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In term 4, Year 6 have started to learn about Viking myths and legends. Two local artists, Frazer and Rainna, joined them to teach them many different skills whilst working with clay, such as pinching, joining and smoothing. The children learnt how to make a pinch pot, coil pot and then had some free time to put their new skills to use. There were Viking longboats, shields and helmets made, as well as some Viking amulets that had runes incorporated into their designs.  

White Cliffs have been asked to enter some daffodil pictures into the Temple Ewell gardeners spring show next weekend. Our art club did these lovely works of art to enter. We will find out after Easter how they got on.

We were delighted to have Network Rail visit us this week and talk to the whole school about safety on the railway.  Years 5 and 6 were lucky enough to then take part in workshops where they used their maths skills to read timetables and work out train times as well as examine the nuts, bolts and screws which hold the tracks together along with the huge spanner used to tighten the nuts and bolts during repairs.  Did you know it takes the length of 20 football pitches for a train to emergency stop?  Did you know that a fully loaded train carriage is the weight of 80 elephants?  Check out Network Rail's safety video:  https://www.networkrail.co.uk/communities/safety-in-the-community/safety-education/      

On Monday 25th March, the children from Key Stage One visited Wingham Wildlife Park. T his was part of their topic, ‘Amazing Animals’. Everyone had a wonderful day.

This year Science Week theme is ‘time’. Mr Grylls started the week with a Science week assembly. The children took part in live experiments - egg drop, floating and sinking, made a lava lamp, aerodynamics.     Year 4 went on an excellent walk along the River Dour this week. The rain held off and they were lucky to see lots of different wildlife, including moorhens - which they've been learning all about in Science! Whilst alongside the river, the children completed photo challenges, an acrostic poem and observed the plants. The children were shocked at the amount of litter in and around the river. They look forward to returning to the Dour later on in the year to dip!     KS1 have been looking at moths and how they camouflage themselves to hide from predators in the wild. They had great fun creating camouflaged moths and hiding them around the field, hoping that the predators (Mrs Pallett & Miss Hopgood) wouldn't find them. Year 5 have stepped into the role of cosmologists this week and have developed their understanding of Earth and Space by working scientifically in lots of exciting ways. They have observed and investigated the impact of different sized comets on the depth of the craters left behind. The children have also conducted five different enquiries on three different soil types to find the one that is most like Martian Soil! Year 6 investigated how different activities can affect our heart rate. They had to ensure that after each activity, they waited for their heart rate to return to their resting heart rate to ensure fair testing to see the true affect of the different activities.   Danielius – “For me, it was really interesting. I was just surprised by how high my heartbeat went.” Milton – “For me, what was really surprising was that my heart rate went up to 172bpm, even though my resting heart rate was 40bpm.” Isabelle – “It surprised me that my heart rate was way above the average heartbeat. I found it interesting that doing a squat made our pulse go up even though we weren’t really doing anything.”   Reception had a ‘blast’ this week for British Science week. This year’s theme was ‘Time’. They discussed day and night and the different things we do in those times. They then continued their learning about space and created their own rockets!

Wow, what a fabulous week White Cliffs had celebrating all things books and reading.  The children were busy taking part in various activities throughout the week including, online draw-a-longs with ‘One goose, two Moose,’ author and illustrator Nicola Slater and Kael Tudor, Book Speed Dating in KS2, A Footy Booky Quiz, Reading Rivers, a dress up day and a Book Bistro down in KS1.   Character Capers! Well done to all children for their brilliant paper plate book character competition entries. The 5 winners received a £5 voucher to spend at the book fair.   Love is in the Air During the week, we saw KS2 take a dip into the dating pool… dating books that is! They spent an afternoon speed book dating. Children filled in their special feedback forms, dating one book every 5 minutes to find their true reading match. Scholastics Book fair A HUGE thank you to everyone who came to buy books from our Scholastic’s book fair. The money spent on books and stationery at the fair means  £449.76 was raised in rewards, which can now be spent on new books for school.    World Book Day Dress Up It was wonderful to see the children dressed as their favourite characters on Thursday as part of our book week celebrations.   Reading Buddies On Thursday the children across the school buddied up with other classes to go and read with different children This was a great experience and allowed children to share books and show off their reading abilities.   The school was a buzz all week with guesses and speculation...who were the Masked Readers? It was great to see the whole school so invested as we revealed 2 more readers each day. We had lots of parents making their guess too! During Friday's assembly, the school hall erupted in shouts of “Take it Off!”  as the winner of The Masked Reader was announced.     The winner was of course, Stitch, who turned out to be Mr. Gibb. The other Masked Readers were revealed.... 8. Red Riding Hood- Mrs Vaccaro 7. Cowboy- Miss Prescott 6. The Zebra- Mrs Bagshaw 5. Bizarre Bunny - Mr Uden 4. Penguin- Miss Lavender 3. The Jester- Mr Grylls 2. Pirate- Mrs Pallett 1. Stitch- Mr Gibb

A huge well done to all our fantastic White Cliffs dancers, who took part in the Annual Primary Dance Festival held at Astor Secondary School on the 4th and 5th of March.  The group of children aged from 5 years old up to 9 years old, wowed the packed out audiences for two nights.  The children danced to the Hair Spray hit, 'You Can't Stop The Beat'. A BIG thank you to Miss Hopgood for your hard work and amazing chorography!   

This week two lucky children from each class, got the opportunity to plant various plants and flowers into our huge, new, raised planters on our playgrounds.  We are one 40 schools across Kent, who have teamed up with Southern Water to install special ‘water slowing’ solutions on their grounds – so the sewer network is protected during and after heavy rainfall.  Thanks to a £1.7m project jointly funded by Southern Water and the Department for Education, schools across Kent, East Sussex, West Sussex, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight have had sustainable drainage systems (SuDS) installed.  Our planters were kindly donated by Southern Water in a mission to preserve water. The planters collect rainwater from the drainpipes so there is no need for watering cans. All the children had a great time digging and getting dirty!      

Following on from last week's alien spaceship landing at White Cliffs, Reception have made their own aliens out of playdough – don’t they look amazing!  The children also discovered that the aliens crash landed on the school roof and left behind lots of interesting items. The children had to sort them into magnetic and non-magnetic items and return them to the aliens.  Find out more about magnetic and non magnetic materials on BBC Bitesize: Which metals and materials are magnetic? - BBC Bitesize