The Echo Christmas 2018

THEECHO ECHO ECHO

Christmas 2018 Edition

Stand and Be Proud!

At St Margaret’s, there is a strong appreciation of the fact that much of life is a performance, where robust communication skills are essential if people are to succeed in life.

Consequently, it stands to reason that children who have grown up in an environment where they are encouraged to perform in front of an audience of their peers, teachers, parents and family friends, are in the best possible position when they go out into the wider world.

During the early part of this term, children in Reception impressed an audience of prospective parents when they sang in French at one of our Open Mornings. Our choir of four-year-old boys and girls, all equally enthusiastic, sang with absolute joy, brimming with confidence and showing no sign of nerves whatsoever. As children get older, they can become self-conscious about performing, but throughout St Margaret’s, they are relishing every opportunity to develop their skills, build confidence, and ‘stand and be proud’.

At the senior end of the school, twenty-eight of our Year 5 and 6 pupils make up the highly successful Chamber Choir, our auditioned (they choose to) performance and competition ensemble. What becomes increasingly apparent as children move through the school is that they thrive on regular performance opportunities, building their confidence and giving them a sense of pride in their own achievements. In the classroom too, this undoubtedly leads to improved concentration, better co-ordination and markedly better cognitive skills. Enjoy performance in every respect and encourage your child to ‘stand and be proud’, secure in the knowledge that they are developing confidence and an inner strength that will enable them to participate fully in whatever challenges life throws at them!

Welcome to the Christmas Edition of The Echo The festive season is definitely upon us and at the time of writing, the joyous sounds of children singing Carols and Christmas songs can be heard ringing out around the school.

The start of the new academic year back in September now seems just a distant memory, but the extraordinary progress that the children have made, both individually and collectively, during the past fourteen weeks is quite remarkable!

Wonderful new friendships have been established,

new challenges have been faced, successes celebrated, and the term will certainly end with everyone justifiably holding their heads up high.

Whilst Christmas is undoubtedly a time for families and friends, amongst all the excitement, I hope you will find time to share in the pages of this edition of The Echo with your children.

As ever, I send you and your families my good wishes for a blessed and joyous Christmas, and a peaceful and happy 2019.

www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk Kindergarten are Sticky Clean!

This term, the children in Kindergarten have explored lots of messy play and had fun with jelly, custard, soap flakes, cooked spaghetti, crazy soap, gloop, paint and slime. They talked about the different textures and then came up with some amazing words to describe how they felt, including ‘wobbly’, ‘slimy’, ‘squishy, ‘sticky’, ‘funny’, ‘cold’, ‘wet’, ‘smelly’ and ‘bubbly’. It was (almost) unanimous – ‘sticky’ soap flakes were everyone’s favourite!

Reception Love EcoOL! This term, every Friday afternoon, the children in Reception have been accessing all of the exciting areas in the school grounds for EcoOL School. They have had so much fun acting out different stories, counting, phonic hunting, doing physical challenges and exploring the Woodland Garden with the mud kitchen and instruments. Everyone embraced the outdoors and definitely enjoyed experiencing all of the different weather conditions! The children learnt so many new skills outside, which they then practised in the classroom; they are undoubtedly all ‘EcoOL Warriors’!

Full Steam Ahead in 1C This term, the children in Year 1 have had fun learning all about Victorians and the history of trains. As well as exploring timelines, the children visited STEAM, in Swindon, to learn more about the work of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, George Stephenson and Robert Stephenson. They also spent an afternoon being inspiring engineers, working in small teams to create their own bridges.

All aboard for historical fun in Year 1!

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1H go Bananas!

In Design & Technology this term, the children in 1H have been learning about food nutrition and preparation. They explored different fruits and vegetables and described the similarities and differences between them. They were also excited to learn different skills to change the shape of the foods, in order to prepare them for different recipes. By altering their ‘Banana Song’, the children explored how to mash, peel, grate and chop fruit and vegetables.

They then used these skills to create their own healthy milkshakes, which were delicious!

3L Bring the Past to Life!

This term, Year 3 started their exciting historical studies exploring the Palaeolithic and Neolithic divisions of the Stone Age. The children investigated different tools and food and discovered how life changed over 3 million years. They are incredibly fortunate to live in an area so full of history and were able to support their studies by visiting the largest stone circle in the world! The children clearly enjoyed bringing history to life by getting up close to the stones. They were complimented on their wealth of knowledge of this time-period, as well as their confidence to share it with others.

