Welcome back to The Hive! It’s been wonderful to see all the children return after the summer break, full of enthusiasm and ready for another exciting year of learning. We’ve also loved welcoming our new Year 4 children, who have settled into life in the Hive brilliantly. Everyone has made a fantastic start, and we’re looking forward to all the adventures and achievements ahead!

We began the year by taking time to settle back into our routines and remind ourselves of the expectations that help make the Hive such a happy and positive place to learn. The children have enjoyed getting to know one another, working together and thinking about how kindness, trust and respect help us to build strong friendships.

In English, we have really enjoyed reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl. Inspired by Willy Wonka’s wonderful creations, the children designed and described their very own chocolate and sweet inventing rooms for the factory, letting their imaginations run wild with weird and wonderful inventions! They also had great fun creating another horrible, vile child to win the mysterious sixth Golden Ticket, using fantastic descriptive language to bring their revolting new characters to life. The creativity didn’t stop in the classroom either! For their homework, lots of the children invented and created their very own sweets and chocolates for us all to taste. We certainly enjoyed sampling their delicious (and sometimes unusual!) creations!

We are really enjoying our new topic, “Where in the World…?”, as we explore our big question, “What is spectacular about Spain?” In Geography, we have been travelling around Europe without even leaving the classroom! The children explored different countries around the Mediterranean before choosing one to research in more detail. We combined our Geography learning with ICT and put our brand-new Google Chromebooks to good use, with the children creating their own fantastic presentations all about their chosen Mediterranean country. They loved researching interesting facts, finding out about different places and sharing their discoveries with the rest of the class!

PE has been another energetic part of our term! The children have been developing their fundamental movement skills, including balancing, running, agility, jumping, hopping, landing and skipping. Mrs Sporty Brown has also kept us on our toes with our weekly 2K run, which has quickly become a highlight! The children have loved challenging themselves to set a personal best and then working hard each week to try to beat it. It has been fantastic to see their determination, resilience and encouragement for one another as those times keep getting quicker!

What a fantastic start to the year it has been! The children have settled in wonderfully, approached their learning with enthusiasm and curiosity, and shown that they are ready to take on every new challenge. We’re incredibly excited to see where our learning takes us next!