Year 4 - Gold and Saffron

Welcome to Year 4.

Our Teachers are  Mrs Humbles and Mrs Hornblow and our Teaching Assistants are Mrs Sedef and Miss Ballard.

9th October 2026

The highlight of this week has been learning about mummification! We have learnt about the process, why the Ancient Egyptians mummified their bodies and the order it was carried out in. We have even started the process of mummifying a tomato! It is currently resting in salt to dehydrate it and we will find out if it has worked in a few weeks.

In English we have been learning all about the discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. We have imagined what it must have felt like to find something so important and intact! We are working towards writing a diary from his perspective and have been practicing techniques such as show not tell to help add depth to our writing. This technique uses how our body reacts to different situations for example... my heart pounded and sweat trickled down my face.

In maths this week, we have been practising the column addition method, making sure we set questions out correctly, and regroup numbers to the right place. 

In science we used scientific equipment to investigate how long it took an ice cube to melt in hot water compared to cold water. We had to accurately measure the temperature of the water and time using a stopwatch.

In music over the past few weeks, we have been learning about different film composers from the work of John Williams, Danny Elfman, Joe Hisaishi and this week, Ennio Morricone who wrote music for many Western films. It is amazing how many pieces of music we can recognise!

Have an enjoyable weekend,

Year 4 team

2nd October 2026

The highlight of this week has been our activity for Digital Innovation Week. We had to wait all week for our turn, but we have really loved using coding to control 'Intelino' trains. 

We have also started work on our non-chronological reports, writing about the Ancient Egyptian lifestyle. We have researched various different topics, from their beliefs and gods, to food, entertainment, sports and the importance of pets. We have written questions to help us form our research and are beginning the process of writing our reports. There are lots of things we need to remember including writing past tense, using specific vocabulary and using conjunctions to extend our sentences.

In maths we have been working on a variety of different methods to help us add mentally. We have talked about regrouping one number to be able to make 10, 100 or 1000 with the other which then makes it easier to add. If you hear the children talking about the potato method - that's what we were doing! Ask them!

In science we practised using different equipment such as stopwatches and learning how to read thermometers. We predicted the temperature of our classroom and outside and then went to measure the temperature. We also measured different temperatures of water.

In history, we have been examining sources of evidence including photos of treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb. We have been able to refer to what we saw at The British Museum last week.

In art we practised drawing creature characters, ready for our final piece which will be to illustrate the story of the poem Jabberwocky by Lewis Carroll. We drew a dragon using pencil and incorporated some atmosphere from our work last week.

Have a great weekend,

Year 4 team

25th September 2026

The highlight of our week was our wonderful trip to The British Museum. We were very impressed with the way Year 4 conducted themselves around the museum, which was very busy. However, the children enjoyed exploring the Egyptian galleries where they were able to see mummified bodies of both humans and animals! We learnt during the talk, about how early Egyptians buried their dead in the hot sand which dehydrated their body and so naturally mummified it. We also learnt that this was important because Egyptians believed they needed their body in the afterlife. We saw lots of artefacts we recognised from pictures we had seen as well as The Rosetta Stone, which enabled archaeologists to translate Egyptian hieroglyphs. We had a fabulous day and thank you to our parent helpers for spending the day with us.

Today, we have been celebrating Languages Day and had the opportunity to learn some words in different languages that people speak in school. It has been lovely to see everyone dressed up in the colours representing different countries.

In Science this week, we have been exploring the process of changing liquid to a solid by freezing and tested this through the medium of ice lollies, which we made using fruit squash earlier in the week. We talked about what happens to the molecules in a liquid when it turns into a solid.

In English, we have started to learn about non-chronological reports using our new text about Tutankhamun. We are beginning to develop mind maps to aid our research about everyday life in Ancient Egypt and looking at similarities and differences between our own lives.

In art this week we were trying to create atmospheric scenes using charcoal. We were using different line effects and shading to create movement and tension. Our scenes included a story sea, calm sea, a thunder storm and fire.

18th September 2026

The highlight of our week was in Science where we investigated different materials to decide whether they were solids liquids or gases or a combination. We had lots of fun pouring, touching and building with a variety of materials including 3D shapes, golden syrup, sand, rice, shaving gel and oobleck. We considered how each material behaved, decided which states they were and plotted them on to a Venn diagram. 

In English we have been writing our descriptive letters about our Egyptian artefacts. We have worked hard to try and include expanded noun phrases with high quality adjectives and prepositions to describe the features of the artefact. 

In maths we have turned our attention to estimating numbers on a numberline by finding the benchmarks at half and a quarter and also rounding numbers to the nearest 10.

We have been enjoying finding out about the composer John Williams in music and recognising the music from films which he has composed. We have heard music from Star Wars, Harry Potter and ET. We could hear a lot of music performed by trumpets, which was one of the instruments he learned to play himself.

Have a lovely weekend

Year 4 team

12th September 2026

Year 4 have made a great start back to life at school and are enjoying starting our new topics.

In history, we have started our topic on the Ancient Egyptians, looking at where they fit in with our timeline, asking relevant questions about artefacts and learning about the importance of the River Nile. 

In science, we had a great time exploring solids, liquids and gases using balloons filled with ice, water and air. We were looking at their differences and how that can tell us about the properties of each state of matter.

In maths we have been exploring place value of numbers in the thousands, understanding the value of each digit and what happens to numbers if you keep adding tens, hundreds or thousands.

In English, we have been developing expanded noun phrases using high-quality adjectives and prepositions to accurately describe an artefact. We will be presenting this in the form of a letter to an expert in the hope they can identify what we have found.

We are very much looking forward to our visit to The British Museum soon, so we can see real artefacts from the time of the Ancient Egyptians.