Food Glorious Food in 2J! The children in Year 2 have been learning about ‘healthy eating’ in Science and looking at ‘where our food comes from’ in Geography.

As part of this, they sorted food into the different food groups and looked at the healthy food plate to see how much of each food group they should be eating. They also looked at what foods and meals they were eating, by keeping a food diary. The children had great fun with their Grandparents on Grandparents’ Day, making their own balanced meal on a plate using a variety of collage materials and paint.

Everyone thoroughly enjoyed sharing all this knowledge in their class assembly, which they performed brilliantly. Within this they acted out the story ‘Brown Bread and Honey’ to demonstrate the importance of eating healthily and shared their knowledge of the food groups. Well done Year 2!

Top Farming Tips for 2N Year 2 were extremely lucky to visit East Farm this term, in order to bring their Geography learning to life and find out where their food really does come from. Laura, Peter and Poppa showed us their arable fields, where the children saw rapeseed and wheat growing. They learnt how oil and flour can be made by grinding down these two crops and even had a go at the process! Having learnt all about dairy farming, the children were strong in their knowledge of how milk is collected from farm livestock and that from this, other dairy products can also be made. Everyone very much enjoyed turning milk into butter by hand, using the cream of the milk, a drop of water and an awful lot of shaking! Using all these natural ingredients gathered on the farm, Year 2 finished their adventure by making (and of course eating) scotch pancakes for their snack; delicious!

spells ‘friends’!

3R Value Friendship PSHEE has seen Year 3 exploring friendship and the children have discussed what makes a good friend. Their H5 adventure camp gave them many opportunities to make new friends and become closer to the ones they already had. The class had to rely on their friends to help them when working in teams and this strengthened the bond they have as a year group. This also got them thinking about how they can do more to show their friends they care. Both classes acted out scenarios and role-played the right and the wrong way to act. They now know that friendships take a little bit of work to keep them strong and that everyone is up for the challenge of making new friendships every day. This is a lesson that will help them today, tomorrow and indeed for the rest of their lives!

Read All About it in 4T’s Saxon Newspaper This term, the children in 4T have been learning about the Anglo Saxons coming to England. They have learnt how this fits into the history they learnt in Year 3 and can create their own historical timelines.

Year 4 had an amazing day at Salisbury Museum – they were able to study and handle artefacts, as well as role-playing being Saxons and looking at the incredible archaeological findings from the local area. When they returned to school, the children used their literacy knowledge of newspaper articles to design, write and edit their own Saxon newspaper. They included different areas of Saxon life such as Crafts, Farming and of course a favourite - Saxon Law and Punishment! The unit of study ended with a class assembly, sharing some wonderful facts with their families and the rest of the school.

4NC Digest Digestion!

4NC set out to try a new experiment this year, in order to find out where their breakfast goes! After making a very tasty chocolate and banana sandwich, together with some porridge, the children mimicked adding digestive enzymes (tomato ketchup), bile (a very green coloured yogurt) and lemon juice representing the acid in their stomachs. The food was then suitably cut up (teeth) and churned in a plastic bag like the mixture in the stomach. They passed it through a funnel into tights representing the intestines. The water was then squeezed out, containing the nutrients which at this point would go into the blood stream. This undoubtedly proved a very memorable way for everyone to remember how digestion works, after also helping them to make and label their T shirt diagrams.

5S Embrace Peer Reading This term, Year 5 pupils have enjoyed meeting in the library each week with their Year 3 counterparts, in order to develop a shared love of reading. The Year 5 children have been helping their Year 3 partners to select suitable texts, listening to them read, reading to them, supporting them with their Accelerated Reader quizzes and writing comments in their Reading Records. It has been lovely to see how pleased the Year 5 children are for their partners when they meet their reading target, or when they earn a place on the Reading Sunflower! Some children in Year 5 have celebrated Millionaire Reader awards already this term, and it has been a pleasure to see friendships developing during this shared time together.

THEECHO ECHO ECHO

CHRISTMAS 2018 EDITION

Year 6 Experience World War II As part of their History studies this term, Year 6 visited STEAM Museum in Swindon. This was a very special day organised with volunteers leading sessions about evacuees, air raids, steam trains, jobs on the home front during the war and the impact on families. It was a really informative trip and the children loved getting into character in the different sessions. However, the best session was when the staff pretended to be the hosting adults of evacuees and selected particular children depending on the type of work they wanted the evacuees to do. They asked some challenging questions and checked for politeness and cleanliness; not everyone was selected!

