We began our adventure by meeting Fifi. Fifi is a security guard for UEFA and over the summer, she's been travelling around Europe as teams have been playing in the Euros tournament. She took all of the trophies with her and as she handed over the Euro cup to Italy at Wembley, she realised she had misplaced the World Cup which is needed for Qatar 2022! She knows she left it somewhere in Europe and needs our help to go and find it! 

We learnt about the country of England and began by locating some of the popular counties and cities on a map. We practiced our atlas skills and some of us even had a go at describing their location using words like north, south, east and west. 

We found out that England was a democracy and this led us onto think about our new RSHE topic. We learnt about the UK parliament and what a democracy is. We compared this to a dictatorship and thought about what we would prefer to live in and why. 

Next, we began to discuss the different religions and beliefs in England. We noticed that there was a Jewish community in England so began to learn about this religion. We found out about how the religion was founded and came up with some great actions to remind us of the story of Abraham. We then looked at the 10 commandments and decided to come up with our own class list of rules to live a good life.

In writing, we Imagineered visiting lots of different locations in England ranging from huge, bustling cities to peaceful and relaxing countrysides. We generated some adjectives to describe these places ready to write our persuasive leaflets telling people why they should visit England. 

We continued our adventure and travelled to Scotland. When we got off the train, we were greeted by bagpipe players. We were very interested in the clothing they were wearing and we found out a bit more about tartan. In DT, we had a go at paper weaving and I'm sure you'll agree, the results are amazing! We had to be very resilient and not give up because it was quite a tricky and fiddly task.

We visited the Sinai Synagogue in Roundhay next in our adventure. We got to look around the building, learn about the Jewish religion and see a 200-year old Torah scroll. The children had a fabulous time and learnt lots whilst we were there. Mr Cooper, Mrs Wilson, Miss Robertshaw and Mrs Russell were all so proud of how excellent the children were at representing Westwood - they did us proud! 

We continued with our DT topic and after mastering paper weaving last week, today we had a go with the actual materials and weaving boards. Some of us found it easier than the paper weaving but we had to be very resilient again and keep going even though it was quite difficult. 

Unfortunately, we still haven't found the World Cup! In writing this week, we have decided to send Fifi a letter to tell her everything we have done so far and what we plan on doing next. We did a Burn2Learn to categorise our learning into countries and chronological order before looking at an example informal letter and sorting through the features. As part of our SPAG, we had to race to find all of the adverbs around the room and keep the ones relating to when and bin any others.

We travelled to France next to try and find the World Cup here. We were feeling very optimistic that this would be where we find the cup! We began by learning about one of the most famous pictures in the world - The Mona Lisa. We learnt about the history of the painting and then had a practice at drawing our partner's face and curved lines. Watch this space for our finished version!

Our finished pieces of the Mona Lisa look amazing! We all took our time so much and ended by adding oil pastel colours to create our final piece! A massive well done to everyone - I am very impressed!

In writing this week, we have been writing an advert to persuade somebody to buy our version of the Mona Lisa. We began by visiting an auction. We got to see different pieces of art and speak to the dealers to find out why we should buy their painting. We then experienced an auction where children got the buy some famous pieces of work.

In DT, we made pizzas! We thought really carefully about making a product to appease somebody else and then the children had a go at creating a pizza for a partner. Whilst we were waiting for the pizzas to cook, we thought about food hygiene and safety and made some posters about these.

We looked at the human and physical features of London and compared these to Rome. This helped us to make our decision and gave us all of the information we needed for this week's writing - Would you rather live in London or Rome?

We finally arrived in Greece and were very optimistic that we would definitely find the trophy there. We visited Santorini and had a really fun morning painting a picture of the scene, creating Greek mosaics and trying and selection of Greek food. We ended the half term with a wonderful rendition of ‘Mamma Mia’.