Welcome to the start of the final half term of this academic year. I hope everyone had a wonderful week last week and have returned to school feeling rested and ready for what will be an extremely busy final five weeks of the summer term.
Peter’s Friends have organised the event brilliantly however they do need a few more volunteers to help assist with a number of the activities. Please let them know if you can help by signing up on the link later in the newsletter. I know it will be a great afternoon of fun for all the family.
Friday 9th June 2023
I enjoyed watching the Britain’s Got Talent Final last Sunday evening and in particular watching Mussa Motha the 27 year old South African dancer who lost his leg following a cancer diagnosis. His performance was truly inspirational, and I think we can all learn something from his sheer drive and determination. His dream was to become a professional football player and although he continued to play football following his amputation, he soon developed a new passion for dance. He was the focus of my assembly on Monday. The children enjoyed learning about his story and reflected on how he had demonstrated all of our school values and superhero qualities at St Peter’s 2-8. If you missed Musa’s performance, you can watch it by clicking here. This half term there are so many events happening at St Peter’s 2-8. Please keep an eye on the diary on the front page of the newsletter and the school diary for dates and times.
One large event at school is Clif-fest on Sunday 25th June, which is our summer fair. There will be so many events for the children to enjoy and many things for parents also. Clif-fest takes place in the school grounds and is open from 12.00 noon, finishing around 3.00pm. The St
currently teaching at Huntington Primary School and is really looking forward to joining the school and getting to know you all.
DIARY FOR WEEK COMMENCING
12th June 2023
School Council
This term Year 1 have been inspired by the themed text Emmanuel’s Dream, a true story of Emmanuel Ofosu Yeboah. This is such an inspiring story about a boy called Emmanuel who cycled an incredible four hundred miles across Ghana with only one strong leg to spread his powerful message that disability does not mean inability. Over half term the Year 1 teachers challenged the children to collectively cycle over 100 miles to raise funds for the Emmanuel Education Foundation and Sports Academy (EEFSA).
Joining Miss Alexander will be Miss Hannah Crosbie who will replace Miss Jeffrey teaching in Year 2. Hannah currently teaches at Barnard Castle School and is very excited to embrace a new challenge working at St Peter’s School. She looks forward to meeting you all at the start of the new academic year. Both Miss Alexander and Miss Crosbie will be in school for the transition afternoon on Tuesday 20th June.
Year 1 Lexia
Year 1 Ball Skills
Year 2 & 3 European Culture
Year 2 Cricket*
Year 2 Cookery
Year 3IT
Year 3 Football*
Year 1 Football*
Year 2 STEM
Year 2 Tag Rugby
Year 3 Swimming
Year 3 Tennis*
Year 2 & 3 Dance Club*
Already Year 1 have raised over £1,000. Huge thanks and congratulations to all the children in Year 1 and thank you to all parents, guardians, family members and friends for supporting their wonderful fundraising initiative.
I am delighted to confirm that following a recent recruitment process we have successfully appointed Miss Hannah Alexander, who will be teaching in Reception from September. Hannah is
As you will no doubt be aware the school announced some changes to the leadership team from September. I know this may have left some parents feeling anxious and you may have one or two questions as a result of this news. Please feel free to contact me by email or catch either myself or Mrs Clarke at morning drop off should you wish to speak to us about the changes. While I will be extremely sad to move away from St Peter’s 2-8, I am confident that the school is in very capable hands with Mrs Clarke. I’m really looking forward to starting the new academic year with St Peter’s 8-13, where Mr Falconer has been a fabulous Head for the past 18 years and I look forward to building on all that Mr Falconer has developed ensuring that St Peter’s 2-18 remains one of the country’s leading schools.
I hope everyone has a restful weekend and enjoys the sunshine we have all been promised.
With good wishes
Year 1 Construction (cancelled)
Year 1 Yoga*
Year 1 Cricket*
Year 2 & 3 Choir (cancelled)
Year 1 Board Games (cancelled)
Year 1 Let’s get Moving
Year 2 Tennis*
Year 2 Art
Year 3 Athletics
Year 3 Environment
Year 1 Wellbeing Outdoors
Year 1 Street Dance*
Year 2 Football*
Year 2 Bat & Ball Skills
Year 3 Board Games
Year 2 & 3 Film
Year 3 Cricket*
• Tatiana (RC)
• Zoe (RP)
PE AWARD
• All of Year 3 for Cricket Workshop
• Evelyn (1A)
• Arthur (2J)
• Zoe (RP)
• Everyone in (RJ)
• Ariella (RC)
• Hector (RP)
• Isabelle, India, Siri, Lily & Olivia (RJ)
• Erin & Evelyn (1A)
• Thomas (1E)
• Aria (1C)
• Irwin (2H)
• India (2J)
• Bertie, Lucas & JoJo (2P)
• Sophie (3C)
• Giorgio (3M)
• Dylan & Adele (3S)
• Annora (RC)
• Tom (RP)
• Ted (RJ)
• All of (1A)
• All of (1E)
• Heidi (1C)
• Leonard (2H)
• Oscar (2J)
• William (2P)
• Dilarum (3C)
• Charlotte (3M)
• Bella (3S)
School Council decided their happiness pathway to the dining room needed tidying up so on Monday evening they re-planted the pots and made some new well-being tiles to make everyone smile on their way past.