Alongside this trip and the academic work about World War II, Year 6 also did some baking from World War II recipes, using the appropriate rations.

They made carrot cookies, rock cakes and chocolate oatcakes. Despite the ingredients being limited and the distinct lack of sugar, all of the baking actually tasted remarkably good!

5G Test the Power of the Pulley In Design and Technology this term, the children in Year 5 have investigated how pulleys can be used to make movement easier. They enable heavy weights to be lifted with only a small effort and permit movement of objects across distances. Using more than one pulley helps to make movement easier. At the start of term, the children tested this out by making a pulley between the trees outside. They found out how the different components all combine to create a smoothly moving pulley. They were able to send Maximus Mouse along the pulley system in his safety bucket, with a small pull on the rope.

They would have loved to travel along the pulley line themselves but unfortunately, they were too big!

The children then used their knowledge to create their own pulleys, with a nursery rhyme theme. Each child had to plan a scene with movement and build the pulley to demonstrate this. They had great fun testing their prototypes, before decorating them ready to show to their buddies in Year 1. Along the way they practised skills, including using the saw, and how to join wood to make a framework.

www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk Decisive Victory for Girls’ U10 Hockey Team In November, the U10A girls’ hockey team took part in the annual Bath Schools Tournament. The girls played five matches, winning four and losing just one on their way to victory. Their journey featured matches against Monkton Prep, The Paragon, Kingswood, King Edward’s and The Royal High School. The team conceded just three goals throughout the tournament and this was in part due to some outstanding goalkeeping skills on display from Isla.

St Margaret’s were undoubtedly worthy winners, with their Coach for the afternoon, Miss Giles, commenting ‘the whole team contributed to a highly successful afternoon, where the end result was not obvious until the last whistle of the final match’. The ‘woman of the match’ was undoubtedly Nina for her positive contribution in all five games, but everyone should be immensely proud of their endeavours - well done!

LEGO League’s Solar Challenge This term, ten pupils in Year 6 have been preparing for ‘blast off’, ready to break out of their earthly constraints and head off ‘Into Orbit’. You’ve guessed it, the theme of this year’s LEGO League Challenge is centred around ‘Space’.

The first challenge for the team was to identify a physical or social problem faced by humans during long duration space exploration within our sun’s solar system and propose a solution. Space explorers face the physical problems of just staying alive, and if they are away from Earth for years at a time, they may face social problems as well. After much thought and deliberation, the team came up with the idea to create an ‘Emagno Strength Suit’. The concept is designed to help astronauts in long distance travel by wearing a magnetic suit. The space shuttle will have areas that are controlled by electromagnets and the resistance from the suit will reduce problems with muscles, bones and skin.

The other part of the project is to solve a series of demanding robotic missions, all revolving around the theme of ‘Into Orbit’.

The group had to design, construct and programme a robot with EV3 software, which took many hours of programming and debugging. The robot then had to complete a selection of missions, which included such challenges as placing satellites in certain areas, removing modules from a space station and relocating astronauts.

Underlying both the research and programming aspects of the LEGO League Challenge are ‘Core Values’. These are at the heart of the competition and by embracing these Core Values, the teams learn that friendly competition and mutual gain are not separate goals, and that helping each other is the foundation of teamwork.

In January 2019, our intrepid Year 6 team, enthused by their solid background of research and programming, will set off to the Hewlett Packard Labs in Bristol to compete against a selection of other primary and secondary schools. Win or lose, the children will be flying high and we know they will do their best – good luck!

Year 3: Petit Dejeuner; Big Appetites What better way to ease back in after the half term holiday than with a typical French breakfast in the St Margaret’s pop up café! The Year 3 children could not wait to use the vocabulary and phrases they have learnt so far this year in a more authentic situation. They managed to name all the drinks and snacks provided (jus d’orange, chocolat chaud, lait, croissants, pains au chocolat, confiture de fraise, beurre…), place their orders and successfully express a few simple opinions in French. The highlight was undoubtedly the tasting part of the session, with many of the children enjoying a second helping. They were also overjoyed to prove Madame Colesby wrong by spreading the butter ever so carefully on their biscottes (French toasts) without breaking them, a task which she qualified as near impossible. Challenge met: thank you spreadable butter!

St Margaret’s Preparatory School, Calne, Wiltshire, SN11 0DF Tel: 01249 857220 Fax: 01249 857227 Email: office@stmargaretsprep.org.uk Website: www.stmargaretsprep.org.uk