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number of children who have had the confidence to volunteer to participate in these concerts, which parents and grandparents will be able to watch via our live streaming platform, Planet eStream. Further details will be circulated closer to the time. I also had the pleasure of hearing the Year 3 Ukulele group too; what talented children! The Year 3 children have been reading ‘The Boy who Biked the World’ about Even in childhood Chloe Zhao was Alistair Humphreys’ adventure cycling endlessly curious and determined, from the UK to Africa. This week Year 3 according to staff at her school. The have reached France and have been Chinese born director whose victory at learning and experiencing all there is to the Academy Awards on Sunday made know about France. They have baked the her only the second woman to win a Best most delicious baguettes, created Director Oscar for and the first who was amazing artwork inspired by Paul non-white. Chloe learnt to speak English Cezanne, learned how to speak to each whilst at Brighton College. The quality other in French and explored famous that the staff at her school remember landmarks in France using their brilliant about her was that she was incessantly iPads skills. curious. She always wanted to know why things were done in a certain way. I was delighted to read of her achievement and her natural instinct to be endlessly curious and have a creative, enquiring mind. This philosophy is what we are trying to instil and foster in our children at St Peter’s 2-8. Having an enquiring mind and creativity is at the core of our learning as we actively encourage the children to continually ask questions, questioning their learning using the qualities and super powers of our Learning Superheroes. This week at St Peter’s 2-8 has been full of adventure and excitement. The children have developed their curiosity When visiting Year 1 classrooms this experiencing a tremendous amount of week, I thoroughly enjoyed the children learning opportunities in and outside the showing me how to make a Red Thai classroom. chilli paste from scratch. It was delicious It has been wonderful listening to the (look out Jamie Oliver). They have also Year 2 and Year 3 choirs practising for been experts in learning how to use IT to informal music concerts just before half further their learning. They were term. I know Mrs Hayden has a record accessing films through QR codes around
Newsletter No: 25 Friday, 30th April 2021 the classroom. Year 1 have also written letters to children in Bali to ask questions and find out more about their lives in Indonesia. We have been put in touch with the children by the Bali Children’s Foundation, an educational charity that Year 1 hope to raise money for later in the term. Year 2 have been exploring their senses this week, tasting exotic fruit and comparing what they saw, heard and felt when transported into a rainforest and our own forest school. They started reading ‘Into the Jungle’ by Katherine Rundell and explored paintings by Henri Rousseau. It has been lovely to see how the Reception children have been transported around the world with their backpack adventures. They visited their special places from Indonesia to Saffron Walden and everywhere in between. It has been a brilliant week and it’s all the hard work of the whole school focusing on these kind of learning experiences that has led to the school being shortlisted for the TES School of the Year Award, and whatever happens at the award ceremony this evening I would like to take the opportunity to thank the wonderful children, outstanding staff and supportive parents for all they do to make our school such a special place for everyone. I hope you have a relaxing weekend and look forward to another exciting week on Monday. With my best wishes,
Notice Board HEADLICE Unfortunately we have cases of headlice in Acorns and Year 2. Please check your child (ren)’s head(s) and treat accordingly. https:// www.nhs.uk/ conditions/headlice-and-nits/
LOST PROPERTY A Didriksons navy mac with a peaked hood went missing at the Easter holiday camp– please keep an eye out and return it to the school office if you find it.
MUSICAL NOTES It’s been another busy week in Music! Reception have had all the instruments out of the cupboard! They have been exploring sound and matching sounds to the different characters in our Hairy Scary Castle Story. They have worked so hard but had lots of fun at the same time.
Year 1 have completely wowed me this week. We have continued to find out more information about the pentatonic scale, they were able to sing the notes just by following me moving up and down on our imaginary floor piano. We were inspired by this video by Bobby McFerrin https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne6tB2KiZuk. Interestingly a large number of our children sang the missing note just like the audience in the film! Year 2 and 3 are continuing their African adventure learning about traditional West African instruments. One of their favourite instruments was the Kalimba, a thumb piano! The year 2 and 3 choirs have been in great voice this week, working hard for the end of half term concerts. Finally, it was very exciting on Wednesday afternoon to have the return of our Year 3 Ukulele club. The children very quickly were able to play the chord C so we could sing a couple of songs together after only a few minutes on the instrument!
