A baking challenge from Mrs Mahoney

This is for a message for all our Oakwood Primary children and families.

I love baking with my children, Sophie (9) and Edward (6)!
Edward and I would love you to try baking a carrot cake like we did. We have baked this recipe quite a few times as it always comes out well and we think it is delicious. My mum, who is an amazing cook, uses this recipe now and she has tried many carrot cake recipes over the years!






Baking is a great activity for all the family. As well as enjoyment, there are extra learning opportunities for children in the form of reading, writing, maths and science!

In addition to using the measuring scales to measure the ingredients, here are some of the maths questions I asked Edward as he was baking:
• How many grams are there in 1kg?
• 100g add 150g
• Double 250g
• What fraction of the 500g bag did we use?
• What is 4 tablespoons of butter in grams? 14.3g x 4?


Don’t worry of you do not have the exact ingredients. We used:
• All white self-raising flour as we didn’t have wholemeal.
• 1 tsp nutmeg and 1 tsp cinnamon instead of 2 tsp mixed spice (or you could leave out the spice)
• Golden caster sugar instead of icing sugar
We used an electric mixer to make the icing topping but you could also whisk it by hand.
The carrot cake also works well in a round cake tin!

We hope you enjoy the egg yolk in oil video – we thought it was very interesting!
Also, Edward usually says no to cracking the eggs but agreed to do it if I filmed him! He did really well!

Good luck with your baking! Have fun!

Year 1 Space Home Learning

Year 1 welcomed Year 4 to class to look at the incredible Home Learning projects they had produced. The children had made some superb robots; some had specific functions like a Cooking bot or had special features such as flashing lights. Amazing rockets of all shapes and sizes were also on display in the Home Learning gallery. Great job Year 1.

Beech Class Spring 'Stay and Play'

Beech Class Stay and Play

Christmas Storytelling Workshop

As part of our Family Learning programme, we were delighted to invite Orangeapples Storytelling into school to do a Christmas themed workshop with interactive storytelling and craft activities.

Chris was able to offer us two sessions which meant that fifty-five families were able to access the storytelling which supports the work on oral storytelling that we have been doing in school.

The children were enthralled as Chris shared with them How The Crow Became Black,, and parents and children participated enthusiastically with the actions. This was accompanied by an activity making bird feeders using apples and sunflower seeds, followed by the story of The Grumpy Snowman and a quilling activity making snowflakes.

As you can see from the photos, everybody had a wonderful time!

Easter Ideas

We're posting daily activity ideas during the Easter break on our Twitter feed.

Some of them get you out and about, some of them can be done at home!

Keep an eye out for our regular updates and have a go!

Easter Ideas by @oakwoodlive

I Got Three Stars!

"I always thought I wasn't any good at maths, but I had fun and was able to answer more than I thought! I got 3 stars!"

Parents showed a real sense of enjoyment and achievement at our Maths Open Afternoon!

Over 120 parents, grandparents and family friends came to see how we teach maths and how children learn. We gave them number, algebra, data, logic, shapes, problem solving, practical challenges, games, "computer" maths to name but a few things!

Everyone worked hard, faced challenges, made their brains work and 100% of the comments we received were positive! Lots of parents also said what fun maths was! Who would have thought that?!



Our aim was to help families understand their children when they do maths homework, talk about methods and use different strategies and vocabulary to those they learned at school...

As one parent commented..."I wish I could have learned this way when I was at school!"

Celebrity Book Launch!

There was a first for Oakwood Junior School last night, as the biggest group of published authors the school has ever seen assembled in the hall for their book launch!

The best bit was that all the published authors were Oakwood pupils!

Proud parents and friends raised a glass of "champagne" (!) to these talented writers and illustrators as they signed their Chocolate Muffin books.



A big Thank You to Claire and Kate from Chocolate Muffin, and also thanks to Elisha-Jade, who took the amazing photos, really capturing the atmosphere!

