Newsletter Week 11

Registered Charity No: 1141329

how to improve and most importantly develops lifelong friendships. The children loved this experience, thank you to Miss Flockhart for organising the sport fixture and to all the Year 3 staff who accompanied the children.

Christmas has started and the school has taken a very festive turn this week on Monday morning Christmas trees arrived, and thanks to the grounds teams they were quickly placed around school for everyone to enjoy. My huge thanks to Graham Hopwood from Facilities who once again diligently took his time in placing the lights that now adorn the outside tree. I’m sure you will agree he has done a super job and the tree now looks wonderful in the low light of the mornings and evenings. The tree in the reception area has once again been beautifully decorated by the Acorn children, who thoroughly enjoyed placing baubles on ‘and off’ the tree numerous times before deciding upon the perfect location! They really have done an amazing job.

On Tuesday Year 3 visited Yarm Preparatory School for a Sport workshop. They played hockey and tag rugby, and all had a wonderful time, despite the cold weather! It was great to hear that the children had all tried hard and represented their school impeccably. Physical literacy and team games play an essential part in a child’s development. The opportunity allows children to develop fundamental movement skills, creates a culture of physical activity, develops collaborative skills working in teams, fosters resilience, provides opportunity to make mistakes, reflect and plan

York Minster are holding a Christmas Tree Festival from 3rd December to 5th January. There are over 40 trees on display which have been decorated by schools, organisations, and businesses from all over York. We have decorated a tree for the festival with some beautiful angels made by Year 2. Thank you to the children from Year 3, Miss murray and Miss Collins who helped place the angels on the tree in the Minster. You might like to go and visit the festival and see if you can spot our St Peter’s 2 8 tree (number 22)!

Today the Year 2 children have held a Greek themed day. They have had a wonderful time dressing in chiton’s, eating a feast of olives, feta and pitta, dancing the zorba and enjoying the biscuits that they baked in the kitchen at 8 13 yesterday. A number of VIP invited guests also joined in the fun including Aga from the dining room, Mr Hall from 13 18, Mr Walker who I’m told cleared his diary for such a prestigious invitation and myself, it really was the perfect end to a very busy week!

Yesterday afternoon the children from Year 3 ventured across the city to the Grand Opera House to watch Nativity, The Musical. It was a brilliant performance and included one of our Year 3 pupils, Issy, who has a passion for drama. Well done Issy, we are all so proud of your performance and thoroughly enjoyed the production.

St Peter’s 2 8 Friends have organised and are supporting many events over the next few weeks. These include Wreath Making workshops on Friday evening and Saturday morning, led Kathrine Armstrong Bisson of Fleur Adamo. Tuck shops for the children to indulge during our charity film evenings which will be held on 12th December for Year 2 and Year 3 and 13th December for Reception and Year 1. Plus there is a pop up café to look forward to on Thursday 15th December, after drop off, as part of our Christmas Celebration Day.

Thank you all for the incredible donations you have been making toward our charity pyjama and teddy collection for Zarack. We have been truly overwhelmed by the generosity of the St Peter’s School community. This morning Mrs Clarke has emptied the collection bins as they were overflowing, and all items are now safely bagged up and have been stored ready to go to Leeds at the end of next week. Please do continue to bring items in as Mrs Clarke still has plenty of space left in her car for any further donations you would like to make.

I am so looking forward to watching the Christmas performances next week, I know how hard the children and staff have worked to prepare for them. It will be a very busy week and on page 2 of the newsletter we have put all the information that you will need, for the next two weeks. If you require any further information, please contact the school office schooloffice2 8@stpetersyork.org.uk

Have a lovely weekend.

MINSTER

TREE FESTIVAL AT THE

Thank you for the generous donations of pjs, cuddly toys and toys. There have been SO many that Mrs Clarke has had to empty the tubs to make room for more!

It's wonderful to know that on Christmas morning so many children will have a new snuggly pair of pjs and a toy to open which will brighten their Christmas.

Mrs Clarke will be dropping all of the pjs and toys to the charity in Leeds on Saturday 10th December.

If you still have pjs and toys to donate please pop them in your house box!

Trophy

MONK

Year 3 Children Music Award Notice Board PE Award

Ben(1A) Bertie (2P)

Value Champions

• Oscar (RC)

• Siri (RJ)

• Tom (RP)

• Thomas (1A)

• Heidi (1C)

• Frank (1E)

Learning Superheroes

• Tatiana RC)

• Winne, Zach, Lily (RJ)

• Amelie (RP)

• Evelyn (1A)

• Poppy (1C)

• Andrea (1E)

• Nate (2H)

• Whole Class(2J) • Ellie (2P) • Izzy (3C) • Afir (3M) • Freya (3S)

• Rafferty (2H)

• Amelia (2J)

• Hugh C (2P)

• Whole Class (3C)

• Whole Class (3M)

• Roz (3S)

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

In the misty, cold fog Year 3 visited Yarm this week. After the much anticipated excitement of the coach trip, the boys and girls parted ways for their hockey and tag rugby experience. The girls took part in a hockey carousel, it was fantastic to see both schools partner up and work together to complete each activity. From stick drills to spatial awareness on the pitch, both parties reported there was a huge amount of talent on display. The children themselves loved the activities but seemed to enjoy making friends with the Yarm students more!

