
Smithdown Extra
At Smithdown, we are proud of all we do beyond the National Curriculum.
As a school, we are passionate about working with families, supporting local and national charities, making links with other organisations and placing our school at the heart of the community.
Smithdown Extra Chatter

It has been a busy day celebrating Eid


WW2 Workshop
Today we had a visitor in to teach us about WW2. We trained to become special volunteer police officers and followed commands given in the war. We looked at Erie facts and even had time to role play.


Eid Celebrations
Lovely to see all our children dressed up for Eid. Lots of families have been fasting through Ramadan and have had a lovely few days celebrating Eid.
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Year 1 have loved celebrating Eid today in school! We enjoyed our special school lunch!

Mother’s Day Story Time
Thank you very much to all parents who cam along to our Mother’s Day story time on Friday.

2GH Martin Mere
We have had a lovely day at Martin Mere today.
we helped Ava find out which way she had to migrate, went on a treasure hunt, explored the wetlands and enjoyed the play area too!

Predictions
We loved exploring our clues and objects that linked to our new English topic. We made great predictions about what the story will be about and shared them with each other.
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Everton mathematics day!
Some children were invited to take part in some maths activities at Goodison Park stadium. They completed challenges and got to see the stadium. What a fun day!


Gymnastics British Championship and Newsround!
Yesterday, we had an amazing trip to watch these athletes. The work they put into practising and training really inspired some students. Also, some children met the presenter of Newsround
and even got a picture!

Switched On Rail Safety
Today we watched a live assembly from Network Rail and learnt how to stay switched on and safe around trains and railways.
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Ruth Wakefield – science week
For science week, we researched Ruth Wakefield. We learnt all about the temperatures needed and the variables that she changed. We then had a lesson in cookie making with our wonderful cook Monica and decorated the cookies with her face.

Railway Safety
A very important and informative message from Network Rail this morning. We learnt about the dangers on railways and how to stay safe.



Year 1 loved crazy hair day. Thank you everyone for the chocolate donations, they will be used for our easter bingo!We are also looking forward to comic relief next Friday!

Crazy Hair day! What wonderful creative hairstyles we have in Nursery. Thank you for the chocolate donations so far. We will be wearing home clothes next week and taking chocolate donations for our Bingo night.

Crazy Hair Day in Y6
Here are a few of our crazy hair people today – super styles indeed! Huge thanks for all the chocolate donations received today, be sure to buy your tickets for the bingo.
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The Dalmatians are safe once again!
Today we had a visit from Cruella De Vil who wanted to steal all of the Dalmatian puppies, luckily the classes were able to find all 101 of them and saved the school! What an amazing World Book Day 2025.


World Book Day
Year 6 have drawn their own versions of some books they have enjoyed reading for World Book Day.
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Football Competition
Great work from Year 3 and Year 4 boys and girls! They all worked well as a team to play in a 5 a side football competition organised by Everton.
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Y3 Sustainability Project with Metal
Y3 have been busy making their own paper out of pulp this morning with our visitors from Metal.

Art project
What an amazing start to our art project. The children created their very own paper and then decorated it. Next in our sustainability art project is to up cycle clothing. We can’t wait for the outcomes.
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International Mother Language Day
In Reception we have celebrated International Mother Language Day by counting in other languages and learning the names of our snacks in different languages.


Our designs for our 150 Year bunting are really coming along. We are going to stitch “TOGETHER WE GROW” along with some pictures that remind us of school.
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On Safer Internet Day, Year 1 made some online safety superheroes. We made some amazing characters and learnt a lot about keeping safe from scams.

Parent Governor Election
Thank you to our two school councilors who helped with the vote counting today. A great way to learn about democracy.

Phases of the moon
We had a wonderful afternoon showing (and eating) the different phases of the moon. First the children represented this with the ball (moon) and the torch (sun) to find the phases. Then we used biscuits to recreate this. Please ask us about the different phases, can you spot the moon at home?

