Rob from Zoolab came to show us his pets…but they were no ordinary pets. Rob brought in a snake, a giant African snail, a cockroach, a tarantula and a millipede. He taught us all about their special features and how we should look after them. Rob then let us handle them. Lots of us tried holding, stroking or just observing the different animals.

As part of our topic ‘How does it grow?’ we had a visit from Zoolab. The children absolutely loved meeting the (not so mini) minibeasts and were very brave holding them and enjoyed finding out lots of facts about them. Did you know that a cockroach has two brains? One in its head and another in its bottom!
Here are some questions you could ask your child-

What is snail slime used for?
What part of our body is like a snails shell?
What does a tarantula do when it is scared?
What happens to a cockroach if you put it in the freezer?

Zoolab visited nursery. They brought lots of creepy crawlies to show us. Some of us were brave enough to hold them, some of us weren’t.

Today we had a wonderful visit from our friends at Gateshead Music Service. They treated us to a fun-filled hour of Disney songs. Lots of us got dressed up for the occasion. We clapped along and got to use some different instruments to provide a musical accompaniment. We were brilliant at recognising the different tunes.

As we have been learning about the Felling Colliery disaster as part of out local history unit, we spent the afternoon walking along to St Mary’s Church to visit a few memorials of local historical importance. First we looked at Thomas Hepburn’s grave, as we found out during our lessons the important role he played in setting up the Northern Miners Union and fought for shorter hours, better education and pay for miners. We also found the memorial for the Felling Colliery disaster, which displays the names of the 91 victims whole were buried in the graveyard. It was devasting to see how many family members lost their lives that day and at such young ages. Finally, we read the blue plaque that had been placed on the wall infront of the memorial as part of the 200th anniversary of the disaster.

Year 6 had a lovely surprise today when an ice-cream van came with a treat for them all for all of the hard work they’ve done over the last 7 years.