I hope you agree that it looks beautiful! Well done Council.
On Tuesday we had an extremely exciting afternoon, with Year 3 going to Yarm Prep School.
All the children and staff were extremely excited and the afternoon did not disappoint! It was brilliant to see everyone socialising with the children from Yarm Prep School and making some new friends.
The children all worked extremely hard during the workshop, improving their cricket skills with drills which focused on bowling, batting, fielding and alongside some mini matches.
After a busy hour, the children were rewarded with a chocolate chip cookie, which they very much deserved! We were all very proud of how everyone represented St Peter’s 2-8.
Teachers from Yarm were very complimentary of our children’s manners. Well done Year 3, you were all superstars!
The Acorns have been discovering mini beasts this week. Did you know there is such a wonderful world to explore through a magnifying glass? The little Acrons used the magnifying glasses to hunt for the many mini beasts hiding in our classroom.
At Forest School this week, we also discovered many little creatures in their natural environment, under old logs and among the fallen leaves. We also enjoyed creating a beautiful picture of a mini beast habitat using natural objects.
This week the Acorns could experience making little mini beast sculptures out of air-drying clay. They were rolling, stretching, pulling, and poking the clay with little sticks to create their art works.
This has been so good for their fine motor skills, and it was a new malleable experience
Gross motor skills were also developed during the fun obstacle course that Mrs Ferguson set up for the Acorns. It was such a fun challenge to follow the course, climbing over, balancing, and hanging from monkey bars. Many of the Acorns wanted to do the course again and again and much laughter was heard as they patiently waited their turn, watched each other climb over the obstacles and challenged themselves to give it a go. They were all so eager and courageous.
What an enjoyable and fun filled week it has been.
Swinging on our new monkey bars, planting our very special sound seeds, fishing for numbers and finding out where in the world we have been during the half term can only mean one thing .....
We are back at Nursery! Yeyyyy!
The sun arrived in Reception this week in the form of books, stories and activities all about sunflowers!
The children have loved creating their own beautiful sunflower artwork using a range of different media and techniques, we are so impressed with the wonderful artists they are becoming. Our reception children are brilliant at sharing in their play and now are fabulous at sharing in their maths investigations!
During the week we have read stories all about sharing such as 'Bean Thirteen' and then investigated different ways of sharing which has involved comparing odd and even numbers and what happens when we share between two, three or more. In our phonics learning children have been enjoying their daily writing on a curious image which provokes lots of discussion and story ideas, consolidating their recognition of phase 4 tricky words and reading and writing phase 4 words in a range of fun, practical games and activities.
In our rotation of literacy lessons this week RJ has been trying to capture and communicate with the dastardly 'Evil Pea', RP has been using their mapping skills and writing in response to Rosie's Walk and RC have been writing instructions linked to our sunflower planting activities.
In Forest School this week RC had an amazing practical Forest School workshop with the amazing Mr Tickle! They learnt all about survival skills, tools which can be used in the Forest, how to build a campfire and how to make a shelter. RJ and RP will be having their workshops in the upcoming weeks.
As always so much of the learning that happens in Reception is 'in the moment' and the children never fail to amaze and inspire us with the creativity, confidence and joy that they show in their play!
What a fantastic first week back we have had in Year One! We cannot believe that we are in our last term already! Where has that time gone!
First of all, we must say a big thank you and well done to all of the Year One children who took part in our sponsored bike ride over the half term holiday to raise money for Emmanuel's Dream charity. The resilience, teamwork and hard effort that you have all shown has been incredible!
We set the children a challenge to try and cycle the same 400 miles as Emmanuel did and the results are in…….…
And we raised a total of £1 104.30 and the children covered 427 miles!
Also this week, the year one children have been busy with clay! We have been researching into Picasso and his abstract art linking to our key text Invisible and the emotions behind this. We discovered ways to attach the clay correctly and made some incredible, emotive faces! We can't wait to show you them!
