We already have visitors to our meadow with the arrival of a baby hedgehog! 

Our harvest celebrations this year have focused on people's rights to food. 

As part of our whole school topic, 'Discovering Southbourne', we have also been out and about this term getting to know our local surroundings in more detail. Year 6 focused on housing; in particular the new development by Seaward Properties on the A259.

At the start of the topic we were given a guided tour of the  site and an explanation of how plans are developed. We even got the chance to measure out the dimensions of the first house to be built. The following week, we all visited the Weald and Downland Museum at Singleton to investigate how house building has changed over the centuries.

Back in school, Year 6 have been very busy in science and design technology. Firstly, have investigated insulation as we need to keep our houses warm. Our main focus has been on developing our own model housing development. Once the planning stage was completed we then got on with the building process. Everybody constructed a wooden framed house and then designed a garden: raised flower beds, swimming pools and even decking was evident. Once the houses were completed we arranged our own housing estate in the hall and invited everybody to come and see our finished development.

In maths we have worked out the cost of fencing an estate as well as drawing our own plans. Finally, in English we wrote stories about an old abandoned house: this gave us the opportunity to use all our writing skills that we had been taught in Year 6.

During our whole school topic, 'Discovering Southbourne', we in year 5 have been discovering how healthy Southbourne is. Year 5 focused on health and fitness when we visited Bourne Leisure centre, and specifically whether we could create fitness equipment for our school grounds that all children could use.

As part of a technology and engineering project the children have looked at different fitness equipment that could be used around the school grounds to keep people healthy. They have designed and built prototypes working with a range of materials before evaluating their effectiveness.

In science they have been gaining an understanding of microbes and how some microbes are useful, for example; yeast, and some microbes are harmful, for example; the flu virus. The children favourite experiment was the great yeast race. During this experiment they tested to see which conditions were best for microbes to grow. In addition, children were given the opportunity to to explore the Tesco store and discover how microbes impact how they have to organise their store.

This project has been enjoyed by all children and staff alike. It has been a great opportunity to explore our local area and further afield as well as see what makes people healthy and how we can best stay healthy.

On Thursday 8th June, Southbourne Junior School participated in a Chichester District Athletics Competition. They competed against other schools around the Chichester area from Barnham to West Witterings. It was a West Sussex West Quad Athletics competition, which involves: a 75m sprint, 600m, a vortex distance throw, and a standing long jump.

After winning their area competition the children then went on to compete for the school and West sussex against schools around Sussex at the ‘Sussex School Games’ in Crawley in July.  It was a great day where the children: sprinted faster, jumped longer, threw further and puffed harder than they ever had done before. They showed great sportsmanship and a 'never give up' attitude- well done to them all.