Thank you so much for coming to play with us this afternoon and helping us understand the Zones of Regulation.

Archaeologist Visit
We had an amazing visit from a local archaeologist, Dr Hill, who brought with him so many artefacts from the Stone Age and Bronze Age. We had time to look at stone axes, arrow heads, tools and weapons made from bone and so much more!
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Cosmo the therapy dog
We had a very special visitor today. His name was Cosmo. We loved getting to know him.
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Chinese New Year celebrations
We had lots of fun taking part in a Chines a New Year workshop. We also made some of our own snakes to celebrate the year of the snake.
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Economic Education today with the help of Debt Aware
We spent the morning learning about the world of work, environments and salaries.
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Lunar New Year Dance
The children enjoyed the dragon workshop today and had lots of fun doing a lion dance.
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5JH Lion dance to celebrate the Lunar new year! 
We had an amazing afternoon in our lion dancing workshop. Happy Lunar New Year!

Chinese Lion Dancing
We got up close to a Chinese lion today as part of our Chinese New Year celebrations.
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Year 1 celebrated Chinese New Year
We were visited by some Chinese dragons. We had a great time!
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Making snakes for Chinese New Year
Some of these snakes just keep growing and growing ….
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Running stitch
We all practised our binca running stitch so that we are ready to create our 150 year celebratory bunting.
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Palaeolithic Cave Art
We all collaborated to create cave art using charcoal. Combining art skills and history knowledge means amazing work!
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How our solar system moves!
Today we tried to recreate the direction and movement of our solar system. We discussed how this is not to scale but wanted to show what we had learnt about ‘Earth and Space’ so far. Please ask us questions about the solar system!

Pottery making
We had a lovely afternoon starting our pottery. We followed our designs to make an object (bowl, vase, cup) and etched some designs in. We are looking forward to painting in the next couple of weeks.

Sign Language sessions
We loved our first Hands session today. We learned lots of colours in sign language.

A great end to this half term!
An amazing Mario Kart tournament to celebrate the holidays!

Parent & carers craft afternoon
A wonderful afternoon with our fabulous parents and carers.

Year 2 Nativity
Our Nativity Slideshow.
Thank you all for coming to watch. We loved performing for you.
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Christmas arts and crafts workshop
What a lovely afternoon! Thanks to all the parents that came and helped out with the winter crafts. They all looked amazing.






Parent assembly and activities Year 3
We had a lovely morning with our Hands assembly and our DT craft activities. Thank you to all our adults who turned up to support us.
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Calligraphy with the Arabic alphabet
Today in our art lesson we looked at different examples of Arabic calligraphy and have had a go at our own.

Rocks!
We have been studying rocks and today we tested the how hard wearing sedimentary, metamorphic and igneous are, along with their permeability and how they react to acids.
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Pattern seeking – science
In science today we put our ideas to the test. we either chose to either investigate if children with the longest femur could jump the highest or if the tallest children could jump the highest. We completed the post it challenge and made sure our investigation was fair.

Premier league workshop
This morning we had a Premier League workshop to tell us all about the different jobs and skills we could get that are part of football. We learnt about football journalists, authors, medics, stewards, mascots, players and coaches. We then acted out being an interviewer, interviewee and clarifier.

Celebrating differences 
For our PSHE lesson we are celebrating differences. In previous weeks we have spoken about racism, bullying and rumours and now we are researching a range of countries and what their culture looks like.

Year 3 campfire
What a lovely morning with parents we had! We all had a toasted marshmallow, cup of hot chocolate and sang some songs.
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City Finalists
Our Year 1 boys did us all so proud today. We finished fifth in the whole city! You are all superstars! Your played so well and your behaviour was exceptional! #teamsmithdown
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NRG! Our power pledges.
Last week we had a visit from NRG to tell us all about our use of electricity and what we can do to help. We have signed a pledge to use less electricity and water to help with waste of non-renewable energy.

Extra work at home!
Some incredible examples of extra work done at home. I have loved seeing how passionate we are about negative numbers, Olaudah Equiano and Roman numeral – keep it up, we love proudly displaying your work!