In the forest we have putting our measuring skills to test as we took part in mini teams to measure the circumference of many different trees - some in which took more team work to get around than others!
We have began to draft and think about the start of our very own Little People, Big Dreams book based upon ourselves, our past and our hopes and dreams for the future. We have spent lots of time using adjectives to describe our personalities and how are as little people. After this, the children drew the most wonderful self-portraits on themselves in the style of the illustrator Mikyo Noah (the illustrator of little People, Big Dreams books). They were truly magnificent! We can’t wait to build and write these books over the next few weeks!
We kicked off the final half term exploring this new country. The children filled in maps of China with pictures representing the country’s landmarks and traditions. We have enjoyed reading the Chinese traditional tale ‘The Willow Pattern Story’ and learning the meaning behind the designs of these beautiful ceramic paintings. The children have been retelling the story in parts, focusing on the use of story language, adjectives, adverbs and conjunctions.
In art, Year 2 created their own willow pattern inspired plates, focusing closely on drawing key elements from the story. We had a great morning at Forest School; the children made ink using charcoal from the campfire and pens using bamboo which they then used to write Chinese calligraphy. We looked at how to write Chinese numbers and the patterns of these. The children have enjoyed activities inspired by our latest country such as origami, learning to draw pandas and making Chinese dragons.
The children have been learning a new concept in maths this week, column addition! They have really enjoyed learning this new strategy and have been eager to take on the challenges of carrying tens and solve problems with three digit numbers. We have been revising times tables and practising quick recall of addition facts.
We can’t wait to delve deeper into this country next week when we start looking at the Terracotta Army!
Whatanexploratoryweekithasbeenin Year3thisweek! Ourlearninghasbeen centredaroundtheMummificationprocess andinparticular,thepreservation techniques!
Webegantheweekbylookingatthe processofmummificationpayingclose attentiontoeachofthestepsandwhythey wereimportanttotheancientEgyptians. Wediscoveredthattheyusedtoleavethe bodytodryoutfor40-50daysbefore packingitwithsawdusttokeeptheshape. Wethenenjoyedourownwrappingofour verytrustingvolunteerstomaketheminto ourveryownmummies!Havinggaineda goodunderstandingofhowtheprocesswas conductedwethenbeganinvestigating whatwecouldusetopreserveandcreate ourownmummifiedapples!Toachievethe bestresults,wetriedoutsomedifferent solutionsbeforeembarkingonourown experiments.Inadditiontothis,wemade decorativemummycases.
Nextweekwewillbecontinuingour investigationsintotheafterlife.
InMathswehavebeengettingtogripswith money,countingpoundsandpence, convertingmoneyandadding.
Weareextremelyexcitedandareverymuch lookingforwardtoourtriptoLondonand theBritishMuseumnextweek.
We are very grateful for your support and any time you can give.
Donations Collection dates
Jolly jars – more guidance next week!
Monday 19 – Friday 23 June Cakes & bakes ON THE DAY!
Thank you for the generous bottle and book donations so far!
Bag2School – Collection dates Wednesday 14, Thursday 15, Friday 16 June – at morning drop off
We’ll happily take your unwanted clothing, soft toys, shoes, accessories and linens! Please see the attached poster for more details on what can be included. Please bag your items (any tied bag is fine – a bin liner is perfect) and bring your bags to the sign-posted collection point outside the Estates office on 14th, 15th or 16th of June. Thank you for your support!
Nearly
The Summer Nearly New Uniform sale will be held on Tuesday 20 June, 3-3.45pm in the school dining room. Cash or cheque only. Any donations welcome on Friday 16 & Monday 19 June.
Dates for your diary:
❖ 14-16th June – Bag2School clothing donations and collection
❖ 20th June - Nearly New Uniform sale – including STP 8-13 uniform
❖ 25 June – ‘Clif Fest’ the STP 2-8 Summer Fair (all the family!)
Wednesday 14th, Thursday 15th, Friday 16th June 2023
Bring in your bags of unwanted items and raise money for the school charity and FOSP!
YES to all of these:-
• Clothes
• Handbags
• Belts
• Curtains
• Paired shoes (tied)
• Socks and tights
• Scarves and Ties
• Household Linen
• Jewellery
• Hats
• Lingerie
• Towels
• Bed Linen (But NOT Duvets, blankets, pillows or cushions)
X NO to all of these:-
• Duvets, blankets, pillows and cushions
• Carpets, rugs and mats
• SCHOOL UNIFORMS
• Textile off-cuts
• Soiled, painted, ripped or wet clothing
• Corporate clothing
• Toys & Books
If you would like to know more about Bag2School and where your items go once they have been collected, please visit https://bag2school.com/blog/where-do-the-textiles-go
