Firebird by Igor Stravinski

Toucans used BBC Ten Pieces website, to watch an orchestra perform a piece of music called Firebird, composed by Igor Stravinski.  Mrs Parry explained there are different sections within an orchestra, such as woodwind, brass and strings and then helped the children to name the instruments.  The children learnt this piece of music actually told a story and is based on a Russian folk tale about a magical glowing bird that Prince Ivan is searching for.  The firebird is imprisoned in a castle with a beautiful princess.  Ivan rescues the bird and the princess but then his own sister poisons them.  The firebird flies to the fountain of youth and with magic water, brings Prince Ivan and his princess back to life. 

Alex Hill – The music makes me feel relaxed  

Declan – I like that the music told a story

Shriya – I like the dynamics (loud/quiet parts)

Jacob – It makes me feel like sleeping

Sam – It makes me feel calm

Ayra – I like the pitch (high/low parts) 

Listen to the piece and see if you like it! 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/ten-pieces/classical-music-primary-igor-stravinksy-firebird-ks2/zbsf3k7 

The class focused on one instrument called the flute.  Mrs Parry showed them a flute in its case, as it comes in three parts, and demonstrated how to put it together.  The children learnt the names of the features of a flute and labelled a diagram.  Mrs Parry explained how air is blown across the embrochure (air hole).  She challenged the class to see if they could try this technique with a bottle at home, after demonstrating how with a glass bottle. 

The children also looked at photos of flutes and made pencil sketches of them.  The children watched a shadow puppet play of the story with the music in the background to help them understand how the music tells the story.  They noticed the dynamics in particular!  Finally, Mrs Parry read them a chapter book with the story in.   There were some beautiful pictures in the book and Toucans are looking forward to producing some Firebird themed art next! 

Toucans revised the notes they had previously been taught and learnt new notes A and B today.   The children played notes with the background music to our friendship song.  Small groups of children played together as an ensemble and there were two brave soloist performers, Karly and  Jack.

Today we learnt how to search safely on the internet using Swiggle. We searched for healthy recipes for our healthy snack cafe. It was tricky exploring the internet as there were so many links! We had to be selective about what we looked at. We have nearly finalised our plans so check back soon for further details.

Today was our last day of being a Toucan! We had a wonderful day enjoying spending time together and some treats.

Miss Williams had a special treat for us… she had made us a video of wonderful memories from the year. We loved it and would like to share it with you.

Well done on a fantastic year Toucans – you will make wonderful Bluebirds.

These are our favourite moments from the year:

We also reminded ourselves of how to keep safe over the holidays. We thought about water safety, road safety, being safe at home and always making sure an adult knows where we are.

We will see you safe and sound in September. Happy holidays everyone!

This afternoon, Year 2 have been listening to the world around them. First they had to sit in silence and listen to the noises in the classroom.

We could hear:
Scarlette -It was completely silent.
Nyeema– I could hear swallowing.
Kai – I could hear breathing.

Next, the children listened to noises on a PowerPoint and tried to identify them. They were all very good at listening and guessing the sounds. They found some of the sounds very funny especially the toilet flushing!!

Finally, they all sat outside to listen to the sounds. Was it silent? How did it make them feel to sit in silence?

What a wonderful year we have had together Toucans. Miss Williams and Mrs Green will miss you very much. We have loved teaching you all and watching you grow. We are so proud of every single one of you and the progress you have made this year. Well done on such hard work and perfect behaviour. We hope you have a lovely summer holidays. Remember to stay safe and come and say hello to us in September.

We will leave you with this video of our memories from this year.

This afternoon Toucans visited Harborne Academy. We had a wonderful time and learnt a lot about coding.

The children were very well behaved. The teacher from Harborne Academy was very impressed and even the mini-bus drivers commented on how lovely the children’s manners were. Well done Toucans!

More photos o our main school website – click here.

What a wonderful week! Toucans have been super-busy this week trying out lots of different Art techniques and making creative and imaginative pieces of work.

We have tried:
* Marble painting
* String painting
* Blow painting
* Marbling with ink
* Painting, splatting, printing and dribbling paint onto a large mural
* Digital Media using Pixlr software
* Using Tux on the computers
* Collaging
* Drawing, designing and colouring
* Making clay tiles

Today we evaluated our work and picked out our best pieces.

What a wonderful party! Everyone had a lovely time as you can see from our photographs. We had music, games, food, balloons and even a bit of singing!

Today in Circle Time we focused on the next behaviour for learning – perseverance. We had lots of sensible ideas about how we can persevere so Miss Williams put us to the test.

For our first challenge we had to stand in a circle holding hands. We then had to make a hoop travel all the way around the circle without letting go of our hands. It was very tricky to start with but once we shared lots of ideas we soon got the hang of it. Practise made perfect and we managed the challenge with no trouble. We then tried the same but with a smaller hoop!

Our next challenge was to draw a house. Easy peasy we thought… until Miss Williams told us to do it with our eyes closed! Again, with a bit of perseverance and a ‘can do’ attitude most of us managed to draw something that looked a bit like a house!

Our final challenge was to write our name on the lines with our eyes closed. By time we got to this challenge we knew exactly what to do. If you look at our pictures you can see we got better and better each time.

We have made a list of our ideas about how to persevere which we will be using when things get tricky.

In our Science lesson today we started to think more about different sorts of exercise. We looked at two egg-cyclists; one was happy and safe and one was not! We talked about how helmets help to keep our heads safe and how important they are. Miss Williams showed us what might happen to our heads if we don’t wear a helmet by putting Mr Egg onto the table and rolling him off. He didn’t end up looking very healthy – in fact he looked egg-stremely sorry for himself!

Miss Williams challenged us to design and make a helmet for Mr Egg and then experiment with which was the most protective. We all chose our materials carefully and we used our knowledge of looking at real helmets to help us with this. We decided to keep some things the same so that Mr Egg had the same chance in everyone’s helmet. We all agreed Miss Williams would push him each time and it would be from the same table so that the height was the same. Have a look at our photos to find out what happened… some helmets were egg-spertly made and some egg-stremely dangerous!