Year 1 loved our camp fire today! Thank you to everyone who came along! A big thank you as well to Miss McFarlane!

NRG Workshop
Today, we had a special assembly followed by a workshop on renewable energy sources. Year 6 knew lots of information about this as we have covered aspects within our Geography topic.
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International Slavery Museum trip
Yesterday we had a great time at the International Slavery Museum. We had a workshop in the ‘legacies of the transatlantic slave trade’ and then had time to explore the museum with our task sheets.

NRG workshop
Year 4 have learnt lots today about saving energy and money with Dr Watts and Dr Sparks.
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NRG workshop
Year 4 learnt lots about saving energy and money. A massive thank you to Dr. Watts and Dr. Sparks.



Our wonderful campfire 
Today we have loved our class campfire. We enjoyed toasting the marshmallows, creating a s’more and having some hot chocolate. We even had a blast from the past with some children’s songs and rhymes.

Children in Need – maths
25Year 4 spent this morning exploring Children in Need themed problems and discussing possible answers.

Year 5 Campfire
What a fabulous way to begin Children in Need day – a Year 5 campfire with hot chocolate and smores : )
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PSHE: Anti-Bullying Week Activities with Everton in the Community
We took part in a workshop this morning discussing values which are important in life such as respect, patience, tolerance and understanding.
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Basketball and netball
For this half term we are going to be learning about the skills needed for basketball and netball. Today we learnt overarm, underarm, chest pass and bounce pass.


Remembrance Day
We did our one minute silence. After, we used our sketching skills to create some Remembrance Day artwork.

Remembrance Day 2024
11:00 11.11.2024
Huge respect in our class to recognise the soldiers that have fallen in the past. We did a minute silence in the morning and then created amazing poppy art work based on our art topic ‘painting with scissors’ in the afternoon.
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Amazing homework!
Superstar sisters! Both have done work at home based on their current topics
. Well done guys.

Painting with scissors
We used our skills and techniques we have been practising by replicating how Henri Matisse created his art. We applied this method to our Ancient Egyptian topic in History.
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Girls Football Tournament
Some of our Year 5 & 6 girls have been out to a ‘Girls Only’ football tournament today organised by Everton in the Community. Go girls !!!!!!
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Football matches.
This week in PE we had a chance to use our skills when playing matches. We remembered to dribble, tackle and defend using skills we have learnt. Everyone made a fantastic effort!

Diwali lanterns
Today we are designing our Diwali lanterns for next week. We have learnt the story of Rama and Sita and thought about why Diwali is celebrated in Hindu religion. We are trying to focus on using Rangoli patterns.

Diwali Celebrations
Year 6 had some special visitors today who helped us to learn about the Hindu festival of Diwali. We looked at traditional food, special dress and other forms of celebration which take place. Most of all, we loved the dressing up and the dancing!
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Oil pastel artists!
Today we having been using different oil pastel techniques (sgraffito, dry blending, cross-hatching and tinting) to figure out which ones we want to use for our landscapes.

Year 4 Everton in the Community
A great PE session focused on our football skills. We love working with Everton in the Community to improve our skills, teamwork and resilience.
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Year 4 Temple trip
Year 4 had a very exciting morning visiting a local temple. We asked lots of questions related to our Hinduism unit.
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An author has come to Smithdown!
Author of ‘The late crew’ Rob Ferguson came to visit our school today. Some of us were so excited to even get our books signed by a real life author! We even designed our own alien that we could use in our stories.

We are city finalists!
Year 1 we are so proud of you. The boys represented school for the first time and made it all the way to the city finals!
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Thank You Danny Butler
Year 2 loved the visit from Danny Butler today. We enjoyed our workout with him too!
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Lots of exercise today!
Year 6 had fun and fitness today as part of their fundraising activity with an ex member of Team GB, Danny Butler. Thank you to everyone for your very generous donations.
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Danny Butler Visit
Thank you to Danny Butler, European champion and 5 times British champion for visiting today. A great workout and a reminder that success comes from hard work.
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Lifesavers Bank
It is great to see so many children saving regularly on our lifesavers bank. Our bank tellers (helped by Miss Caraher and Miss Wilson) are doing a fabulous job.
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Thank you to everyone that joined us this afternoon, it was lovely to see you all in Nursery playing and sharing the space together.

