Sustainability Week
This week is sustainability week! We have had fun learning about recycling, saving energy and researching local wildlife!
World Faith Day – Waesk
What a wonderful day we had celebrating World Faith Day! The children learned about the celebration of Waesk, creating their own beautiful lanterns as part of the experience. We also enjoyed tasting mango and pineapple, foods often used to celebrate the event. To wrap up the day, the children set their own kindness goals based on what they had learned, reflecting on the values of the celebration. It was a day full of creativity, learning and a commitment to kindness!
Think Tank!
We had a fantastic day exploring the incredible exhibits at Thinktank in Birmingham! The children had a great time discovering inventions, robots and engines, with the science garden being a highlight, especially in the lovely weather. We also took part in an electrifying science workshop that left everyone amazed. The children represented Mereside brilliantly and were a real pleasure to take on the trip. A huge thank you to the parents who joined us!
Year 4 Sustainability Week 2025
Our Sustainability Week was packed with fun, learning and action! We explored a range of important topics, starting with the challenge to ‘Become a Clean Air Superhero’ – investigating air pollution with a sticky tape experiment and designing our own superheroes who made pledges to protect the air we breathe. We got hands-on with ‘Getting Scrappy’ as we looked closely at food waste. We also took on ‘Show Your Stripes’ to learn about climate change. It’s been a fantastic week full of creativity, curiosity and a shared commitment to looking after our planet.
Year 4 Poetry Competition
We were so proud of everyone who took part in our school poetry competition! It was a fantastic event, full of creativity, confidence and expression. Everyone did an amazing job and it was a joy to hear such a variety of poems performed so well. A big thank you to all the parents for your support and to Mrs Baker for organising such a special event.
Poetry Performance – EYFS
Poetry performance.
Wrens and Robins did an AMAZING job performing to their friends and grown ups. They were all super stars reciting their poems!
Sustainability Week – EYFS
Sustainability week.
Wrens and Robins have been talking about Reduce, Reuse, Recycle this week and how to keep our environment clean. We have reused bottle tops to make bugs and have collected them to put in the British Ironworks giraffe for recycling. We have been litter picking and spoken about reducing the amount of electricity and packaging we use.
World Book Day 2025
We had a wonderful time celebrating World Book Day in Year 4! The children looked fantastic in their costumes and embraced every opportunity to enjoy and share books. Throughout the day, we read lots of stories, took part in an exciting BBC live lesson, and welcomed a visiting poet who inspired us with their brilliant poems. Our book swap was a big hit too – it was lovely to see children choosing and enjoying new reads. A huge thank you to everyone who came in to read with the children at the end of the day – your support really made it a day to remember!
School Council Bake Sale Success!
School Council Bake Sale! 🎂
A huge thank you to everyone who brought in cakes and spent their money supporting School Council!
All of the cakes and bakes looked delicious and everything was sold! 🍰🧁
Our next job is to count up the money during our next meeting which will be after the Easter Holidays.
Arthog 2025
Last week, Year 6 went on their annual trip to Arthog. Despite the gorgeous weather, everyone got wet as they took part in gorge walking, canoeing, raft building and games on the beach. Everyone even braved the rock climbing on Barmouth slabs where the wind nearly blew us off the edge!
Mr Jones, Mr Giles, Miss Moffat, Mrs Ackers, Mrs Emden, Mrs Hopley and Miss Scoltock were so proud of the children as embraced the challenges that the new experiences brought. There was lots of laughter and smiles throughout the week and the children will take away memories that will last a lifetime!
Photographs of the trip will be uploaded once we’ve sorted through them.
Mereside Boys football 2024-2025 – Well done and thank you!
A few weeks ago, we received the news that our U10 boys, who had won the Shrewsbury final at the sports village, have received a bye in the county semi-final stage. Therefore, I am proud to share that our U10 boys are County finalists!! ⭐️ This means they have reached the county final two years in a row, which is a huge achievement and one we, as a school, are proud of 👏.
Unfortunately, the county finals are not taking place at Shrewsbury Town FC, like last year. Instead they are taking place at Shifnal Town FC. However, we aim to still make the occasion just as special for the boys and we ask for as many supporters to attend the final to cheer on the boys. Last year they sadly lost on penalties. This year we aim to win the final! 💪🤞
The final is on Saturday 10th May. Kick off time tbc! Please save the date.
In other news, Monday 7th April, sees the last session of after school boys football club. It has been another successful year of boys football. Well done to all boys who have taken part in the club and represented the school in boys football tournaments/fixtures over the year. I look forward to restarting in September for our new U9s, U10s and U11s! ⚽️
Mereside Girls Football 2024-2025 – Well done and thank you!
The other week, our U11 girls football team played their Shrewsbury County Plate final match and sadly lost 3-1, in what was a closely fought contest.
We are so proud of the girls achievement getting to the final and with their efforts across the whole season. It has been another successful year for our girls football.
Friday sees our last girls football club session for the season. Thank you to Mr Hole for running these sessions all year.
Well done to all girls who have taken part in the football club and represented the school in football fixtures this year 👏
We aim to run an open evening session in the summer for girls years 1-4 and hopefully we continue to get the numbers when the club restarts in September ⚽️
Forest School 2025
🌳Forest School 2025🌳
We have had the amazing opportunity to have a few weeks worth of forest school sessions where we have been exploring how to use the environment to aid our learning. Looking at animals and their habitats, with a focus on how we can respect our school environment. Having lots of fun playing team games and building our class communities.
Even better we were lucky enough on our last session to have hot chocolate and biscuits😊
Poetry Competition 2025
Poetry Competition 2025
We have taken part in the poetry competition in the school. Linking to our Poetry unit in English, we have explored and wrote our own poems. We picked a poem or wrote our poem to perform in front of our parents and carers. We practice our fluency, expression and actions to ensure we were able to preform our poems confidently.
