Years 3 & 4

Potions

Poisonous potions, aromatic brews, vapour or a sticky goo… Welcome to the amazing world of potions!

By reading an extract from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in English, we’ll learn all about mysterious potions and retell parts of the story. We will also turn the story into our own playscripts to perform.

In Science, we will sort everyday items into solids, liquids and gases. Using our investigation skills we’ll explore capacity and the properties of liquids. We will also explore circuit making equipment adding in switches.

In Art we will be developing our drawing, sketching and painting skills looking at different lines, textures and shading.

Our History learning will be based on the Ancient Civilization of The Shang Dynasty. We will look at a range of images of artefacts to deduce and search for clues about the past.

During computing lessons, we will continue to focus on E-Safety and understanding the importance of this as well as using coding to create games and movements of characters.

Reading at home

Here are some suggested books that will go with our new topic you could share together at home:

The Witches, Roald Dahl

George’s Marvellous Medicine, Roald Dahl

The Worst Witch, Jill Murphy

Alice in Wonderland – there are many variations of this available from picture book to longer novels

Here are some things you might want to do at home:

• With an adult, make a list of all the solids, liquids and gases you can find at home- are they kept safely? What makes them different?
• Make a home-made potion from things you find in the garden or outside. You could grind up the things you find and break them down or even sieve your mixture.
• Sketch some interesting shaped bottles and containers you have at home that could be used to store a potion you design. Add colours, shading and patterns.
• Make ice lollies – can you add a surprise ingredient that reveals itself as the ice melts?

Homework

Homework will continue to be set on a Thursday and needs to be handed in on a Tuesday. The expectations are:

• Reading with your child, your child reading aloud to you at least 5 times a week
• Maths work every week (up to 30 minutes)
• Learning multiplication table facts – 2, 5, 10, 4, 8 and the division facts (Year 3)
• Learning the rest of the multiplication table facts to 12×12 – 3, 6, 9, 7, 11, 12 (Year 4)
• Spellings (weekly)
• Other subjects work throughout the year