Danny Butler!
Today we had a wonderful visit from Danny Butler. We joined in the activities and even got to see some of his amazing skills.

Danny Butler Event
We had the best day doing our sponsored event with Danny Butler. We couldn’t believe his bike skills! Wow!
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An afternoon of ‘Quidditch’
Wow…. what a way to end the week !!! Some children in Years 5 & 6 got to try their hands at ‘Quidditch’ today and they absolutely loved it !!!!
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Year 3 Hands
Year 3 had another great ‘Hands’ practice. We are really enjoying learning new sign language.
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Being an archaeologist!
Year 3 all had a go at being an archaeologist and excavating some ancient Egyptian artefacts – just like Howard Carter!
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Competition Time! Y5/6 Dodgeball
Some of our Y5/6 went out for a Dodgeball competition this week – we didn’t win but we enjoyed ourselves!
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Black History Month ‘24
Some AMAZING entries for the Merseyside Police competition! Children have worked hard creating lovely pieces of work with great messages as well. Well done to everyone who has submitted already. Last day tomorrow (Friday 13th September).
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Painting with scissors
We used Henri Matisse as our inspiration for our art topic. We used his method of painting with scissors to make our collages.
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So very grateful!
We all feel so very grateful and proud of the children we have helped grow this year! A big thank you to all our families.

Cheque Presentation
A massive thank you to all parents and children who donated money to Alder Hey. The children on the school council were very lucky to be invited down to Alder Hey for a cheque presentation.
The money raised is going to help brighten the lives of children and their families, all over the country, who require the help of Alder Hey.


Time to say goodbye 
Thank you for joining us this morning for our celebrations
We are lucky to have been able to share this year with your children and hope you all come back to say hello.
We finished the day with a party lunch and party games this afternoon.


Water transportation!
We used celery to investigate how xylems transport water and nutrients to the rest of the plant. Watch this space and see what we find out!

Sports day!
Super morning with our LKS2 sports day! We had a great day for it and we all tried our best with every activity.
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Sports Day!
We had a great morning for our sports day! Thank you to all of our families who came to watch!
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Picnic Time 
It was so lovely to see you all at our picnic and thank you for all the delicious food.
keep those hearts topped up with love and we hope they help you all as you move onto new classes in September.

Singing Assembly!
I love starting off our Wednesdays with our singing assembly. It puts a smile on all our faces and gets us ready for our work.
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Eid Mubarak!
Happy Eid to all our families celebrating! We had a lovely day and week celebrating with all our children and adults.
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Spaghetti Bolognese time!
Our first group created their very own authentic traditional bolognese sauce! We have linked our DT unit with our Geography topic of Italy. Super behaviour and sensible cooks.
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Volcanoes!
We have created our volcanoes and painted them. They look amazing! We are going to erupt them this week and see what happens when an active volcano blows. Watch this space…
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Fantastic Family Picnic
A fantastic community picnic. The sun shone.
An amazing community food table with so many lovely dishes to share.
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Girls’ rugby
Year 3 and 4 girls had a super experience with an introduction into rugby. They had a chance of practising kicking, tackling and their footwork.
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Year 3 natural resources!
What a week we have had! Year 3 had a lovely trip to New Brighton to find natural resources so that we could create landscapes in the theme of Frances Hatch. We glued on things we found and used water to extract the pigment out of them to colour paper.
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Y5&6 Girls Rugby
How great was our rugby taster session yesterday at Calderstones !!!!!
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University Trip
We had a fantastic day at the University of Liverpool on Friday. We took part in workshops related to Maths and Science…. including sitting in mini Planetarium!
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4KM had a great afternoon discussing what it means to be loved and creating their own collage about a person special to them

Cricket in the Sun
What a lovely day some of our Year 6 children had today! A great day playing cricket at Sefton Cricket Club and the sun shone just for us.
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Reception Parents and Children Visit to Calderstones Park
We had lots of fun with our families at Calderstones Park. We played ring games, had a picnic, fed the ducks, rolled down a hill, explored the playground and looked at different plants and flowers in the sensory gardens. Huge thanks to all families for coming along.

