Mount Street Junior School would like to wish all the children a very Happy Easter. We hope you are all enjoying your time at home and staying safe.

World Book Day was once again a hit with both children and staff at Mount Street Juniors. Many of the children dressed up as characters from their favourite books as well as the Lower Junior staff dressing up as Oompa Loompa’s from Charlie and Chocolate factory.

Here are just a few examples of the amazing costumes.

We had so much fun celebrating British Science week at Mount Street Junior school. Our timetable was filled with exciting STEM challenges, inspiring visitors and amazing new resources.

The week began with Robotic workshops for Years 5 and 6 by Technocamps. They were so impressed with our ideas that they’re keen to come back and work with us again. We can’t wait!

Year 3 and 4 had a busy day on Tuesday, with dinosaur challenges and a visit by fossil expert Robert Loveridge. He was so kind and even gave us real fossils to take home with us. They were 25 million years old! It also stayed dry for Year 3 to explore natural habitats in the Groves in the afternoon.

On Thursday we found out all about life in Antarctica from Steve Lloyd. Did you know that it’s been 200 years since the first sighting of the continent? Divina Gillard then kindly supported in Year 3 and 4 classes with our carousel of activities. We built bridges, rafts and even completed coding on Microbits. A big thank you to Brecon High School, King Henry Comprehensive and Penmaes for letting us borrow resources. Years 5 and 6 also had the opportunity to try some exciting Science experiments with Emma Blatt in the afternoon.

The week ended on a real high with presentations and challenges with Georgie Bevan and Alex Powell. A huge thank you to all the visitors for inspiring us and giving us an amazing week.

The entire school came together on Tuesday to take part in Mount Street Junior Schools Eisteddfod. The children spent time in their teams practising recitation pieces, folk dancing and individual competitions.  There was a great feeling of team spirit throughout the school building up to the main day. The children were excited to represent their teams in group competitions as well as individual. There was a very high standard with all entries and the judges found it very difficult to pick their winners. We had an on the day Welsh quiz with members from each team coming forward to pick their brains to win points for teams. Teaching staff also made a team of four and went up against the highly competitive children. It proved to be a very close competition.

The winning team on the day was Coch, however it was could have gone to any team throughout the morning.  Seren Edwards was acknowledged and celebrated for her outstanding writing contribution, the children and staff watched her being crowned in the Bard ceremony.

Congratulations to all the winners, llongyfarchiadau.

On Thursday, the Year 4 pupils taught and played Welsh themed games with the Year 2 pupils from Mount Street Infants School. Both the mentors and the students from Year 4 and Year 2 had a brilliant time and welcomed each other with open arms. They enjoyed playing ‘Anifeiliaid’ and ‘Bore Da’. The children were put into mixed year groups and settled well with their peers.

We look forward to welcoming the Year 2 children very soon.

Congratulations to our teams who participated in ‘Cwis Dim Clem’ competition this week. Both teams demonstrated a very good general knowledge of Wales and Welsh culture as well as the ability to translate from Welsh to English and vice versa. The results were very close with Team A scoring 34 points and Team B scoring 29 points. A very close competition indeed. Only twelve teams from across the region can go through to the next round, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that Mount Street Juniors Team A have scored enough points to secure their place in the next round.

As part of the Lower Junior Chocoholics topic the children have been investigating the melting of chocolate. Our literacy focus at the moment is instructional writing and as a special treat the children planned and made chocolate stirrers. They had to choose the toppings they’d like to add and using their instructional writing techniques plan the task. Each child got to choose if they’d like white chocolate, milk chocolate or dark chocolate and then looked at how the different types of chocolate melted. Once the stirrers were made we put them in the fridge to set ready for home time. We were all very excited to see the finished product when we popped them out of the mould! 

Mrs Woods’ Year 3 class have had lots of fun this week applying their numeracy skills. They were given the challenge of building a monster from coloured unifix blocks. Each coloured block had a monetary value which was set out on a sheet, they had to calculate each block and make sure not to spend over £5. Here is one example of a scary unifix monster as you can see there are lots of working outs and the grand total comes to £3.64.

A huge welcome back to all the children. We hope everyone had a fun packed holiday.

Could we ask that all children have coats with them each day in school and weather appropriate footwear.

Thank you

A very Merry Christmas from Santa himself