Over the past couple of weeks, the whole school community has been revelling in festive cheer: thrilling audiences with brilliant Christmas House Plays and Nativities, singing with wonder in yesterday’s Christmas Concert, dazzling in woolly Christmas jumpers, tucking into Christmas lunches with all the trimmings, enjoying class Christmas parties with tutors and co-tutors, and warming hearts by fundraising for Save the Children. The atmosphere and enthusiasm for these celebrations have been nothing short of remarkable.

We are undoubtedly part of a special community where both interests and talents are nurtured, and challenges are embraced. Witnessing the incredible successes of our students is deeply humbling and inspirational in every sense of the word. My heartfelt thanks go to the teaching and support staff who make all of this possible. Their behind the scenes efforts every day go above and beyond, and I am certain our students and parents appreciate this as much as I do.

This final week of term has brought us together as a school community to celebrate the Christmas season. The beautiful and atmospheric Christmas Concert provided an opportunity to pause, reflect and rejoice through music. Festive lunches and Christmas jumpers allowed everyone to share food and laughter, while our final assembly today highlighted the true Christmas Story and its timeless message of redeeming love.

As the world around us continues to change, I hope you will take time during the holidays to reconnect with family and friends, cherish simple pleasures and reflect on what truly matters. Let us also look outward to the wider world, acknowledging our shared humanity.

We often hear that ‘Christmas is a time for families’. While gathering with loved ones is a cherished part of the season, this emphasis can sometimes feel exclusive. Since becoming Head of Northampton High School, I have been honoured to participate in the St Edmund’s, Hardingstone Church Carol Service. This year, I will be reading the eighth lesson from Matthew 2:1-12, which invites us to reflect on the virtue of hospitality that extends beyond the familiar to embrace our ‘neighbour’ in the broader sense.

The Christmas story, told in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, reminds us of the innkeeper’s humble hospitality towards a young couple. They were accommodated in a modest stable – not fit for a king by worldly standards but fit for a king who will herald a new vision of a world where both shepherds and kings find equal hospitality. So, this Christmas, let us strive to kindle “the fire of hospitality in the hall and the genial flame of charity in the heart,” as Washington Irving wrote. This, after all, is the essence of the Christmas message.

Every time we look at a Christmas tree, we are reminded of the fragility of light, and yet its permanence: the continual difficult triumph of hope, optimism, love and beauty over the dark. And every time we see the resolve and optimism of young people, it is like setting a light against the obscurity of the future: they illuminate the path ahead. 

The High School is made up of an extraordinary group of people and I have high hopes for the impact that each and every one of them can choose to have – the hope that they can bring – in the communities to which they belong. Hope breeds hope, and kindness shared can be shared onwards. Indeed, the generosity of our students and staff is always so humbling and a poignant reminder of our duty as human beings to take care of each other. I am constantly touched by the empathy our students and staff show to others and this is what makes our school such a calm, happy and purposeful place to be. 

As we close this term, I wish you and your families a joyful Christmas and look forward to a bright and promising New Year in 2025.

With my warmest wishes for the coming year.

May Lee
Head 

In Nursery this week, we have been excited to meet a new friend who will be joining us in January. The girls have shown great inter-personal skills and been very welcoming.

We have enjoyed being outside experiencing the weather and noticing that our deciduous trees are now bare.  We went on a puddle hunt and enjoyed jumping in them so much so, we didn’t want to leave.

Ballet with Miss Lauren is a huge hit and the girls always make sure their listening ears are switched on before we go in, they particularly like the feather exercise, which has been bought to life by the real colourful feathers that Miss Lauren has bought in.

On this last week of term we have been continuing with our theme of Christmas by being very creative and expressive. The girls have joined in with dancing to Christmas songs at our party, a festive ballet session, many craft activities and we continued on with our book advent calendar.

Outside a group of girls pretended to be reindeer and worked together to move around the garden all in one hoop, making sure to all go in the same direction.

At Forest School we went on a Christmas picture hunt to find all the hidden pictures and we even had a tasty Christmas snack.

Our feelings board that the girls use every morning to let us know how they are feeling, has been been full of happy and excited girls who have said “I’m really excited for Christmas”

We hope you have a lovely Christmas break and we will see you all in the New Year!

Happy Christmas from all of us!

