In engaging children in the process of giving, children develop a deeper understanding of the charity areas that matter to them, which cultivates a longer-term commitment to philanthropy. Schools are crucial in helping children engage in fundraising efforts both as organisers and donors, therefore vitally cultivating children’s longer term philanthropic ‘citizenship’ habits, whilst simultaneously providing an important source of fundraised income for many charities. 

A huge and heartfelt thank you to our parents and pupils for the generous donations of delicious cakes, cookies and brownies for our Macmillan Coffee Morning. Your contributions in cake and donation form are very much appreciated. Sincere thanks, importantly, to our Year 5 girls and Miss Brandon-Jones for a brilliantly planned and executed (and tasty!) event highlighting in action the importance of charitable giving. 

Mrs Amanda Wilmot
Acting Head – Junior School

This week in Nursery our story of the week has been ‘Dear Zoo’ where we have had props to accompany the story and spark interest. In the tray we also had the Dear Zoo animals and oats to enable the girls to role play with these.

For Maths the girls continued to look at different sizes and introduced the compare bears with a big, small and medium sized bears and we also enjoyed a session in the music room exploring different instruments whilst singing songs together.

We embraced the very wet Monday by going out with puddle suits on in the Nursery garden so there were no limits to the usual garden activity.

In Forest School this week the girls had the opportunity to have a colour hunt, jump in puddles, explore their surroundings, balance on logs and have a run around. We even made a house for a special bunny.

We are working on sitting nicely at the table during meal times. If you could  encourage this at home that would be helpful.

In Preschool this week we have started to look at the topic harvest and how it is celebrated. We have watched a CBeebies clip of how it is celebrated and talked about where food and plants grow.

During our PSHE session we talked about being a team and helping each other if we see someone in need of assistance. It’s been been lovely to see the girls remember this throughout the week saying to each other phrases like “we are a team”, “we are all friends” and “team work makes the dream work”.

We have been exploring natural resources both at Forest School and in the classroom. The girls completed a colour hunt looking for leaves and sticks and brought these back to the classroom. When the leaves were dry we experimented with leaf rubbings discovering the pattern each leaf made. We did some painting with these natural found items too which the girls loved getting messy with, lots of fabulous pictures have been made this week!

This week our learning has been based around a book called ‘Only One You’ which has encouraged us to think about how we and other people are special.

In Maths we have been exploring patterns – in the environment, on objects and in music. We have learnt to talk about how a pattern repeats and created our own pattern rules.

Next we learnt about the difference between an object and a material and are starting to think about the important properties that each material has and what it can be used for.

We will end the half term by testing different properties and finally have fun with an umbrella investigation.

Year 2 have really enjoyed learning about light. This week, we have been investigating reflection. We wanted to know which materials were most effective in reflecting light so we designed an experiment to shine torchlight on to items such as carboard, tin foil, fabric, sponge and wood and observe and record what we saw.

We ensured that our experiments were ‘fair tests’ by keeping everything the same each time and only changing one variable – the material.

Considering the texture and colour of the materials, we made some excellent predictions, using language such as ‘rough’, ‘smooth’ and ‘shiny’. We discovered that the mirror was the most reflective but we were also surprised to find that the cardboard was too!

We worked really hard in this lesson and should feel very proud!

We have thoroughly enjoyed studying rocks and trying to remember some of their tricky names!

Using hand lenses has enabled us to examine them more closely and we have been trying to draw accurate diagrams.

We worked in pairs to test the physical properties of a range of samples and decided that granite or marble (budget permitting!) would be the best materials for a kitchen worktop, as they are hard and very difficult to scratch!

In Year 5 we are having lots of fun learning about the ins and outs of plants.

Last week we looked very carefully at the different parts of a flower and, after dissecting them, could identify and label the parts used for reproduction.

This week we have been thinking about seed dispersal and watched some incredible video footage of plants that literally explode their seeds in all directions!

We started the term by learning how plants and animals are classified according to their visible characteristics and creating our own yes/no keys.

Studying ‘branching’ and ‘go to’ keys also helped us to understand the importance of creating clear questions and paying attention to detail, as we spotted mistakes in a published online key.

We enjoyed working in groups and using a freshwater habitat key to collect information about our chosen invertebrates.

Today, the Year 5 girls brought some huge sunny smiles to a grey and rainy morning! With the assistance of Miss Brandon-Jones, they organised a Macmillan Coffee Morning to raise money for cancer research. The delicious aroma of cup cakes brought crowds of excited staff, students and parents flooding into the dining room. Thank you so much for all your baking contributions, for joining us to eat cake, and your generous donations. We have raised over £550 so far, which is fantastic!