Trip to Goodison!
Year 3 had an amazing trip down at Goodison Park as part of our Everton In The Community project.
We took part in a cooking demonstration and enjoyed the yummy chicken paella we made.

RLMc Farm Trip
RLMc had a great trip to Croxteth farm today. We saw lots of animals including goats from the Three Billy Goats story. We loved brushing the horse and holding the rabbit and Guinea pig. We had a great day outdoors.
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Great morning with our Everton project! We made our dough from scratch, cut up our own toppings and created wonderful pizzas!

Hands Sign Language in Reception
We have started to learn sign language each week and are doing so well at learning greetings, colours and animals thanks to Hands.
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Pizza Time!!!
Year 3 had a great morning making pizza! They mixed all the ingredients, kneaded the dough and added toppings all by themselves. All whilst looking the part in their chef hats and aprons! I think everyone would agree that the best part was being able to eat it.
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4KM had a great morning working with the Hope university students learning about light and sound??!!

Check out our finished chairs!
We made chairs as part of our DT topic on stable structures.
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The Smithdown Romans!
What a great day we had in Chester at the Deva Experience! We marched the streets of Chester and learned lots of interesting facts about the Roman Empire.
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We had an amazing day on world book day! We focused on #Goldilocks and created our own poems and naughty hashtags.







Court Visit
We took a trip to the Family and Civil Court to take part in a mock trial and meet some real life judges!
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Y6 Lowry Museum Trip
Since we have been studying L.S. Lowry, we took a trip to The Lowry Museum in Salford and took part in a portrait workshop after viewing some of Lowry’s famous paintings. We had such a fabulous day!
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We rounded off our ‘My Bnk’ sessions with talking about money habits and the importance of saving! We even made our very own money bank.


Maths parental workshop
Thank you to our parents who came to our Reception maths parental workshop this week! We look at how to support your children with their shape knowledge at home.

Chinese New Year celebrations
To celebrate the new lunar year, we have been getting crafty in class making representations of dragons using a variety of resources. Look at our fabulous dragons! We also made our own lanterns after learning about the significance of the colour red.
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Year 4 had so much fun at their campfire toasting marshmallows and drinking hot chocolate??!!!





The Year of the Dragon
We LOVED our dragon dancing today celebrating Chinese New Year.
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4KM had an amazing morning learning a Chinese dance and carrying the Chinese dragon???!!!

Tesco trip
To continue learning about chefs, we’re going to become chefs and make our own soup! To prepare for this, we went to Tesco to buy the ingredients we need.
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The Wizard of Oz – our ticket designs.
We thought some of our ticket designs were just far too lovely not to share!
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The Wizard of Oz ? Christmas Performance 2023
A selection of our FABULOUS actors who performed in our Christmas 2023 performance of The Wizard of Oz. We hope you loved watching as much as we loved performing for you all!?
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ESOL class awards
Congratulations to our parents who have completed the 12 week Stepping Stones ESOL class. We celebrated with certificates and food.

Year 3 and 4 had an amazing time watching a Christmas performance! We all had a good laugh and got involved.


Wellbeing Champions!
Our Wellbeing Champions have been working hard to learn strategies to support other children in class and on the playground. They’re doing a fabulous job
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Young Scientist Centre
5NA went to a solar system workshop at UCLAN. We did lots of investigations all about the solar system!

