Count Arthur says goodbye to Year 6

Near the end of term Year 6 went with their teachers and Mr Harrison to Lightwater Valley. It was a fantastic day out with brilliant sunshine and lots of laughs and happy memories. Count Arthur was very pleased to be shown around the park by Khadeejah, Amna and Sannah as he hadn't been before. He laughed when he saw the big Year 6 boys on the spinning tea-cups and was a little disappointed that the Ultimate rollercoaster was closed for maintenance but he had a great day out.

Count Arthur goes on holiday

Count Arthur is a very excited class pet today. So excited he couldn't even eat his dinner. It has taken all day to get ready. He has packed and re-packed his bag three times as he is a little unsure of what to take on his desert adventure to the Kalahari. To help make his mind up Mrs Conway allowed him to surf the internet to read up on where he was going. Some of the places he is visiting include Sossusvlei, Damaraland, the Kalahari, Swakopmund, Etosha and Windhoek.

He finally decided that he better take some sun cream and a hat, even though it is winter there it will still be quite warm, however, he really doesn't understand why it is winter in Namibia when it is summer here in sunny old Bradford. Can anyone help explain it to him?

Count Arthur hopes to blog to you about his holidays with Mrs Conway and her two children Shona and Sean but if you don't hear from him keep your fingers crossed that he hasn't been eaten by a lion whilst camping out.

Miriam Lord Zoo article

We were very excited to see our little zoo featured in this term's issue of Learn magazine this week. Especially the fab picture of the pets. Mr Harrison told everyone about the impact that has been made with our blogging projects and the use of twitter in school.

Read what was said about us on page 16/17 here

Don't Count Arthur, Barry and Alan look proud of their achievements.

Jamal met the Lord Mayor!

On Mega Music Day Jamal was honoured and very lucky to meet the Lord Mayor of Bradford. He especially loves the Mayor's shiny, gold chain.

Jamal enjoying his lunch at Mega Music Day

Jamal was the luckiest pet in the universe as he shared a extremely healthy packed lunch. Then met Barney Harwood from cbbc.

Jamals trip to mega music day!

Here is Jamal enjoying his day out at the Mega Music Festival. He was amazed at the size he of the Valley Parade football ground. He sang his camel heart out joining in with'We will rock you' and 'We are the champions'

Barry does "Games Based Learning"

Year 6 were very excited to have Mr Bleazard from Challenge CLC visit just before the holidays. He came along to show us how to use games based learning to use and apply our maths skills. We knew a little bit about probabiltity beforehand but we got to use this skill in the computer games that we made/played using Kodu. Kodu is a new visual programming language made specifically for creating games. It was very exciting and we found out that we can download this software ourselves at home as it is free from Microsoft so lots of us decided we would do that.

Mrs Conway said that I was a very good orangatang as I went round all the groups making sure that they were OK and I kept an eye out for pupils using their learning muscles, I saw most pupils collaborating on their games, lots of perseverence as everyone got to grips with the software (that means they didn't give up even though it was a bit hard) and some excellent questionning.

Check it  out for yourself here 

Count Arthur plays rounders

Count Arthur has been learning how to play rounders in Year 6. He was very excited about this and it took a little bit of time to work out the rules so at first he just sat on the edge watching with Humera, who was keeping the score on her whiteboard, but the excitement was just too much for him and he was soon joining in. His arms arent long enough to have a turn at bowling but when he grows up to be a big llama he would like to try.

After much observation, Count Arthur would like to share some top tips....

1. Keep your eye on the ball

2. If you are on a base, make sure you are a really good catcher

3. Talk to your team mates, batters need to call out to others already on bases, fielders should call if they are going to catch the ball or at who they would like to throw to

4. Keep your best fielder on fourth base to stump the base and prevent the other team from getting a rounder.

5. No bad sportsmanship, referees decision is final

Jamal joins 4GD

A few weeks ago Jamal was living in the souk in Marrakesh. He travelled back to England with Mrs R after hearing how wonderful it was at Miriam Lord. He can speak Arabic and French and wants to improve his English.

He has already been on a residential trip to Halton Gill where he learnt how to fly a kite, how to make a curry and designed a tee shirt. He also enjoyed meeting children from Fountains school.

Barrys spectacular holidays!

