April 2, 2024
The week was lots of fun, starting with a visit from the Nutty Scientists, who held a workshop with each class throughout the day on Monday. The Reception classes learned about the sun and the moon and got to take some ‘moon dust’ home! The focus for Year 1 and 2 was dinosaurs, Year 3 and 4 made their own sundials, and Year 5 and 6 explored how a Van de Graaff generator creates static electricity.
On Tuesday afternoon, Year 6 were invited to have a Science lesson in one of the Senior Girls’ School’s laboratories. The children put on safety glasses and were introduced to Bunsen burners, conducting an experiment to see how a beaker full of ice melted and warmed up over time.
The whole of the Upper School visited the Science Museum on Wednesday, where each class had an activity booked to look forward to. Year 3 and 5 attended two shows in the Wonderlab showspace: Wonder Show and Flash Bang Wallop. Having learned about sound last half term, Year 4 visited Turn It Up: The Power of Music – an interactive gallery. Year 6 explored Power Up – an immersive, hands-on gaming experience with consoles from the last five decades.
On Friday morning, Year 2 went to the Natural History Museum to see an immersive show about ocean life and habitats. The children loved diving below the waves as they visited a coral reef in the daylight zone, came face-to-face with a giant squid in the twilight zone, and met bioluminescent creatures in the midnight zone!
Finally, throughout the week, children were invited to take part in a school-wide poster competition around the theme of ‘Time.’ The entries were artistic, technical and creative, making it difficult to choose a runner-up and winner from each class!
The experience provided an enriching blend of hands-on learning and fun exploration, fostering a deep appreciation for science and its role in understanding the passage of time!
The Pause
At St James, we feel it is important to introduce our pupils to stillness and allow them to discover how to be inwardly free and deeply at ease within themselves. A short period of 5-10 minutes at the beginning and middle of every day is allocated to quietude in which pupils may meditate, contemplate or simply be still – according to their own spiritual inclinations.