This term our children at Ribbleton Avenue Methodist Junior School have been busy with some very exciting undertakings, including exciting trips and making Robots to contend in our Numeracy Ninjas competition.

Let’s start with our Year 3 trip to Cobble Hey Farm; not only did we have an amazing time, we were also a twitter sensation - 804 likes, 136 retweets and 15 Quoted Tweets!

Using a grant obtained by the Country Trust, we were able to take our Year 3 pupils to a working farm near Bleasdale, where first and foremost, we were able to enjoy the great outdoors. We made pizza and cooked them over open flames, learnt all about cows, the importance of forests and nature before we climbed to the top of a hill with Farmer Dave and ran all the way back down. The shrieks of pure joy made the entire experience all the sweeter but with this came the stark reality that none of these children has ever done anything quite like it. The staff and Farmers Edwina and Dave were not only humbled, but teary-eyed when describing this most basic act of enjoyment. This trip only goes to highlight the significance of the work we are undertaking with the development of our Outdoor Education and Mr Moran and Mrs Langfield are planning their next trip for Year 5, who will go to Martin Mere to learn about the importance of wetlands and the habitat they provide to birds, wild fowl and animals.

We have also been promoting our children taking the lead in school and our Numeracy Ninjas have set the bar incredibly high with their Battle of the Robots competition. Children across school were encouraged to make a robot; the design brief was to ensure that the robots were able to launch an object, the robot with the greatest launching capacity winning the competition. It was fascinating to see the differing designs which had clearly taken a significant amount of time and effort from both children and their family.

By providing learning opportunities like these, we are hoping to ‘spark’ an interest in new hobbies that may go on to transform the lives of our pupils and their families.

We like to keep our school Facebook page topped up with all the information about our weekly activities so feel free to give our page a ‘like’; alternatively, there are regular updates added to our school website which can be found HERE: Alternatively, there are regular updates added to our school website which can be found HERE:

Fran Nickson Headteacher RAMJS