St Teresa's Prep School Weekly bulletin 5 February 2021

8th February 2021

Message from Mrs Conrad My inspiration this week has got to be Captain Sir Thomas Moore who captured all our hearts when he single-handedly raised over 30 million pounds for the NHS by walking one hundred lengths of his garden with the help of a walking frame! He was an incredible example of how one person with determination, a dream and a positive spirit can make a huge difference to the world and he inspires us to do the same. Captain Tom made us smile and brought us joy and hope when we were feeling low. As we come to the end of another week, hopefully a week closer to welcoming the girls back to school, it is good to remember his words, “The sun will shine on you again and the clouds will go away.”

Rest in peace Captain Tom.

Diary Dates: Wednesday 10th February

Years 1 to 6 virtual Parents’ Evening

Thursday 11th February

Years 1 to 6 virtual Parents’ Evening

Friday 12th February

Half Term begins

Monday 22nd February

School resumes

Parents’ Evenings— 10th & 11th February Formal parents’ meetings for the Prep School will take place virtually on Wednesday 10th and Thursday 11th February from 4.30pm until 7pm (7.30pm for Year 6). A letter has now been sent out with further information, including booking details.

Safer Internet Day The 9th February is Safer Internet Day. This day is always marked in school as part of our PSHE curriculum and this year is no different, especially as our girls are learning and communicating online as their current norm. If you, as a parent, would like to access some free resources about online safety which you could use to aid discussions with your daughter, please access the link here.

Miss Brailsford—Director of Pastoral

Good News!

Trying Something New The Year 2 girls have been trying a few new things in lockdown:

Darcy has been creating her own scents using a kit which she got from Santa.

Natalia has been learning cross stitch.

Olivia made delicious honeycomb ice-cream.

Optional Activities As one of her option activities, Séarlait made papyrus paper and also a beautifully decorated worry box—well done Séarlait.

Bird Spotting Arabella didn’t have very much success spotting birds in her garden, but she did see these two beauties out and about on her walks—and, yes, that is a peacock!

Lucy P took an online art class and painted her own version of van Gogh's Sunflowers— beautiful!

Directed Drawing Over the summer last year, Lyla tried something called ‘directed drawing’. She used a YouTube channel called Art Hub for Kids.

Why don’t you have a look when you have a moment.

Ruby has been baking bread.

Golden Book Well done to all of the girls in our Golden Books this week: 1BB

Liberty C for her excellent concentration and participation in live lessons and her impressive effort in her written work.

2EB

Poppy E for doing some fantastic work in Maths this week whilst learning about division through sharing.

Harlow G has written some super descriptions full of adjectives in English this week; a character description of Jim Lad and a setting description of Dull-on -Sea.

3DI

Olivia P for fabulous involvement in all lessons and challenging herself in maths lessons.

Seren S for her super attitude to online learning, uploading her own work and responding well to feedback.

3KC

Pascale E for producing a Greek Gods mask in the style of the Minotaur with fantastic horns and nose ring included. He looked really fierce!

Matilda R for trying hard during lessons and for becoming more confident with her online learning.

4RN

Elin S for such a fantastic, hard working attitude to her online learning and her wonderful use of description with figurative language in English this week - Well done Elin!

Farah V for her excellent contributions during our Maths lessons and hard work on using short division this week, well done.

Tabitha S-G for her participation and engagement with all our online learning. Tabi has a very positive attitude and always puts in 100% effort - well done!

4CR

Steffi C-B for her fantastic leaflet about a town from 1066 and her fabulous character description.

Ruby G for her superb attitude particularly in English and Maths, making choices to challenge herself and develop her understanding.

5MK

Katarina B for consistently producing a high level of work across the curriculum; a very amusingly composed 'Tudor style' cure for Covid and an incredibly persuasive letter written by Anne Boleyn from the Tower of London to Henry VIII as she awaited trial for treason.

Eva M for taking pride in the quality of work that she produces and for her very creative representation of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in RE. Arabella C for her super effort in English this week, in particular her letter from Anne Boleyn to Henry VIII using a variety of strong and emotive persuasive language.

5HC

Frankie B for the outstanding examples of work and creativity shown in all tasks but especially her Tudor Banquet in Topic and her stop motion clip in RE this week.

Sofie S for an excellent week of online learning and for super participation in lessons.

Tamara B and Gabriella B for their conscientious attitude to all their lessons, trying their best and producing very creative work in Topic and RE this week.

6KH

Katie D for her commitment to online learning: always uploading all her work on time; asking for help when she is unsure and giving up her time in order to go through tasks to ensure understanding.

Briony L for her enthusiasm for, and knowledge of our current topic, 'A Child's War'. She has shared interesting information with the class and used her knowledge to great effect in a tricky comprehension task this week.

6JG

Lucy P for her maturity, resilience and high standard of work.

Georgie M for her impressive work in RE.

Great Work!

Year 2 This Week This week in Topic, the girls in Year 2 learnt about Grace Darling and her bravery as she risked her own life to save others shipwrecked out at sea off the coast of Northumberland in 1838.

In Maths, the girls have been working on division through sharing and answered questions practically using resources found around the house: counters, pieces of pasta and even Maltesers!

Year 6 Science Year 6 have been applying their knowledge of acids and alkalis this week. They made a rain gauge to collect rain water and tested it to find out its acidity with homemade indicators.

Here are two examples of their rain gauges:

Great Work!

Year 5—RE In their RE lessons, the girls in Year 5 enjoyed recreating a scene of Moses leading the Israelites out of slavery in a variety of creative ways.

Year 5—Tudors As part of their Tudor topic this week, Year 5 had to design and plan a menu for a banquet to be hosted by King Henry VIII before they were asked to try out some authentic recipes from the time.