RLMc visit Speke Hall
Yesterday RLMc had lots of fun visiting Speke Hall. We looked at the changes for Autumn and we even saw a sleeping giant! We visited the giants house, kitchen, music room and even his playground. It was lots of fun!
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RAG trip to Speke Hall
Reception had a lovely afternoon visiting Speke Hall! We followed the Giant trail and spotted lots of the giant’s clothes high up in the trees! We tiptoed past the sleeping giant, making sure not to wake him! We then walked around the grounds, looking for signs of Autumn.


Thank you to all our parents who joined us today to help us celebrate World Nursery Rhyme week. We had lots of fun sharing our rhymes and activities with you all.

A happy Diwali from 3TS! We made beautiful lanterns to represent the festival of light.




Year 2 have made remembrance poppies today
2GH made some beautiful poppies to help us remember today.
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Using Henri Matisse’s style, painting with scissors, Year 3 created poppies to show their respect for all the people who have lost their lives and our thoughts for their families.



Parent and Toddler
Thankyou to School Council for delivering a fabulous assembly on kindness and respect.
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SEND Processes for Parents
Why not sign up for free online family learning? Friday 10th November 9.30am to 12pm.
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4LA exploring conductors & insulators
4LA exploring conductors & insulators @SmithdownPrimY4 #smithdownsci
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Wonderful first session facilitating Cohort 3 ECT’s this afternoon
Wonderful first session facilitating @InspireTSHubNW @CEL_IOE Cohort 3 ECT’s this afternoon. Great dialogue around supporting disadvantage pupils & inclusivity ?? Well done all!
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4KM had a great PE lesson…
4KM had a great PE lesson with @EITC improving their teamwork and game skills!! #smithdownextra
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Our PE lesson today was all about teamwork…
Our PE lesson today was all about teamwork and how different strategies can help a team win @EITC #smithdownextra

Well done to our amazing stars of the week
Well done to our amazing stars of the week keep up the hard work girls!! #smithdownextra

Another amazing PE lesson from @EITC all about teamwork!!
Another amazing PE lesson from @EITC all about teamwork!! The children played different games to help with their teamwork skills #smithdownextra

4KM had a great time developing their ball skills and teamwork skills…
4KM had a great time developing their ball skills and teamwork skills during our PE lesson with @EITC ?? #smithdownextra

Having fun in Spanish this morning!
Having fun in Spanish this morning! #smithdownextra #smithdownyr3 #smithdownspanish
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Discussing different ways how we can be kind to others
#smithdownextra #smithdownY3. This morning 3KM have been discussing different ways how we can be kind to others no matter our differences, we had some lovely things to say!
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Lovely singing voices this morning!
Lovely singing voices this morning! Year 3 have been learning all about our rights. We have discussed about having the right to learn and believe what you believe! #smithdownextra
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In year 3 today, we practised doing peer to peer massages on each other
In year 3 today, we practised doing peer to peer massages on each other. They completed many different strokes and we all felt very relaxed. Thank you very much for this @MrsCarpenter30 #smithdownextra
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Focusing on the importance of attendance…
Great start to the week focusing on the importance of attendance and why we need to be in school! Lots of different reasons that help us in different ways. #smithdownextra
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What an experience…
What an experience! Year 3 went to a stately home to feel what one looked like and felt like. Sudley house was perfect for helping us understand our new book – Seen and not Heard. #smithdownenglish #smithdownextra
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Voting for our new School Councillor today
We loved voting for our new School Councillor today #smithdownextra @IrelandIreland1 @SmithdownPr
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Donating food to the Harvest food bank
These superstars enjoyed donating food to the Harvest food bank #smithdownextra
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Thank you for our harvest collection
Thank you for our harvest collection. We were overwhelmed at your generosity. Thanks to for supporting our community. #smithdownextra
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Reception exploring our outdoor area in the sunshine 
Our new Reception classes are having a lovely time exploring our outdoor area in the sunshine @SmithdownPrimR #smithdowneyfs

New reception families
Lovely to share lunch time with our new Reception families #smithdownextra #smithdowneyfs