Year 3's Mythical Exhibition

Year 3 presented a fantastic home learning project exhibition on Friday. Well done to all the children who have worked so hard and thank you parents and friends for coming too!

Please have a look at our photos below.

A Mexican Adventure!

Some old friends of the school have just arrived in Mexico!

Lucy (an ex pupil of the school) and her Mum and Dad have gone out to live in Mexico for a few years.

They went to Mexico a few yeas ago when Lucy's Mum, Hilary, worked for the school as a teaching assistant. They took SAM with them, and you can read about the good work they did while they were out there.



SAM and Lucy, looking a bit younger than they are now, with their Mexican friends.

This time, they have gone to do more work with the same charity, and have offered to keep everyone in the school up-to-date with what they achieve.

Many of the children and families in the poorer parts of Mexico City don't have access to clean running water, let alone a school to go to, and they make their living by foraging on the city's rubbish dumps.

We are looking forward to hearing how the Hamilton family settle in, about Lucy's new school and how it's different to Oakwood and about all the work they will be doing for the charity.

Good luck, Lucy, Hilary and Aaron!

RE Extravaganza!

Year 6 had an amazing week with Chris and the team from Southampton City Mission.

We learned all about Christian beliefs through the telling of the Christian story, which started with Creation, moving onto how things changed with the story of Moses and the 10 plagues, finishing with how Jesus came to help people put things right.

Some of the exciting activities we took part in were: designing a dream city, making a magic 'flicker' book and helping 'Eggbert' to climb a mountain, parachute safely back to land and fly as far as he could to reach home!

When you look through the photographs, look out for a trick being played on Miss Denton too!

Miss Denton, Mrs Collins, Miss Beavill and all the year 6 children would like to say a huge thank you for all the hard work Chris and his team put into making this such an exciting week for us all!

Quick Links to our OFSTED Report

Thank you for your support during our recent OFSTED inspection.

The report confirms that Oakwood Junior School is a good school, with outstanding practice in a number of areas.



Here are some quick links to documents and pages about the inspection:

• Letter to parents and carers from Richard Wilson (Chair of Governors) and Ian Taylor (Headteacher)
• Full 2010 OFSTED Report for the school
• Our page on the OFSTED Website. The report will also be published here in due course.

Macmillan World's Biggest Coffee Morning

A personal message from Mr Taylor...

Oakwood Junior School is a very special place to work, but on some days your children and our staff leave me so proud I'm speechless. (And that's saying something!)

Friday was one of those days!

We had decided to host a coffee morning in aid of the Macmillan Cancer Care Charity. We know that so many families are affected by this horrible, vicious disease and wanted to do something positive and amazing to show that we are part of beating it.

So we got busy...

The kitchen was buzzing as children made cakes and classrooms turned into "Invitation Factories!" We invited parents, friends and families, local businesses, people from organisations we work closely with, such as Neptune Court and Semble House, governors - in fact anyone and everyone we could think of! We said "Come and have a coffee and a cake and make a donation to Macmillan..."

But we weren't sure how many people would come and how much money we would raise...

Friday morning came and after a steady build-up, the queue stretched out of the door! We reckon over 250 people came and shared the morning with us...

We raised a grand total on the day of £644 - in just one hour! (And a little more has come in since!)

My personal thanks to everyone who came and had a cake or helped organise the morning - and a very special thank you to all our children. If it weren't for them, we'd have had no cakes, no people to eat them and no money to give to Macmillan... You are superstars!

Getting Fit for Life!

It was really impossible to walk past our pupil kitchen this week without being tempted in by the very inviting food being cooked!

But this time, it wasn't pupils, but parents of pupils taking part in the Fit for Life Family Learning Course.

They are learning from each other, sharing experiences of home and family life and are trying out some new recipes...



The Pasta Hot Pot was delicious and filling - and, more importantly, easy and cheap!

(And Mr Taylor liked Pula's Mixed Bean Salad too!)