Month: March 2020

Here is a song we would be enjoying at song. Listen and enjoy with your family at home. Can you spot any springtime things in your garden?

Happy Spring time everyone.

Hi everyone,

Look who has been busy working on his engines at home. Lots of listening and concentrating involved there. Well done, keep up the good work.

Have a look at the train layout video. Click the link above.

We would love to see any pictures of things you are doing at home. You can send photos to the school office and from there we can put them onto the Copper Base blog. You can also send photos to your classes – check your class blogs for details.

We will be able to put images onto the blog if appropriate. We can not post photos containing pictures of other people or your child if they are wearing pyjamas or swimming costumes. The images you email us will only be used on your child’s blog and they will be deleted from the email once they have been uploaded

Please send your photos to: office@damers.dorset.sch.uk

See you all soon.

Good Morning Copper Base,

At school we enjoy looking closely at patterns in nature as part of our geometry and beauty. Look at these lovely patterns below.

ISLAMIC PATTERNS

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Talk to your children What shapes can the children see? What are the properties of these shapes? Through these discussions you will discuss shape vocabulary in relation to circle, triangle, square, hexagon, and octagon.

Shape investigation 
Cut out a range of 2D shapes from paper (like the ones above) and ask them to fit them together so there are no gaps. After some time, ask the children which ones fit together and which ones don’t. (Oblongs, rhombus, parallelograms, equilateral triangles, squares and hexagons will tessellate.) Once the children have had an opportunity to explore, ask them to draw a pattern by fitting their shapes together and drawing around them. This could be developed by asking the children to colour in, using a repeating pattern and explaining how they did it.

Have fun making different patterns. You can colour on the shapes or cut out the shapes from different coloured paper if you have it at home.

Enjoy and happy pattern making.

Mrs Kenny reads a new story -‘ Oi Dog’

Enjoy

The Ants Go Marching #2

We love to listen to songs and sing them in our group. Have a listen to this familiar song at home.

Another one of our favourite base activities is is this cup stack game. We use reusable cups and paper plates that can be used over and over again. The children are great at taking in turns and really concentrating. Have a go at home if you can.

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Here are some different ways of doing it!!

Message from Mrs Smith:

Good morning everybody! I hope that you’ve all had a restful weekend and that you enjoyed our Celebration Assembly on Friday. This week we are going to think about Health and Wellbeing and the effect that nature has on our lives. I’m hoping that we will all become ‘Transformers’ through growing and gardening.

Your grown-ups have an email to help with the assembly and in this week’s notes I’ve included a clip for them that some of us watched together in school, linked with The Eden Project and the work of Sir Tim Smit. You may want to watch this together as a reminder.

Those of you who met Sir Tim when he came to visit will remember his advice to you about dreaming big and how if we all join together we can transform places through hope and nature. So that is exactly what we are going to do this week!

I would like you to think about a space in your home, or your garden if you have one, that you would like to transform over the coming weeks by planting some seeds or caring for plants. Some of you may already have seeds and spaces that you have started to transform, but don’t worry if you haven’t as we can help and I have let your grown-ups know what we can do.

I would like you to take a ‘before’ snapshot of the space (this can be a photograph or a drawing) and we’ll then look at this again in a few weeks’ time once things start to grow. If Sir Tim had done this at the beginning of his project this would have been his ‘before’ and ‘after’ …

As most of you are now able to stay home and stay safe, I thought it would also be good this week to take a little virtual trip over the Atlantic to New York City to see another beautiful transformation project. The High Line is a public park built on a historic railway line which runs above the streets of Manhattan. It was saved from demolition by neighborhood residents and opened in 2009 as a beautiful public space where visitors can enjoy nature, art, and design.

The High Line is supported by a team of dedicated volunteers. There’s a lovely clip below showing one of these volunteers, Gammy Miller, in action. I wonder if you can find any links between interdependence and wellbeing and what Gammy is doing within her community?

So your mission this week, should you choose to accept it, is to start your own natural ‘transformation’ through growing and gardening. Your starting point may look like this …

… and if you ‘dream big’, who knows what your ‘after’ will look like!

Lots of you have already been telling me about the changes in nature that you can see all around you and I would love to see your pictures and drawings of the natural things that are making us all say ‘wow!’ at the moment too, now that we genuinely have time to ‘stand and stare’.

I can’t wait to hear from you (your grown-up will help you to share pictures, drawings and ‘wow’ moments with me). I will reply to any messages that come in and I will share all the highlights in our celebration on Friday.

Stay sheltered, safe, healthy and happy Team Damers. School is very empty without you.

Mrs Smith ☺️

Message from Mrs Smith:

Good afternoon everybody! (The chickens and I are sitting together in the Peace Orchard waiting to see if we can hear you all saying your good afternoon back just like you do in our assemblies at school!)

You have all made me smile so much this week with your amazing rainbows and tales of interdependence within our community. I have heard about …

• Rainbow tuned bells being played and heard by some very happy neighbours
• Children and families cheering up neighbours with food, chocolates, and messages via skype
• Children setting up virtual nail painting salons
• Trumpet playing through the window of granny and grandad’s house
• Electronic messages being sent to our friends in care homes
• Families helping to ensure that our vulnerable neighbours or the homeless have enough food
• Children having their haircut for The Little Princess Trust
• Cake baking and rainbow painting for parents who work at the hospital
• Helping supermarket staff to collect boxes
• One little boy playing his violin in the sunshine to give his neighbours a moment of joy (- he played Mozart’s ‘La ci darem la mano’ which means ‘There we will give each other our hands’)
• Children spotting the tiny changes that are happening outdoors every day and sharing images of the wonders of nature with family and friends
• And finally, all those that joined in with our show of support for our key workers last night at 8.00 pm

Amazing efforts from you all and I think you will all enjoy looking at everyone’s rainbows. They  have also brought incredible joy to our community this week …

I have also filmed a story for you with the help of the wonderful Miss Barnes. We have included pictures as it is a longer story but I wonder if you can work out why I chose this story this week? 

Keep shining out like the little beacons of light in the Mousehole harbour everyone, stay sheltered and safe and have a lovely weekend. 

Mrs Smith ☺️

Have a go at some of these garden games if you can. Target games are great for practising your aim and hand eye co-ordination. You can choose any numbers you want – choose some numbers that you are working on or want to practise. We enjoy target throwing at school.

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