house points trophy
Notice Board learning superheroes •Thomas B (RA) •Japji S (RC)
•Bella D (1C) •Ciara R (1E) •Seth B (1E) •Rosie T (1J) •Bea C (2H) •Lottie W (2J)
•Mary-Jane R (3C) •Noah A (3M)
MICKLEGATE
•Guy B (3S)
value champions •All of RA
•Sasha N (1E)
•Arthur P (3C)
•All of RC
•Kate E (1J)
•Rafe L (3M)
•Izzy J (1C)
•Norman N (2H)
•Imogen E (3S)
•Tamsin A (2J)
PE award
Music award
•Liam G (3S)
•Drishya D (1C)
•Harriet R (1E)
•Thomas C-S (1C)
Year 2 have been working extremely hard in their PE lessons this week! In their Core PE lessons, they have been doing Athletics, paying close attention to the skill of jumping. The children explored the different techniques they could use to jump over obstacles of varying heights and widths. After exploring the different techniques which they could use, the children discussed which techniques were the most effective for navigating each style of objects, deciding that a hurdle style jump with a lead leg was the most effective for the taller objects. After practicing this technique on the various objects, the children had a go at jumping over a series
of hurdles, before completing a hurdle relay. Most of the children were able to clear the hurdles successfully, which was very impressive! Well done! In their Games lessons this week, the children continued to develop their striking and fielding skills. They first learned the correct technique with which to bowl a ball underarm, ensuring they stepped forward when releasing the ball to increase the power of the throw. Once they were able to perform an accurate and powerful underarm throw, the children aimed to use a tennis racket to return a ball thrown to them by a partner. All the children were able to
remember the correct grip to use when holding a tennis racket and displayed excellent concentration when attempting to hit the ball back to their partners. Excellent job year 2, we are very proud!
PE
PE
ACORNS
What a fantastic week it has been! Our little Acorns had a big adventure on Wednesday, visiting the school's tractor yard! Just look at us all exploring the different parts of the vehicles with the help of our very kind gardener!
Oh what a lovely time we have all had in Conkers this week! We've been so busy celebrating
birthdays, playing pets, building different lands and welcoming our own real life pet Doug the dog!
CONKERS
RECEPTION
Reception have been transported around the world and back again this week as part of our backpack adventures! We have visited some of the children’s special places from Indonesia to Saffron Walden! The children have loved showing their friends photos and items from their special travel destination and we can’t wait to see where everyone else is going to take us!
In literacy this week the children have absolutely blown all our socks off! We read the story ‘Dear Zoo’ and then the children have worked so hard to re-write the story as a group, using different animals to the original. The children have then written their very own ‘Dear Zoo’ books containing butterflies that are too flappy and dogs that are too woofing!
In Forest School the children were challenged to a very special team work activity. The cheeky fairies took our ice On Tuesday, the children got t-shirt lolly treat and hung it up in the tree! The pictures and walked around campus trying children had to work together to problem to find different colours and textures to solve how they could get the treat down – decorate their t-shirt with. The children the challenge was having to get it down found beautiful flowers, brick walls and before they melted! Luckily we managed to even metal grids on the floor, which all put do it just in time and we were able to enjoy different effects on their t-shirts! We then our treats! walked along the river, waving at passing Well done Reception, another fabulous boats! week!
This week our learning has ventured in many different directions. Lots of children have been bringing things in from home to show us which has inspired our learning. In 1J they were inspired by Novem's paper handicrafts from China so we have been learning about the origin of paper and making our own using traditional methods. Lucy brought in a flower press so we have been adding our own pressed flowers to decorate the paper. In 1E, Molly has brought in so many beautiful ornaments and books about Thailand and she has kindly shared them with the rest of Year 1. We have also been busy making our new Thai curry paste recipe; a traditional red Thai curry that definitely tastes better than it smells! The children are becoming experts in
YEAR 1
learning how to use IT to further their learning; this week they have been accessing videos through QR codes. In 1C we have been building earthquakeproof structures, including hotels and houses, as well as our very own urban environments that included beaches, yoga studios and skyscrapers. We have been delving into our core text, 'The Elephants of the Tsunami' and exploring how the characters in the book would have felt when they realised a tsunami was coming. The children used a range of drama activities to explore this, including hot seating and a conscience corridor. It was wonderful to be back in forest schools this week where we enjoyed climbing, building and exploring. The children were really interested in discovering insects this week and some worked together to build a bug hotel for them. Another fabulous week in Year 1!
