Paddock Wood Primary Academy enjoyed a fantastic House Day recently with a theme of a ‘Big Build’, related to their current lines of inquiry. All the children attended school in their house colours and spent their day creatively planning and building a range of monster-sized creations. Year groups had brought in a vast amount of junk modelling materials for their projects which were put to good use in their designs. Across the year groups, approaches to learning which included: research, planning, communication and self-management skills were put to the test to complete their tasks. All children also had a fantastic lunch that day with a build-a-burger and brownies. This is a taster of what they got up to:
EYFS
In the Foundation Stage we had a Superhero themed house day! The children came to school dressed in their house colour t-shirt and a Superhero accessory! During the day the children took part in lots of fun activities, including making Superhero masks, designing their headquarters, building obstacle courses and making shields. The children enjoyed the special day, particularly eating their special lunch.
Year 1
Having spent the last term learning about plants and their importance as part of our Sharing the Planet Inquiry, we were excited to explore plants through art on our House Day. This included an exploration of Claude Monet’s famous artwork of water lilies, creating their own paper plate lily pond: reading the story ‘Camille and the Sunflowers’ by Laurence Anholt to find out about Vincent Van Gogh and his famous Sunflower painting and taking inspiration from the artist Georgia O’keeffe to create close up, detailed and colourful pastel drawings of flowering plants.
Year 2
With a focus on how a community meets the needs of its members, we conducted a walk around the village to find out what services and shops are available locally. The children then designed how they would like Paddock Wood to look and add anything they consider to be missing. Each class collaborated on different aspects, such as a nature park, housing /schools and retail/restaurants. Communicating together, they worked creatively to produce a huge 3D map of their ‘dream Paddock Wood’ as their build challenge.
Year 3
“We built Table Top Mountain! This matched this term’s Line of Inquiry. Our models included the sea, the mountain and the South African city of Cape Town. We loved working together – smiling and chatting as we worked in teams of four. Can we do it again soon?”
Year 4
As part of our inquiry we have been exploring the beautiful book ‘The Invention of Hugo Cabret’. Developing our international mindedness we have been learning about what Paris is like. We researched, sketched and made careful designs of the shops and used our self management skills to organise groups and tasks. We have also learned how to say the names of shops and directions of the buildings in French. The shops we have created reflect these exciting parts of our inquiry. We really enjoyed working collaboratively!!
Year 5
Year 5 had the best time creating their builds, which were related to their central idea about the scarcity of resources and renewable and non renewable energy. 5W worked as a class to construct a globe to show where natural resources come from, 5P split into two groups to create a nuclear power station and a container ship (representing trade), 5A worked in groups to create their own wind turbines and 5G worked together to produce a very colourful representation of ‘pollution in the sea’. All of the Year 5 staff are so proud of every single one of them for demonstrating fantastic self-organisation skills and working hard as part of a team to produce such different but equally amazing ‘big builds’.
Year 6
Taking inspiration from their current inquiry related to WWII, the classes selected a relevant vehicle at random to research, design and build. These included a battleship, Spitfire, tank and field ambulance. In their house groups they independently constructed large-scale models. The results were truly impressive and a fantastic day was had by all. The winning team, voted for by Mrs Fidock, our new Principal, was the ambulance and they were rewarded with cupcakes!
