* Party in the Grounds! *

What a really great day! Whatever your views of the royal family, there couldn’t be a person not impressed with the fun and excitement experienced by our children yesterday. It was a moment of living British history that I’m sure our children will remember.

It was a beautiful, sunny day with us all dressed in red, white and blue starting with a themed picnic lunch; Mrs. Page made a brilliant wedding cake (everyone got a piece today!); all our infants had already been to St. Leonard’s with Rev. Jones on Tuesday (Many thanks to Rev. Jones for that!); some staff had brought their own wedding dresses to school to show the children (Thanks for that too!); we had bunting and flags that lined the junior playground where we had all our dining tables set out for the big street party (Many thanks for sending in all the party goodies too!); we had DJ Raz’s music pumping out across the afternoon from Ashton Entertainments; we had a wedding hat competition with such incredibly creative entries (see winners list below and thanks to Mrs. Nicholls and Mrs. Lowe this time for the thankless judging task!) and we noticed that the standard was really high with such innovative ideas that we had to increase the number of prizes!

We also had a wide range of crafty and sporting activities that kept the children interested, excited and challenged all afternoon; and we finished the day with a conga led by Mrs. Simpson and her megaphone through our new creative outdoor space.

Huge thanks to all our staff team for pulling it all together and providing this wonderful opportunity once again for our children at Padiham Green. Watch out for the Burnley/Padiham Express  and the Telegraph for photos.

The Wedding Hat Winners: YR Tierney Graham; Y1 Lilymae Johnson; Y2 Ellie Walsh; Infant overall winners: Siannah Forrest and Jude Marsden; Y3 Caitlyn Finch; Y4 Leon Pilkington; Y5 Soraya Ostle, Olivia Stockdale and Oakley Butcher; Y6 Ruby Hughes; Junior overall winners: Rebecca Mellor and Aiden Hoyle. The Westminster Abbey Treasure Hunt Word Winners were Alfie Angus, Lewis Harwood and Isaac Wild.

                              

Grounds Update!

The Fun has Begun!

The last couple of days have been very exciting as Mrs Poll (Daniel's Mum!) has been in helping us with the beginnings of our allotment! In small groups we planted lots of different fruits, vegetables and herbs which will be put into our raised beds once they are flowering.

The most important part of looking after these plants is to make sure they don't dry out and they get as much sunlight as possible. We have been spraying the seeds with water regularly and putting the trays outside a lot over the last couple of days! Here is a list of some of the plants we are growing:

• corriander
• sage
• mint
• dill
• basil
• sweetcorn
• beetroot
• potatoes
• cucumber
• onion
• garlic
• lettuce
• tomatoes
• gooseberries
• red berries

Project Path: An Update

Allan and his team have been working on the path around our school grounds for a week or two now and are making great progress! Most of the concrete paving slabs are in and there are even stepping stones down by the bottom of the hill! There is an area marked out for some wooden poles and the raised bed area where our allotment will be is being planned next. Its all very exciting, especially as each playtime we can watch the work being carried out and see it developing right in front of us!

The PG Snail Mound!

Having looked at existing snail mounds - the time came for us to make our own! We put on some old play clothes and our wellies and set to work with Sean in small groups. Once we had piled the soil and stamped it into a snail shaped hill, we covered it in grass to complete the look.

Its big enough to fit the whole of our class on! What do you think?!

Left, Right, Left, Right!

We've been skiing...on a pair we made ourselves! Using long planks of decking, a long, thick red strap, a staple gun and a hammer and nails...we set to work!

It was important that we created a pair of ski's so 7 children at a time could get on and work together to travel the length of the playground. We used a ruler and marked the wood every 12 inches (we decided this is how long our feet plus a little bit of extra room would take up). Caitlyn and Aimee cut the red strap into equal lengths whilst Alfie marked the wood to show where they would be attached. Sophie held the straps whilst we used the staple gun to secure them before Micheal and Jay hammered in some nails. They were such good fun to make - even though it started raining, we hardly noticed!

We had a go at walking on the ski's one at a time...it was pretty easy until another person joined in! The more people on the ski's, the harder it became to walk without falling over!

We found the best way to walk was to hold on to each other like a train, and listen to the person at the front shouting which foot to move first. Working as a team was so important because, "if one person doesn't move, it lets everybody else down." 

As you can see from the pictures - we had a lot of fun playing with the ski's and learnt a lot about teamwork. Working together really does get the job done quicker...as Mitchell and Abigail's team found out!!

Watch our video and you will see just how difficult we found this task at first!

Hideout Heaven!

Wow! This is one of the logs from our 'log pile' which the council dropped off last Friday after Sean spotted them chopping away near our school! These logs will look great dotted about our grounds once the landscaping is complete.

On Wednesday we all spent the day with Mrs Edwards and Sean, exploring the tree areas around school to find a good place build our den. We found some great spaces, like in the centre of tree island or along the edge of the wall near the school field.

We searched high and low for natural building materials in the wooded areas and took them back to class.

Once back in class we fixed our materials together along with some wood, cardboard and fabrics that Sean had brought in too. We worked in our own groups before Mrs Edwards split us up to work with some different people. We created some amazing dens and learnt that the best ones were made with a mix of boys and girls in a group!

We talked about how we couldn't have made these hideouts by ourselves and that working together brought about new ideas and interesting creations we wouldn't have thought about on our own.  

  

One group spent some time with Sean building an outdoor den! It had an upstairs, a hide-hole, steps up to the top and a letter box! We used the drill and saw and worked as a team to make our tree house on the infant playground! Our next step is to think about building a larger den for the rest of the school to use in our grounds. How exciting!!