In the Easter holidays Barry came with a student in year 6. Barry went to the fairs, on all of the scary rides such as: Terminator 3,Cage Rage,Crazy Bounce,Bumper Cars and the Ghost Train.Cage Rage and the Ghost Train were the scariest rides that he had ever been on.When we went on the Ghost Train there was an old lady, who was sitting on a chair,rocking back and forth and her head was chopped off and was on the floor.Furthermore about Cage Rage it tilted to the side and span round and round for at least a good 5-10 minuites.The following week we took a little trip to Birmingham and we had great fun there. Barry came with us. As a treat me,my family members and barry all went to Pizzah hut.The day after that we also went to Star City where there are lots of rides, Cinema, Cafe and a Bowling Center.Barry had a great time and I hope we can meet again for the following holidays.

More from Tenerife and Count Arthur

Count Arthur has been reading Mr Harrison's blog and is pleased to see that he is keeping up with his exercise regime!!! Everyone tends to overeat on holiday and Count Arthur is no exception. Consequently, he is keeping in shape by joining all the early morning joggers who jog along the Paseo De La Pedrera at around 7am.

Here is Count Arthur at the local market. It is open on Saturdays and Thursdays and sells things from all over the world. You can buy Spanish flemenco frocks, wood carvings from Africa and wooden toys from France. This is a great place to buy presents to bring back for your friends. Who will Count Arthur buy for?????

Even though Count Arthur is on holiday he knows that he cannot neglect his education. He is thinking about all of you in Year 6 and hoping that you are finding some time to do some revision ready for those important exams when you get back to school. He wishes you all the very best and is confident that you can all achieve those coverted level 4's and 5's!

Alan's Busy Afternoon in the Garden

What a glorious afternoon we've had today (yesterday was not up to much) and Alan jumped at the chance of getting out in the sunshine and helping out in the garden. First, all the weeds had to be dug out of the garden, this took some time and Mrs Stones was very grateful to have Alan to help her. We have had a very dry couple of weeks, so next Alan lent a paw watering the thirsty plants.





After Alan had finished the gardening, he had time to admire the plants that are in full bloom. I wonder if anybody out there knows what Alan is looking at here?








Here, Alan is looking at some strawberry plants that have just started to grow again after winter. Mrs Stones has been advised to put broken eggshells around the plants, can anybody work out why?
She would also really appreciate any handy hints to help these strawberry plants grow really well, as she is looking forward to enjoying some juicy strawberries later in the year.

Count Arthur on the beach

What a surprise Count Arthur had when he first saw the beach! He had expected the sand to be a lovely golden brown but instead in was black!!! At first he thought that it must be ash from the volcano and not sand at all. However, on closer inspection he discovered that it was sand. He could dig in it, built with it and leave footprints in it. It did all the things that sand can do, but it was black!!! He will have to do some research to find out more about this when he gets back to school.

Undeterred, Count Arthur gets out his bucket and spade and begins piling up the sand. He is very proud of his finished work. Does it remind you of anyone?

Take a closer look!

Count Arthur abroad

After a long and tedious journey, Count Arthur arrives in the volcanic island of Tenerife. Here he is on the first full day of his holiday eating breakfast on the balcony.

After breakfast he sits back and enjoys the relaxing view of the palm trees gently waving in the sunshine.

Later he intends to saunter down to the beach.

Alan's on the hunt for Easter Eggs

On Friday, Alan, Mrs Stones and her family visited Bolton Abbey. Bolton Abbey is on the banks of the River Wharfe and is in the Yorkshire Dales. It is a very popular place to visit. There were hundreds of visitors on Friday but we were still lucky enough to find a parking space.

Here is Alan sitting on the shoulder of the Easter rabbit ready to start the Easter egg trail around Bolton Abbey. It involved Alan walking along the trail and looking out for Easter egg clues. We had to count how many eggs we saw on the trail. Some of the eggs also had letters on them which we had to collect. All the letters were jumbled but would spell out a phrase when they were re-arranged, this is called an anagram.

Yipee! Alan has spotted an egg. Unfortunately this did not have a letter on it, so it did not help us with the anagram.

When all the letters had been collected on the trail, Alan had to concentrate to work out what the letters spelt.

Here are the letters, can anybody else work them out?

The first word had 6 letters - WLOYEL and the second word had 9 letters - FDIAFSODL

After all the hard work, Alan found time to enjoy the sunshine and have a game of frisbee. As you can see, he's super at catching!!

Here is Alan finally relaxing in the sunshine and looking pretty cool aswell. He really enjoyed taking part in the Easter egg hunt because he was brilliant at spotting the eggs and liked stretching his Learning Muscles when solving the anagram.

Hope you are all enjoying the holidays too!!!