a cut out rectangle and mixed colours to create similar shades and the aim was to continue to replicate the original painting. Here are our artists in action!

In our humanities lessons we are now learning about mountains, and last week we investigated how they are formed. The children learnt about the different types of mountains including fold, dome and fault block and then had a go at recreating how they were formed by doing some fun activities!

On Friday, the children had a great time taking part in Baleares Day activities including art and dancing!

Esta semana hemos aprovechado el día del libro y hemos participado, en Year 3 and Year 44 durante las clases de español, en un concurso internacional sobre EXLIBRIS. Pues un Exlibris es una marca de autor personal que consiste en una estampa con un dibujo personalizado que contiene el nombre del dueño para marcar sus propios libros.

También, en Y5&6 hemos conocido algunas de las famosas aventuras de Don Quijote de La Mancha haciendo mención a Miguel de Cervantes. Los alumnos han podido visualizar un la famosa historia de los molinos y los gigantes y, a partir de esta locura, ellos mismos han creado otras anécdotas locas de Don Quijote y Sancho Panza.

Last week Y6 students during their PE class were focused on developing their racket skills while playing tennis games. Well done to everyone!