On Wednesday the 31st of May, P5-7 went along to Leswalt’s local wetlands at Aldouran. We were looking forward to finding out lots more about wild flowers, plants and trees. We headed up through the woodland paths, listening to the sounds of nature. Here are a few quotes from our class about the wetlands.
“You can learn a lot more when you’re not in a class room,” Jamie.
“It was an exciting adventure and I hope to go back soon,” Arden.
Cherry and Eve were our tour guides for the afternoon and they shared with us their vast knowledge about plants. Also we learned about how plants do not flower so much in woodland because the trees block the sun in Summer.
As we were walking down from the woods, we looked towards the pond and saw baby ducks. There was eleven ducks in the pond when we went to the wetlands. Also we saw the dinosaur’s nest but unfortunately no dinosaurs!
We enjoyed our visit and will return again very soon!
This morning we had the absolute pleasure of enjoying a morning with Rachel and Duncan from Pitch, Pulse and Magic. They both play string instruments – Rachel plays the violin and Duncan plays the cello. The instruments are related – they looked like little and large beside each other! We heard lots of pieces of classical music, some which we recognised and some which were new to us. The music really did sound so beautiful. We chatted about classical music, the role music plays in films and adverts and how the instruments actually create the notes. By enjoying this music session, we were also doing a little science as we were exploring vibration, some literacy when we looked at metaphors and HWB when we thought about how music makes us feel. Megan, Cameron and Boyd even played ‘Hot Cross Buns’ simply by tapping a glass of water with a pen – amazing eh?!
We enjoyed listening to the theme from Harry Potter – always a favourite! And there was lots of toes tapping along to ‘Under the Sea’ from The Little Mermaid. We listened to a slow, mournful melody and it made us feel much quieter, calmer and it seemed quite sad. It turned out that this was from the funeral scene of an opera – so we got the mood just right. We could almost hear the sound of people crying from the violin. There was even a piece of music that showed a real change of emotion – it started off quite light and jolly, the pitch was high and the bow of the violin and cello almost seemed to skip over the strings but then the tone became so much lower and the bow movements were harsh and stronger – we guessed that the music was telling us that something was not going at all well! This is called the musical structure of the piece.
Antonio Vivaldi was a very famous composer who wrote pieces of music to describe the seasons. We looked at the poem linked to this and worked with Rachel and Duncan to suggest ways in which the violin and cello could recreate this. The class were great at suggesting ways in which the instruments could be used to sound like lightning, the breeze and the murmuring rivers.
Everybody in our class thoroughly enjoyed the music session. How lucky are we to have this experience in our classroom to brighten up a rather damp and dreary Tuesday morning!
Many thanks to Rachel and Duncan from Pitch, Pulse and Magic for bringing this experience to us.
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