“I like to play outside with my friends.” Sarah

“I love making models at the workshop.” Felicity

“I like reading with my teachers and playing games with my friends.” Evelyn

“My favourite thing to do is to play in the role play area, I really love Santa’s Workshop.” Phoebe

“I really like to draw and be an artist.” Grace

“I like learning ballet and wearing my ballet kit.” Olivia

“My favourite lesson is PE and using the bats and balls to play team games.” Sofia

“I really like singing, dancing and dressing up.” Francesca

“I like learning French and playing on the pirate ship outside.” Bijoux

They have become more independent in organising themselves for the day and are showing enthusiasm and readiness to learn. The term included new experiences such as Spanish and Atomic Tom clubs, along with an exciting trip to the Oxford Story Museum. Rehearsals for the Christmas show, ‘Everyone Loves a Baby,’ began in the second half of the term, and the hard work paid off with a show that was enjoyed by the audience and performers.

It has been a delight to see the progress made in individual reading and the pleasure gained when reading begins to flow and stories and characters become more complex. I wish you all a restful and Happy Christmas break – don’t forget to keep reading!

The autumn term seems to have flown by and it has been wonderful seeing the girls develop in all areas in school life.

It has been a very busy term, with each day filled with discovery and creativity. However, one of the highlights of the term has definitely been our nativity play: ‘Everyone Loves a Baby’. The girls worked incredibly hard to learn their lines and song words and delivered them with incredible enthusiasm and confidence! It takes great courage to stand up in front of an audience and they should be so very proud of this!

I hope the girls have a wonderful Christmas break and are looking forward to another exciting term in the New Year!

Year 3 think that the autumn term has been fantastic, incredible and amazing!

Highlights have included: our class assembly about animals with unusual names, drawing and painting our woolly mammoths, making pneumatic monsters in DT, learning and performing our snowflake dance, writing a description of a woolly mammoth and improving our knowledge of times tables.

We think we have become more independent and we understand how important it is to work hard on our prep. We have also tried to improve our handwriting and we think we focus well in lessons.

We are looking forward to all of the new things we are going to do next term!

What a busy and exciting term it has been for our wonderful Year 4!

From captivating performances to creative learning experiences, I couldn’t be prouder of our pupils and their dedication.

Our term concluded with a charming production of Silent Night. Watching the children shine on stage filled me with immense pride for their hard work!

In English, the class dived into The Firework-Maker’s Daughter. The students produced fantastic descriptions of Razvani the Fire Fiend, and with a sprinkle of creativity, their characters were brought to life using an AI generator. They even crafted backstories for Razvani, effectively using fronted adverbials, conjunctions, and noun phrases to enhance their storytelling.

In Maths, our focus has been on honing calculation skills and mastering times tables. It’s heartening to see so many making excellent strides, on track to meet the expected standard by the end of the year!

Our Science lessons explored the fascinating world of teeth and digestion. The children had a blast recreating the digestive process with orange juice and crackers—learning has never been so disgusting!

History truly came alive during our trip to Piddington Roman Villa! The hands-on experience inspired students to create informative non-chronological reports. Back in school, one of the highlights was building an edible Roman road, where they not only learnt about engineering but also wrote instructions for a real road.

In Art, Year 4 created a dazzling display of cityscapes inspired by the artist Faith Ringgold. Their 3D drawing and precision with painting have really come on.

In Design & Technology, the perseverance shown by the pupils as they produced their purses was commendable. I am incredibly proud of their final creations!

The girls have become expert coders, designing their own mini racing games! As we head into the Christmas break, I wish everyone a joyful holiday season and a Happy New Year! 

“Since joining NHS, my highlight has been having my own device and using it in lessons. I really like it when we are able to write big long things on our tech because I sometimes struggle with handwriting lots. My favourite thing to type so far has been my autobiography because I found it fun and easy writing about myself!” Alice

“I have loved the English lessons in Year 5 and all the books we have done so far. My favourite was probably ‘Hidden Figures’ because the story inspires people to make their dreams come true – nothing is impossible. I was really proud of the newspaper article that I wrote at the end of the unit.” Orla

“I have really enjoyed the Art lessons because I get to draw. I really liked doing the apple sketches at the start of the year and then using water colours.” Flora

“I loved going on our Grafham Water residential trip because I got to know all the girls in the class better. When I first arrived at the school, I felt like I would miss my old school, but after a few days I felt really glad that I had moved. I also love the swimming lessons because we only got to do that in one term at my old school.” Maya

Year 6 have shared their thoughts on the autumn term:

