Year of the Snake

This year the Chinese New Year will be celebrated on February 10th. 2013 marks the year of the snake. Celebrations for this event include parades with dragons, and eating various foods with chop-sticks, such as dumplings, sweet and sour chicken, chicken chow mein and much much more! Also, there will be fireworks and lots of red and gold coloured items because red and gold are considered lucky colours. In London for this event there will be big festivities this Sunday. In our school, year 1 have celebrated by making this beautiful display. Gong Xi Fa Cai! (Happy Chinese New Year in Mandarin)

Houses of Parliament

On the Friday, 25th January, the year 6 class went to the Houses of Parliament. Once we exited from the Westminster tube station we received some passes to go into parliament: if you don’t have one, they will not let you go past and there are police everywhere guarding! We went down into this underground place and we went up into the parliament building. We were put into 2 groups. My group went to the House of Commons where there was live debate going on. We got out and walked towards the House of Lords and apparently the House of Commons has more power than the House of Lords. We found out that the queen only visits the House of Lords once a year and her role is not that important in the House of Commons because she is only the head of the monarch. When we were finished we had our own debate about keeping or getting rid of SATs. We had these little tablets and we put our answers in them and at the end we decided that we should keep SATs. Overall, it was a great learning experience!

Avonmore Keeps Tidy

There has been a lot litter and dirtiness in Avonmore lately. For example, on the 15th of this month it was someone’s birthday and instead of throwing the wrappers in the bin they threw them on the ground! Some people are so irresponsible they don’t even put the wrapper in the bin! Now because of that, Mr Hale wants classes, after playtime, to clean up the rubbish that they find on the ground. Well, that was karma for some students but some students are disappointed because they didn’t contribute to any dirtiness and they still have to clean up! Well, you got to do what you got to do even though you didn’t do it.

Yummies in our Tummies

We were starving after our visit to the pet department, and so we went to the food hall. As soon as I stepped into the hall, the nicest smells came across me. There were just so many sweets! They had many impressive chocolate statues, all sorts of snacks and delicious fudges! Miss Cotten bought us all weird and wonderful flavours: Mint Choc, Maple Walnut and my favourite- Butterscotch! We looked around the last of the window displays, then ate our fudge at EAT (a cafe) with a cup of water or orange juice. Many of us liked the Mint Choc fudge. IfI i ever again go to Harrods, I’ll be sure to eat more fudge!

Wonderful Winter Windows

On the 17th December 7 lucky students went on a trip to Harrods to see their Christmas 2012 window display! The themes for the windows were Disney princesses. There were various princesses such as The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, Jasmine, Pocahontas, Mulan, Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella and The Frog Princess. The detail in each window was extravagant: there were details such as moving fairies, realistic backgrounds and an actual talking mirror for the Snow White window!

The Best Toy Department in the World?

We went up to the 4th floor where the toy department was and it was huge! There were so many toys and they were all very expensive. Included in the department were toys like Steiff bears and huge dollhouses. The doll houses were round £1000! We saw enormous Lego like dragons and stuff. We played with a remote control car that will never get stuck or put upside down because it has the capability to turn itself upright whichever direction it’s in. There was a whole section filled with games and books. I saw an X box Kinect and some of us played bowling on it. There was even a whole room with the latest books. As we continued to walk through the department we saw a Lego Harrods man and he looked really cool!

Harrods' History

Have you ever wondered why Harrods is such a popular department store? Want to know who founded Harrods? Then read this Harrods-info filled blog! Charles Harrods’ department store was destroyed by a fire before Christmas in 1883.Even so, Harrods still delivered all the Christmas hampers in time! Charles Henry Harrod was Harrods’ founder. He was a tea merchant and grocer. After opening in 1849, he made £200 every week. These days, Harrods sells 165 teas, including the most expensive on earth, and in 2010 it made £635 million! In 1921, a bear from Harrods was bought for Christopher Robin (the real one, not the cartoon) when he was one year old. He named it Winnie-the-Pooh. The stories which his father ( A.A. Milne) wrote about Winnie made it one of the most famous bears in the world!