Our final week of Spring 1 has been a busy one! We’ve really enjoyed seeing all the home learning projects that have been brought in, and have been fascinated by the amazing facts Year 3 have researched. We’ve started statistics in Maths, and are starting to look at how we read, display, and interpret information.

We finished Arthur’s diary entries in our English lessons, which have been filled with daring deeds and dramatic encounters in the Sphinx. We finished practising our Egyptian dances and performed these in our groups, and we learned all about the famous Egyptian Pharaoh Tutankhamun. We reflected on all our learning from this half term, and enjoyed thinking about all the new things we now know.

This week in Year 3 we have continued learning about the Ancient Egyptian process of mummification. We also recapped our recent learning about parts of a plant by dissecting tulips into the separate parts and explaining what each part is for in the circle of plant life.

In English, we have started planning Arthur’s diary entries when he was trapped in the belly of the Sphinx. We created freezeframes to show what adventure he may have had on his way to retrieve Thoth’s book of knowledge. We enjoyed being creative about what kind of danger he may have been in, and working out how he may have escaped it.

We have enjoyed continuing our Egyptian dances in PE, and finishing our Flat Stanley book in Guided Reading. We have continued to practice our skills of adding and subtracting money in our maths lessons, and have been thrilled to see some of the wonderful home learning projects make their way to school this week.

This week in Year 3 we have enjoyed building our model shadufs. We created a model that met the design specifications and followed the plan we made last week. It was very busy and loud, but great fun! We have also enjoyed getting out the glockenspiels to play the song “Three Little Birds” in music lessons. We have moved onto money in maths, and have found lots of plastic coins everywhere in our classroom ever since.

In English, we have written a character description of Marcy from our class novel. We thought carefully about how her character had changed from the start of the book to the end. Our blue flower experiment has ended, with some of our carnation petals and celery leaves ending up tinged blue! In computing, we have been practicing debugging our codes.

Our history lesson was full of excitement as we learned all about the burial process in Ancient Egypt, and practised removing (tinfoil) organs and mummifying our classmates. In PE we have continued our Egyptian dances.

This week in Year 3 we have been continuing our work on division, including remainders and using partitioning to help make it easier to solve. We have been writing a dialogue between Marcy and the Ancient Egyptian god Ra, thinking about their personalities to ensure that the speech we write matches what the character might say. Also, we have thought about how the adverbs that we use to describe them can continue to give the reader clues about their character. We have begun coding in our computing lessons and are enjoying creating backgrounds and characters, and experimenting with timers!

In science, we have begun our long experiment to examine how roots and stems work to distribute water in a plant. We placed our lovely green plants (celery and carnations) into jars of water with some blue food dye. Excitedly, we have watched through the week for hints of changes to our plants – and we are excited to see what happens next week too!

A highlight of Year 3’s past week was our trip to the British Museum on Friday. We were all fascinated to see the many amazing Ancient Egyptian exhibits, like amulets, sarcophagi, and many well preserved mummies. We also enjoyed our workshop, which was all about the process of mummification and how modern day medical technology like x-rays and CAT scanners can help us learn more about how people were buried without unwrapping them. We all had a lovely day!

We have been writing a setting description this week, of Marcy’s journey into the forest with her father Arthur. We have been talking about how we can use our vocabulary to give the reader a better picture in their head – are our trees lush and green, or are they shadowy and looming?

In computing we have begun our new topic of coding, which we have enjoyed starting to set up our background and characters, and getting them to move and make sounds. We have continued to practice our multiplication skills in maths, and are starting to move on to 2-digit by 1-digit division.

Year 3 have jumped into Spring term with enthusiasm! We are really enjoying our new topic of the Ancient Egyptians, and made our own Wesekh collars on our WOW day last week. We also learned about Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs and used these to create a print of a hieroglyph. It was messy but a lot of fun!

Our new book, Marcy and the Riddle of the Sphinx, has some wonderful illustrations that we’ve really enjoyed discussing as we make predictions about what will happen later in the book. We’ve learned about compound and complex sentences, and used these to write a dramatic narrative about one of Marcy’s father’s adventures.

In maths we’ve been looking at related number facts, and how we can use our times tables to work out much larger questions. We’ve started to learn about parts of a plant and what their purpose is, and we’ve enjoyed beginning to learn more about the geographical features of Egypt.

We will tell you about our British Museum trip next week.