For the first year, Mrs Nowell has introduced the Year 6 children to the Civic Award. 5 of our students, Anna, Callie, Erica, Ella and Eva have spent 9 months working towards this. Below is an outline of what they have been busy doing:
1. They have had to show they are an active citizen in the school community for at least 4 months. Activities they have done have directly impacted on other children in school and widened their experience through running a KS1 choir, running a drawing club, being part of the sports Council, becoming reading ambassadors and running with allotment club.
2. Be an active citizen in the local community and charity work. The children have helped at pre-school breakfast club, held sales to raise money for WESC and the Blue cross and raised money for Nayamba school.
3. Take part in an active hobby. The girls have enjoyed clubs such as ballet, Street dance and rugby and will continue with these beyond the award.
4. Take part in a non-active hobby. The girls have enjoyed cooking a varied range of recipes, designed clothes and completed book reviews.
5. Take part in adventure trining. The girls all enjoyed challenging themselves and overcoming fears with their residential week and loved surfing, the adventure assault course and the whole residential experience.

The girls have had to provide evidence of all these aspects of the award. We enjoyed a breakfast together this morning to talk about their award and now they are having individual interviews with the assessors, Mr Clements from DCC and Mrs Mason, one of our school governors.

I would like to congratulate the girls on their commitment and contribution. They have positively impacted on their school, their local community and the wider community through the great work they have done. We are all very proud of you.  Mrs Whalley and Mrs Nowell

Due to the poor weather this morning, Key Stage One Sports Day is CANCELLED. Weather permitting, it will go ahead on Monday 27th June 2016.

What an amazing afternoon we had yesterday with our year 6 students and their parents at our Pop up Family SEAL session. As you can see from our photo's lots of fun was had by all. We had feeling activities, play dough, cake decorating, fruit kebabs, a photo booth and so much more! We wish all our year 6 student's the very best of luck in their new school's from everyone on the Family SEAL team.

We were lucky to have  a visit from Carl from The  Donkey Sanctuary today. We have been learning about the donkeys and what they need to be looked after properly. We were even luckier to meet a donkey after learning about them.

Today we have enjoyed bouldering and the high ropes in the sunshine. The children have braved wobbly high seesaws and the zip wire. Some were petrified initially but we were really impressed with their perseverance. They supported each other brilliantly. Kate, one of the instructors, congratulated Maddy and Betty for their encouragement of their friends - great team work! Jack OC and Thomas C were first across the challenging side of the High ropes. Mr Phillips and Mrs Nowell were impressed with their swinging skills.

We have been given 4 weeks to plan, conduct and review a science area of our choice. We wanted to research about natural disasters and this is what we have created so far. Every week we review how we are doing and then set new targets for next week. We look forward to presenting in week 4

Our school allotment team have today harvested the first crop of spring onions and spinach, tested by Mrs Whalley and all willing volunteers in Year 6

We have really enjoyed our reading roundabout today. We have some amazing new books to add to our library. Thank you to Nicola Cowling for sharing some of the newest titles and getting us excited about reading.

We made up our own instructions today to make worm pie. The ingredients were oreo cookies, strawberry laces and angel delight. Yummy! We wrote the instructions and then followed them to make our pie!

Composer Peter Kyrke-Smith came to visit Year 3 today with Claire to make a musical in a day and what a day it was!

GREECE LIGHTNING!

Making Olympic History In A Day!

The first Olympic Games were religious festivals as much as sports competitions, and the Greek gods always took a very keen interest in what happened…

GREECE LIGHTNING! tells the history of the Games in Ancient Greece - and then shows what happens when the Greek gods turn up rather unexpectedly for the Opening Ceremony of Rio 2016!

Will the Greek gods simply sit back and watch, or might they just be tempted to meddle with the medals..? Why else would a wing-footed runner from Greece called Hermes be up against Usain (Lightning) Bolt in the final of the Men’s 100 Metres..?!

Dramatic drama… great songs to sing… the historical truth (well, mostly…) - Year 3 put on an incredible performance to parents and the rest of the school.

Here are some of the pictures from the rehersals.

Click read more to see some video clips from the performance.

This week is Science week in Reception! We have had some special visitors today! We have been extremely careful. This snail was very quick at travelling. It almost slipped away!

Exminster Community Primary school is proud to be trialling Family FUNS. Family FUNS is a programme designed to work on children's fundamental movements combined with parts of the SEAL curriculum. Mrs Martin, Mrs Godbeer and Mrs Mason are delighted to be working with some parents of children in key stage 1. They are having great fun and have so far been pirates and astronauts. Take a look at some of the children leaving their spaceship this week to collect space rocks!

We followed the instructions ( see Reception blog) and today we raced our paper aeroplanes! It was AMAZING!

Today children school-wide have been celebrating our British Celebration Day with singing, dancing, food, making crowns, writing letters and making cards.  The costumes were amazing with knights, princes, princesses, party dresses and bow ties.  My favourite part of the day was my hand delivered letter from Florence!

We have made party hats to celebrate the Queen's 90 th birthday.

Today we had a delivery of eggs! Exminster finished in tenth place in the Mangahigh Eggstreme Maths Competition. Every child in the school who took part in the competition received a Creme Egg. Twenty three of those children achieved more than 100 points, earning themselves a further Easter Egg. Great work everyone!

Children in Key Stage Two have been taking part in daily sessions called 'Mini Maths', where they have been practising either their number bonds or times tables. They time how long it takes them to complete a grid correctly and simply try and beat it the next time. They have a maximum of 15 minutes and if they don't finish in that time they count how many they did and try to beat that. This is proven to improve children's recall of basic number facts and the more they do it the better. We found this great app which allows children to do the same at home. Click the link below to go to Google play to download this free app.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.jpn.bestyle.hundred_squzres_calc

The children are really enjoying taking part in the Eggstreme Primary Maths Challenge on Mangahigh.  It's been a wonderful competition so far, with 9528 students from 223 Primary Schools across the UK taking part! With two days still to go, there have already been 365 winners across the country! At Exminster, there have been 14 winners so far. We are currently sitting 7th on the National Leaderboard! Lets secure Exminster's top ten finish and win some more Easter eggs!