“I really enjoyed the Greek topic and loved making our Greek pots. I also liked when we went around the playground with Greek shields and spears, it was probably a bit weird for the Year 5s though.” Holly

“I enjoyed doing the playground models in our houses. It was really fun but also extremely challenging trying to figure out how to make the different pieces of equipment.” Annabel  

“I liked writing the description of peculiar creatures.” Cristina 

“I liked doing the Kenning poem about ourselves as it was nice seeing all the lovely things that everyone had written about us and using those words to write the poem.” Avani 

“I really liked swimming this term. It was so fun and I loved that at the end of our lessons we would sometimes do handstands.” Leah

“I really enjoyed the Greek topic in Humanities as I love Greek myths and know quite a lot. Marching around with spears and shields like Hoplites from Sparta was especially fun.” Elizabeth

“I had a great time at the Think Tank trip in Birmingham. The bus rides were fun, and the trip itself was very exciting. The experiments were interesting. “Anushka 

“I enjoyed working on our mini playground presentation and the best part was that we did it in our House groups. However, the challenging part was that you had to make everything from scratch. ” Hesali 

“I really enjoyed our trip to the Think Tank Museum.  I really enjoyed Forest School because we were making stuff and playing, and after that we got to eat some bread with different spices and sauces. It was so fun.” Sophia  

“Really enjoyed doing swimming because it gives you a chance to learn how to swim but also it gives you a chance to have fun. I found English the most tricky because I wasn’t actually good at it but it was very nice to do.” Sylvia 

“I really like making all of the Christmas cards in art.” Eloise R

“I really enjoy reading Un Lun Don because it is a really good book with mysteries round the corner.” Thea

“I found it really fun adventuring to Forest School and learning about the Greeks outside with friends. I loved the bread with all the different and unique sauces and spices.” Eloise C

“I loved the Greek Urn making. It was really hard at the start but at the last lesson I was really proud of myself.” Zoe

“I liked our Forest School sessions.” Kinara 

“I liked watching and completing work about ‘For the Birds’ but it was very emotional at times.” Amber

“I loved the playground house project. It was really fun.” Constance 

“I liked it when we read Un Lun Dun because it is a different style of book to what I normally read and it was something that I would read when I get older. Also, going to the library is fun because we get to try out new, trickier books.” Olivia

“Our French lessons have been great fun, particularly the raffle tickets.” Evie

“I loved the music lessons because we go to the practice rooms to play scales and sing songs.” Evette

Earlier this week Miss Brandon-Jones in Year 5 had an email from the BBC 500 Words Competition saying…

Congratulations! We’re pleased to say that the following stories made it through to the next stage of 500 Words:

‘A Christmas Tail’ by Emily and ‘Jokey Jack’ by Eve.

We received tens of thousands of entries and only around 5,000 go through for the second round of judging by the Reading Agency. You should be very proud!

We’ll be back in touch with an update when we have selected our shortlisted stories in January.

Last week of term PE

Year 1 and 2 had great fun having a snowball fight and putting decorations on the Christmas trees in PE!

Year 5 and Year 6 House Hockey 

1st – Selene

2nd – Artemis

3rd – Demeter

4th – Hestia

The U9 team travelled to Milton Keynes for their final hockey game of the season.

Both teams had incredible games. With great performances by Isabel and Millicent in defence, Charlotte and Lily in midfield and Siena-Louise in attack.

Lily made Mrs Saunders-Wall proud with a goal, as this was the Christmas Wish she asked for at half time.

Both Dulcie and Rayna made some amazing saves in goal and certainly kept the score line down. Players of the match were Rayna and Ivana

What a truly magical evening at our Christmas Celebration! We are all immensely proud of our talented girls, who rose to the occasion beautifully.

Year 4 wowed us with their performance of “Silent Night,” brimming with enthusiasm, character, and boundless energy!

The Year 3s delighted the audience with their impressive dancing skills, bringing joy and elegance to the stage. A huge thank you to Years 5 and 6 for their incredible support during the singing segments; their beautiful rendition of “Silent Night,” including a part in German, lit up the night!

Years 1 and 2 were simply charming as they transported us into their nativity with a wonderful performance. Our Junior School Choir, with their weekly dedication shining through, captivated everyone with their two heart-warming songs. And what a joyful way to conclude our celebrations with “The 12 Days of Christmas!” Memories have certainly been made this evening!

Thank you to everyone who contributed to this memorable night!

KS2 Forest School Sessions – spring term: Dates can be found here.