As a final, wrap-up activity on the reading of The Budgie Diaries, we were lucky to have a video call with Fionnuala, the author of the book, today. Fionnuala was really impressed with all the work we did in our mini-books!

​We all had so many questions to ask her, so we voted at our tables to select a shortlist of questions.

It was so exciting to meet Fionnuala - she was really friendly and fun. And she finally answered some of the questions we have been dying to know the answers to!

This week, as part of our learning about Sound in Science, we conducted an experiment called Dancing Rice. We wanted to see the power of sound energy, so we got a speaker and played some music really loud.
We predicted that the rice in the box would dance if the music was loud enough, and that it would dance more if the music had strong base beats.
We really enjoyed the chance to blare the music!!

This month, we've been learning all about sound. We've learned that there are 4 ways to make sound: striking, stroking, plucking and blowing. Today, we made the most of the lovely weather, and went out to the outdoor garden, where we tried to make music using nice long blades of grass!
We had to stretch the blade of grass tight between our thumbs and blow to try to make the grass vibrate. We had a lot of different results - some of us got loud noises like a bird's call, others got raspberry sounds, and some others didn't have any luck in making a noise. Luckily, it's something we can practice any time we go to the park!

Everybody has been so happy to be back at school, and to have a chance to catch up with friends they haven't seen in so long! We've had a really busy week this week - we spent a lot of time practicing how to go about normal school life, but with a mind to safety. The biggest adjustment is giving each other space, and we have been particularly working on walking around the school, while maintaining a physical distance from one another.

The phrase we hear the most throughout the day is 'Check your spacing' - though the children have now started to respond with 'Outside Drainage!' - a quote from the book we have been reading! (Ask your child to let you in on that inside joke!)

The book we are reading (The Budgie Diaries) is set during the COVID quarantine period, when we were distance learning, and it has given us lots of opportunities to talk around our different experiences of the lockdown, and the feelings we are continuing to experience about the Corona virus.

We also have a classroom meeting every day, where we are getting to know each other better, and we talk about how we're adjusting to the changes to school life, and how we can better settle in.