Attingham Home Farm Trip
Wrens and Robins had a wonderful time visiting Home farm at Attingham. We fed bottle fed the lambs and had animal food to feed the cows, sheep and pigs. We were shown around the farm by farmer Sam and farmer Ben. They told us lots of amazing things about the milking parlour and all about the animals that live on the farm. We saw some amazing tractors and even had time to play on the park! What a wonderful day!
Faith Day 2025
In Year 3 we learnt about Bandi Chhor Divas, one of the biggest celebrations for the Sikh community!
We learnt that Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji was the sixth Guru (spiritual leader) of the Sikhs. On Bandi Chhor Divas, Sikhs celebrate to remember the day when Guru Hargobind Sahib Ji was released from prison in 1619 after he had been wrongly imprisoned by the authorities. The guru made 52 tassels to attach to his robe and thus freed all the princes from prison. We had a go at making our own tassels out of wool.
During Indian festivals and special occasions, like Bandi Chhor Divas, Sihk’s eat sweet foods. A very popular dish is Dodha Barfi. It is an Indian fudge with a soft, grainy texture that is made with gently roasted mawa and a simple sugar syrup. We even got chance to make our own Dodha Barfi.
Science Week 2025
Science Week Activity 1
We warmed up our brains by trying to work out the phrases or expressions from the clues – we managed to work out more than the teachers!
Then we moved onto naming animals. This started off simple by just looking at the picture and the matching name underneath and reading the word aloud. Then we were given the same pictures but with different animal names underneath which tricked our brains. The science behind this is that due to the interference of different information, our brains find it trickier to identify the animal. Also, we learnt that most people can read quicker than they can name a picture which is why we were making mistakes!
Science Week Activity 2 – Hanging Crystals
First, we had to carefully add bicarbonate of soda to hot water and stir into it dissolved. Next we attached two pieces of paper clips to each end of a piece of sting and put them in the jars of water. We’ve left them on the windowsills to see if we can create crystals! We have had some success but the weather needed to be warmer for it to work fully – it is something that we can easily try at home as the weather gets warmer.
The science behind this experiment is that the wool soaks up the mixture. When the water evaporates, all that’s left are bicarbonate of soda crystals. The hanging crystals are formed when the mixture starts to drip from the wool and evaporate.
Activity 3 – Foaming Dragon
We created bottle dinosaurs and added vinegar, washing-up liquid and food colouring. Then we gave it a gentle stir to mix the ingredients together. Next, we put bicarbonate of soda into a tissue pouch and dropped it into our bottles. With a bit of encouragement, we noticed that the liquid was changing into a frothy, red bubbly mixture! This is another experiment which could easily be done at home – for a bigger eruption, try filling the bottle half-way with vinegar and see what happens!
The science behind this experiment is when you mix vinegar and bicarbonate of soda, it makes a gas called carbon dioxide. This forms bubbles in the vinegar. The bubbles of gas react with the washing-up liquid to make foam. The whole combination reacts so much that foam pours out of the monster’s mouth. Bicarbonate of soda was originally developed to help make bread and cakes rise. A similar reaction occurs in cake mix. The carbon dioxide bubbles make the mixture expand and rise!
Mereside Podcast Ep 6 – Science Week!
The first of two episodes this week! In this episode we chat with Mr Giles about Science Week and look back at World Book Day!
Hula hooping!
Wrens and Robins really enjoyed learning new skills in our hula session!
Music area
The Wrens and Robins had a sponsored sing-a-long earlier this year to raise some some money to enhance our music area! Today we have introduced the children to our first musical frame! The children have had a super afternoon exploring the pitched and un-pitched instruments and even made their own microphones too!
Sustainability Week!
During the week of the 7th April, Year 3 took part in Sustainability Week. We did a range of different activities across the curriculum linked to sustainability.
Monday’s theme was Active Adventure Travel. We created bar charts to show how each of us travel from our habitats to school. We then looked at animal footprints and how far each animal travels from their habitat, we used this information to work out which animal we are in terms of travel.
If we walk from our habitats to school then we were like the long-distance walking animals such as a grey squirrel or fox. 🐿️🦊
If we drove and then walked from our habitats to school then we were like the medium-distance walking animals such as a hedgehog or rabbit. 🦔🐇
If we drove from our habitats to school then we were like the short-distance walking animals such as a wood pigeon or frog.🐦🐸
Next, we designed our own, sustainable, mode of transport to get us from home to school! 🚲🛴👟🛼🦽
Tuesday’s theme was Plant-Powered Diet, we looked at food miles and where our food comes from. This linked nicely to looking at transport and our carbon footprint from yesterday.
We looked at a range of different food labels and had to use the iPads to research which country each food or ingredient came from. We then recorded these on our world maps. Once we had done this, we then googled how many flight miles had been travelled to bring the food from the country it was grown in to the UK. If we had a list of different ingredients from one food label, we then had to use a
calculator to find the total amount of flight miles that product had travelled. ✈️
Our next task was to design a British menu to limit the amount of food imported from other countries. We used a seasonal calendar to help us identify which foods grow in the UK to ensure our menus were locally sourced. 🍓🍎🍏🇬🇧
We created our menus while watching WALL-E which is a film set in the year 2110, where the amount of waste created by humans make life unsustainable on Earth, forcing the human race to leave Earth. 🤖🗑️
On Wednesday and Thursday we used our estimating skills to estimate the weight, height and volume of Melman the Giraffe. We have used lots of our science and maths knowledge to predict and then measure to find the answers to our questions. We have lots of amazing mathematicians in Year 3 and we estimated that Melman will hold roughly 1840 bottle tops when full! 🦒♻️