Great Work!

Year 3—Padlet Year 3 have been using Padlet to share their ideas when they complete research tasks. Here are our notes about Greek Theatre!

Year 1 This week, the Year 1s listen to a new story. It was an African folk tale called 'Anancy and Mr Dry-Bone'. The girls discussed the story and we realised that there was a special message hidden within it! We talked about a 'moral of a story' and what this means to us as the reader. The girls then thought about the moral, which in this case, was 'Happiness is more important than money' and they wrote down their own opinions on this message. The girls had some really lovely and thoughtful ideas!

Great Work!

6JG—Prayers of Unity The class were asked to write prayers of unity. Here is Freya’s wonderful example:

6KH—Art The girls created ‘blind’ continuous line drawings of Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama,’s flowers, adding colour into selected areas.

Year 4—Science In Year 4 we have completed our Science topic on electricity by looking at renewable and non-renewable types of energy. This week, the girls had to research and present their findings on different types of energy or answer the question 'what would life be like without electricity?' ‘we thoroughly enjoyed the science task yesterday. We zoomed Grandad as he worked for Southern Electric since he was 16 (now 72!) and they both worked together.’ - Mrs Campbell

Year 4 After writing playscripts last week, we began to think more closely about our characters. We explored how we can combine powerful language, similes and key aspects of how characters look, move and behave to create fabulous character descriptions.

Great Work!

Year 3— Greek Masks In Year 3, the girls drew and labelled masks in the style of Ancient Greek Gods or characters from their myths. They had lots of fun identifying key characteristics from each god or character and replicating this on paper. Some of the girls then went off and created masks from cardboard papier mâché and much more. Well done girls!

Music News Musicians of the Week Rosalind D and Sophia D for their ongoing enthusiasm and great contribution to music lessons.

Isabel R and Jessica T for making up excellent fanfare patterns and correctly writing them down as music notation.

Lottie C for responding well to feedback and improving her work.

Erin C, Stella P and India Rose C for using their musical skills to bring joy to others.

Lockdown Performance In December, Stella in Year 6 played Christmas carols on her violin for a Christmas Carol concert on her road.

She was the only child who was brave enough to take part!

Erin in Year 5 has been learning a new musical hobby and has been teaching herself songs in Hindi. She has been performing them with dance moves too for her grandparents in Singapore when she sees them on Facetime.

India Rose in Year 4 has been working hard on her piano playing and giving Facetime concerts for her family.

It is wonderful to hear these stories of how the girls are helping others through music. Well done girls!

Lockdown Music Competitions Today is the last day for entries. Please submit your work on the Firefly task.

Singing Activities The Diocese of Leeds is producing many singing activities for children. There are daily singing worksheets for Upper Prep age children and a weekly sing-a-long for those in Lower Prep age groups. All their sessions are released on their YouTube channel so do not have to be watched live. These sessions are well worth watching.

Diocese of Leeds Schools Singing Programme - YouTube

Sports News This week, the girls have been working on their reaction time and muscular endurance. Year 5 and 6 designed their own circuit and shared them with their peers, whilst Year 3 and 4 learnt the Irish Jig. Year 1 and 2 continue to work on their movement skills, learning how to lunge and pivot.

PE Star of the Week Our PE Stars of the week for outstanding effort are: Lower Prep: Olivia G in Year 2 Upper Prep: Erin C in Year 5

Weekly PE Challenge Hockey stick: Peyton in Year 4 with 57 taps. Football: Kaiah in Year 4 with 10 taps.

Tennis Racket: Tabby in Year 6 with 39 taps. Book: Peyton in Year 4 with 63 taps, followed closely by Ruby with 54. Searlait in Year 3 managed 8 taps.

Outside School Liliana and Zara have been working on their hockey skills, finding some space indoors to practise whilst it was raining.

Keep up the good work girls!

Sophia in Year 2 has been enjoying walks with her daddy, creating bridges across mini streams. It looks like lots of fun!

This week, Zara challenged herself to do as many staircases in 20 minutes.

She got to 114 (up and down = 1).

St Teresa’s Bird Watch A huge well done to all the girls who took part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch. I hope you all enjoyed it and learnt how to identify different birds in your garden. As a school, we managed to spot 169 birds and 23 different species.

Our most popular bird to spot was the blackbird, followed closely by the jackdaw. The least common was the dunnock, woodpecker, goldcrest, red kite, wren and jay.

The class with the most variety of wildlife and the greatest number of birds spotted was 4CR with 15 different species spotted. Great work!

We really hope that you enjoyed taking some time out to observe our feathered friends.

This Week This week we celebrated the Feast of the Presentation in the Temple, when the Holy Family of Mary and Joseph presented their newborn child, Jesus, in the Temple. They were met by Simeon and Anna—two elderly prophets who, despite all the difficulties and trouble that they and Israel and faced, still held on to the hope that God would send a saviour. Simeon, in particular, bursts out in song that he could now die in peace as he had seen the saviour of the world.

This feast, known as Candlemas, is traditionally the end of the season of Christmas and the day, in the past at least, when Christmas decorations were taken down. It is also the day when traditionally all the candles that are to be used over the coming year are blessed.

In the Chapel, this week, we therefore packed away the crib that has graced the Chapel since the beginning of Advent. All that was left was the Christ -child—a reminder, once again, of Jesus’ constant presence in our lives.

Likewise, we also blessed the candles that will illuminate our services as a reminded of God’s constant presence in our lives and in our school.

We were reminded that the Sanctuary Lamp burns day and night in the Chapel reminding us of God’s presence. And we reflected, on this day when the light of the world—Jesus, the Word made flesh—reentered the Temple to be a shining light for ever, how God shines his light into even the most shaded areas of our lives.