On the rugby front, the boys strapped up their boots and, more importantly, zipped up their coats for a chilly afternoon of tag rugby. Despite the conditions, both sets of boys were in high morale. There was an emphasis of gamesmanship within the tag rugby tasks, as the boys enjoyed two games of tag rugby and competitive activities kindly led by Miss Murray. As the afternoon went on cold fingers led to more dropped balls, but the smiles remained the same. It was a truly promising and exciting display of the hard work during tag rugby term here at St Peter’s 2 8. A massive thank you is to be given to Miss Flockhart for her seamless planning and support. The Year 3 staff were as enthusiastic as always and were a massive help in making the trip a success. And, lastly, a huge thank you to Yarm for hosting us, the chocolate chip cookies were a hit!

Acorns

The Acorns are gearing up for the mums and dads to come and see the filmed Nativity next week. All the final touches have been made and we do hope you will enjoy the finished product. We went for a very cold winter walk making sure we had hats, scarves and gloves on. York Bid have placed their large grassed animals behind the art gallery for the public to see. And so the Acorns had fun playing on the animals. We ended our time with a warm chocolate drink on the picnic benches before heading back to school. There is glitter and sparkle all around and we are getting into the Christmas spirit as each day passes. Our advent calendar was opened for the first time this week and there is much excitement to see who will have the next chocolate! The Acorns were given a very special job this weekwe decorated the Christmas tree in the office! Have a look next time you are in school. We hope you have a lovely weekend.

Who can see the Elf in the Tree?

RECEPTION

Christmas has arrived in Reception, and we have welcomed 3 little elves into the setting! Our classrooms are full of decorations and there’s even an elves workshop for the children to play in. The elves will be here to join in with all our Christmas fun and may even surprise us with some yummy treats! Our nativity rehearsals are in full swing, and we are so excited to perform next week for all the mummies and daddies! We have worked so hard to learn the dance moves, the signs and actions for the songs as well as acting on stage. We’ve have been toasting marshmallows down at Forest School and playing with our friends on the swings and in the dens. Throughout the week we have been looking at 4 sided shapes in maths and have explored the work on Piet Mondrian. There has been Lego building, cutting and sticking and painting as we have investigated squares and rectangles. We can’t wait to show you all our Christmas fun in the classrooms and look forward to performing our Nativity next week!

YEAR 1

What an incredibly busy week we have had yet again in Year 1!

Wehave had some exciting trips down to St Peter's 8 13 this week to practice our Christmas Performance. Our teachers were so proud of our beautiful singing and how we projected our voices on a big stage!

We have also been busy practicing all of the writing skills we have learnt this term in a Christmas story about seeing Father Christmas for the first time. It was incredible to read the amazing adjectives that were included! It was so wonderful to see such writing stamina in Year 1, we are so proud of each and every one of you!

As we reach the end of a fantastic first term, we have been preparing for our Greek Feast finale! We had a wonderful afternoon at 8 13 on Thursday, baking delicious honey biscuits. The children really impressed us with their collaborative skills, careful measuring of the ingredients and reading skills when using the recipe. We wrote invitations to the teachers around school so we hope to have a good attendance for some dancing! Year 2 have also been busy making accessories for the party including golden crowns and Greek patterned bracelets.

YEAR 2

We felt like true actors and actresses this week after our official rehearsals on the big stage and this helped the children really get into character. We can’t stop singing the Christmas play songs and we are so excited to perform to the grown ups next week. We are feeling very festive after making Christmas tree decorations to go on display in York Minster as part of the Christmas Tree Festival.

It has been another busy and exciting week in Year 3. We are continuing to rehearse for our Christmas performance of ‘Aladdin Trouble’. The children are working hard to remember stage directions, props and cues, it’s all coming together nicely, and we are looking forward to showcasing it next week. We enjoyed our trip to Yarm on Tuesday for an afternoon of sport. We enjoyed participating in tag rugby and hockey skills workshops, making some new friends and although a little chilly we had an excellent afternoon. We have continued to read our text ‘George’s Secret Key to the Universe’ in class and followed the main characters into outer space. We have had fun creating own additional characters and describing them. In Maths we have been carrying out problem solving and reasoning challenges using our knowledge of the column method for addition and subtraction. The children have demonstrated resilience and independence when persevering to solve their challenges. We thoroughly enjoyed our trip to the Grand Opera House in York on Thursday to watch Nativity the Musical. This really got us all in the festive spirit!

Next week we are all super excited to be performing our Christmas play to an audience! Looking forward to seeing you all there. Have a lovely weekend everyone!