Peak pupils expand their minds in class

Children at Peak Forest Primary School celebrated World Book Day in style this year by dressing as their favourite characters to discuss and share books.

The day was shared with Matilda, Harry Potter characters, Winnie the Witch, and Where’s Wally to name but a few.

Reading is very important to all the children and staff at Peak Forest Primary - a fact made clear by their efforts, and World Book Day was once again a great success.

There was also great excitement when the students were visited by Graham Brock, STEM expert and space ambassador for the Tim Peake Primary Project.

He ran a session called ‘How to Train Like an Astronaut’ with the junior children - leading them in activities such as fitting nuts and bolts together underwater to give the children a sense of what it is like to carry out tasks in an unfamiliar environment, a memory test and reaction timing experiment.

They also had to complete tasks using probes and corks and finally wore large, thick gloves to simulate the difficulty of carrying out fine motor tasks in a space suit.

Head teacher Ros Carter said: “The children enjoyed all the tasks and worked really well together to complete everything in time - it was all a lot of fun.

“They learnt a lot about the huge variety of skills that an astronaut’s training covers.”