From dancing competition medals to competing in Northampton Saints hockey, from Brownie promises to articles written for magazines, there is always such a range of brilliant accomplishments to recognise and celebrate. Well done to all girls receiving recognition and appreciation for their efforts both in school and out of school.

Thank you for supporting us with entries to the GDST Christmas Christmas Card competition. We were delighted to see some beautifully crafted designs. We are pleased to announce that, after careful consideration, the winning design was Olivia C’s innovative pop-up snowman, closely followed by Constance’s meticulously crafted night before Christmas scene. Olivia’s design will be entered into the GDST competition representing the school and both designs will be employed as our Northampton High digital and physical Christmas card for 2024.

Festivities usually contain an element of music, and our Scholars’ Concert was a treat at lunchtime – well done to pupils who entertained us with their music and good cheer. Thanks go to Rhoda who started the week with her performance in Monday’s assembly on the flute. The classrooms and halls ring with the sound of Christmas songs being practised for our upcoming programme of events. Just as a reminder, these are as follows:

Christmas Nativity – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 – Tuesday 3 December 9am-10.30am – Book your seats here
Christmas Sing-a-long and crafts – Nursery and Preschool – Tuesday 3 December 2pm-3.30pm – Please confirm here
Christmas Nativity – Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 – Wednesday 4 December 2pm-3.30pm – Book your seats here
Christmas Celebration – Year 1 to Year 6 – Tuesday 10 December 6pm refreshments 6.30pm start – Book your tickets
Christmas Carol Concert – Senior School Year 7 to Year 13 – Thursday 12 December 6.30pm refreshments 7pm start – Please book here

Finally, our Christmas Fayre day is upon us! Our school is being transformed into a festive market, with Christmas treats, activities for the children, —exciting games and activities, craft stalls, , and, of course, a visit from Father Christmas himself! It’s the perfect way to kick off the holiday season, all while supporting our school community and our school charity, the Hope Centre in Northampton.

We look forward to seeing you there and thank you for your support!

Mrs Amanda Wilmot 
Acting Head of Junior School 

‘Dear Santa’ has been our book of the week, with the children learning new vocabulary as they looked at the presents in the book as well as new adjectives.  

We have also set up the tuff tray with Christmas sensory objects including tinsel, different pieces of fabric and some baubles.  

At Forest School the children explored all the cooking utensils as well as making their own natural Christmas decorations.

We have been very busy learning our Christmas songs for next week and are very excited.

Christmas has arrived with us in Preschool and we have begun lots of Christmas activities. We have continued to learn our Christmas songs ready for our performance next week. The girls are all excited to have you come and watch them.

The activities in the classroom have been on a winter theme/Christmas related. We have made baubles for the tree, snow globes and a range of winter-themed pictures. The girls have practiced their fine motor skills by using stamps and writing their names in their cards.  During our weekly sessions with the Reception teachers for reading and name writing the girls thoroughly enjoy and always look forward to their turn.

At Forest School the girls had the chance to climb and jump off obstacles they have made using available resources. The rope swings have also been popular with the girls continuing to practise getting on and off themselves. Mrs Mason helped the girls to make mini Christmas trees with spray snow which was very fun to squirt.

In Reception this week our Art focus has linked to our Mathematics work on 2D shapes.

We listened to the story of ‘ Perfect Square’ by Michael Hall. In this story a happy square demonstrates how it can be changed into a park, a fountain and a mountain using the skills of ripping, scrunching, folding, cutting and tearing the square. Each had a perfect square to start and had to use every little part of it make a new picture, the results were super!

Year 1 have had lots of fun learning about mechanisms in DT.

They each made their own sliders, levers and wheel mechanisms and created pictures with moving parts based on different traditional tales.

In Art we have been learning about drawing beginning with making expressive marks when listening to classical music and ending with learning about proportions for portraits based on the work of Van Gogh. We enjoyed using our new skills to create self-portraits.

The term is ending with finger printing a seasonal tree to create a calendar.

As part of our ‘Landscapes and Cityscapes’ unit, Year 2 have enjoyed learning about the work of Van Gogh.

Inspired by his Starry Night painting, we used short brush strokes and swirling movements to create our own sky pictures.

You might notice some of these paintings as back drops in our upcoming nativity play, so keep your eyes peeled!

Year 3 started this half term by learning how to sketch a woolly mammoth and thoroughly enjoyed adding extra details so that each animal has its own unique personality.

They are now learning how to mix watercolours and have created successful background washes for their final painting of one of these amazing prehistoric creatures!

This week Year 4 have embarked on a creative journey, crafting vibrant fabric prints inspired by the dazzling beauty of fireworks and our book The Firework Maker’s Daughter.

The process began with our talented students designing their unique firework displays before transferring their masterpieces onto polystyrene. With a bit of technique and lots of enthusiasm, they printed these designs onto fabric, resulting in a spectacular array of colourful prints.

In DT, the Year 4s have been working hard using their block pattern to cut out their felt for the different panels of their purses and then adding their decorations by stitching them onto their felt.

The Year 5 girls have just finished a beautiful version of David Hockney’s ‘Bigger Splash’ in their Art lessons.

“It was really fun doing our own ‘Bigger Splash’… but it was really hard! We had to use different sized paintbrushes to do the smaller details, and it took a long time doing all the different layers. We tried to do it exactly the same, but we were allowed to do the diving board whatever colour we wanted. It was really fun painting the actual splash, because we had make the paint really watery.” Annie and Aggie

In DT lessons, the girls have started a new project, designing and making something with an end user in mind.

“In DT we have just started doing woodwork… we can’t tell you what we are making because we don’t want to spill the beans. It has been really fun doing the measuring and the cutting, because it was active and we just had lots of fun! We can’t wait to decorate them and give them to… [spoiler]!!” Tabby and Dia

Year 6 have been studying the Ancient Greeks in Humanities and we decided that we would extend this topic to our Art lessons. We have therefore researched, designed and created Greek pots out of terracota clay. This was a long and challenging process involving lots of perseverance and determination.

Our designs needed to be adapted at times as we found some of our chosen shapes were very hard to reproduce. However, we persisted and completed the task. Special mention should go to our resident expert Leah, who helped many of her peers to enhance their finished product by blending their coils smoothly. We have then used black paint or a black Sharpie to decorate our pots.

We have been very pleased with the end results.

Christmas Parties: We have changed the date of the class Christmas parties from Tuesday 10 to Thursday 12 December. On this day, girls are welcome to come into school in their party clothes and a Christmas Jumper; this date is national Christmas jumper Day and raises funds for Save the Children.

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