YEAR 1
This week in Year 2 has been a senses explosion! We have started to read another key text, ‘Into the Jungle’ by Katherine Rundell. It tells the back stories of the characters in The Jungle Book and contains some beautiful descriptive writing of equatorial habitats. We started by going to Forest School and using all our senses to record what we saw, felt, heard and touched. We didn’t do taste as we saved that for the next day, back in school! We then compared our sensory trip to our forest with the sounds of a rainforest jungle, the paintings of Rousseau, and the taste of exotic fruits! Some of us had never tried mango before, but we all tried it this week and most absolutely loved it! We used our taste experience to add to our descriptive writing, culminating in a Big Write on Friday, packed with sensory descriptions! On Art Wednesday we started beautiful cut paper collages, based on the
YEAR 2
paintings of Rousseau. Cutting out skills are so important and Mrs Hall and Miss Jeffrey were very impressed with how careful everyone was. Our lovely new member of 2H, Tom, brought us some visitors on Wednesday and we were fascinated by his stick insects! They have been pottering (mostly on Tom’s face) and seem completely unfazed by the busy classroom they have found themselves in. In maths we have continued our theme of measure, looking at weight. Lots of children in Year 2 sent us photos of their pets (or toy pets!) and their experiences weighing them. Olivia M evened weighed her lambs, which was lovely to see. As Mrs Hall says… maths is for life, not just for Christmas! Well done, Year 2! Another busy week- but great work everybody!
YEAR 3
Bonjour!
loaves of French baguettes with Miss Murray, created some incredible artwork inspired by Paul Cézanne with Mrs Salisbury and What an exciting adventure this week has carried out an exciting STEM boat challenge with Miss Collins, been. We write this newsletter piece to you looking at density and molecules within certain materials. We were all the way from Paris! We set off from the white cliffs of Dover with so impressed with our baguettes that we wrote our own recipes to Tom and after a rough ferry ride and a few days cycling, we bring home for our families to try making… you won’t be eventually made it! We have been learning all there is to know disappointed! In Maths we have been dividing numbers by 10, 100 about France, including several of their famous landmarks, famous and 1000. We have really enjoyed the challenge of understanding artists, its location, fun facts and most importantly, FOOD! After the place value of each number beyond the decimal point and have carrying out some detailed research, we created posters and been applying our knowledge to tackle tricky sums. taught each other lots of interesting and new information about the country. We have been speaking to each other in French and It has been such a wonderful week in France, but it is time to move looked at 3D maps to explore buildings close up! On Wednesday we on! Our passports have been stamped, our bags are packed and we had a carousel of exciting topic inspired activities. We baked fresh are ready to cycle on to our next destination…
House Art
Competition St Peter’s 2-8 Paint, draw or model your pet, or a pet you wish you could have and enter it into our first House Art Competition! Named entries in to Mrs Hall by 19th May with winners chosen for each house in each year group. There will be an exhibition for all entrants after the competition has closed!
!! Please note– no photographs this time! !!
COLLECTION DAY
Friday 18th June 2021 Bring in your bags of unwanted items and raise money for charity!
YES to all of these:Clothes
Paired shoes (tied)
Jewellery
Handbags
Socks and tights
Hats
Belts
Scarves and Ties
Lingerie
Curtains Bed Linen
Household Linen
Towels
(But NOT Duvets, blankets, pillows or cushions)
NO to all of these:Duvets, blankets, pillows and cushions
Textile off-cuts
Carpets, rugs and mats
Soiled, painted, ripped or wet clothing
SCHOOL UNIFORMS
Corporate clothing
Toys
COLLECTION DAYS Nursery – Monday 14th June Reception – Tuesday 15th June Year 1 – Wednesday 16th June
Year 2 – Thursday 17th June Year 3 - Friday 18th June 2021
The Collection Point for Bag2School will be behind the Nursery/ Hope House building, at the Friends of St Peters 2-8 shed.
Just follow the A-board signs, queue up at 2m intervals and use the one-way system in place, to ensure we abide by strict social distancing guidelines. If you miss your year group’s day, don’t worry, you can drop off on another day, but we are just trying to keep as socially distanced as possible.
Thank you Friends of St Peter’s 2-8