Newsletter Week 7

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What a remarkable half term it has been at St Peter’s 2 8, I can’t believe that we have already reached the half term break. The children have had a brilliant start to the academic year, and I am delighted to see how well they have all settled into the rhythms and routines of school. The progress they have made has been clear for all to see, and it is never more evident than when in the classroom witnessing the sheer enjoyment they are having from their daily learning. On Monday the School council led an assembly on recycling. All members of school council contributed to the assembly and explained the importance of recycling and how we can all play our part at school and at home. They also put together this short powerpoint for the school to watch. Thanks to Mrs Franey and Mrs Clarke who facilitated such a wonderful start to the week.This week it has been incredibly busy with so much going on at school. On Monday morning the St Peter’s 2 8 Friends organised the St Peter’s 2 8 Bake Off. The entries from Nursery through to Year 3 were amazing. Later in the newsletter you will see many designs and I was delighted to award the winners in each year group in assembly this morning. Well done to everyone who took part baking such a variety of wonderful cakes and biscuits. A huge thank you must go to the army of judges who had the very difficult task of selecting winners and runners up. It was such a lovely event, thank you to the St Peter’s 2 8 Friends for their organisation and coordination. This week Miss Flockhart and Mr Lomax

organised our first co educational House Tag Rugby Tournaments. On Monday the Year 3 children were divided into 12 House teams then on Tuesday the Year 2 children were divided up the same way. All teams played 6 matches and Miss Flockhart (using her algorithm) worked out the winning House. In Year 2 the winning House was Walmgate and in Year 3 the winning House was Monk. In assembly today the overall winners, Micklegate were presented the trophy. Well done. Thank you to the parents who came to watch, the staff who supported the events and to Miss Flockhart and Mr Lomax for organising such an enjoyable sporting event for the children to take part in. This week we had our first music concerts of the year. Year 2 performed on Monday and Year 3 performed on Tuesday afternoon. The Year 2 / Year 3 choir performed at the start of the concert singing songs that they have learned throughout the term, many of them in many parts. Children amazed me by how talented they were. They performed on a range of musical instruments including recorders, violins, cello, guitar, clarinets and piano? Well done to all the children for performing to a large audience of parents. They were brilliant and so brave as many of them performed for the very first time. Thank you to the parents who attended, the peripatetic music teachers who prepared the children and to Mrs Clarke for her continued support with the choir and of course not forgetting Mrs Hayden, who once again pulled the whole event together. Brilliant! On Thursday, I was fortunate to be invited on the Year 3 trip to The Life Centre in Newcastle. We all had such a brilliant time travelling from York by train. While there we learned about space, investigating what it is like to spend 6 months on the International Space Station by taking part in a range of experiments based on the skills astronauts need when they are living in space. We also watched

Friday 21st October 2022

a fascinating film in the Planetarium where we explored the question, ‘Are we alone in this world?’ Huge thanks to the year 3 children who were a pleasure to be with and excellent ambassadors for our school throughout the day. I could not have been more proud. Thanks also to all the staff who accompanied the trip and to Miss Murray who organised such a brilliant day out for the children. Last Saturday’s Open Day was a huge success with 65 families visiting St Peter’s 2 8 and 90 families overall who visited both St Peter’s 2 8 and St Peter’s 8 13. They were all hugely impressed with our school and the learning that is taking place across the school. Thank you to all the support staff and teaching staff who gave their time on the morning and made the necessary preparations in the lead up to the event. As I mentioned last week in the newsletter, we sent a cheque for £7000 to last year’s school charity. This year the children have nominated a number of charities and we have chosen to support two. Zarack, who are committed to helping children and families living in poverty crisis and and Hearing Dogs for Deaf People, who train dogs to alert deaf people to important life saving sounds they would otherwise miss. There has been so much packed into this half term, and I am extremely grateful for the incredible work of the staff team across St Peter’s 2 8. All staff create such a vibrant and exciting environment for the children to learn and everyone in the school community teaching staff, support staff, estates staff, catering staff and parents make valuable contributions which are appreciated. Collaboratively these contributions set the foundations that make St Peter’s the fabulous school and community we can all enjoy and thrive in. Wishing you all a wonderful half term break. With best wishes

Harvest Collection for York Foodbank

The Foodbank delivery went well on Wednesday and Adam at York Foodbankwas extremely grateful for all the donations that had been given by Peters 2 8. The children learned how the food is stored, sorted, and delivered. They were able to help Adam by sorting the food into crates, which was a huge job for one person! Thank you to Graham Hopwood and Mrs Walters for organising.

Monday morning brought the return of Inter house Tag Rugby. The gorgeous, sunny morning clearly motivated the children to put on a spectacular show for parents and their class teachers. The skills on display were certainly above their age grade and it was fantastic to see this in a game setting played in such high spirit. This term, Year 3 have enjoyed a double games lesson which has allowed them to spend more time learning skills, practicing core values and, most importantly, spending longer outside! Parents and teachers alike both commented on the effect this extended lesson has had on the children’s sporting performances.

Another glorious morning on Tuesday, saw Year 2 compete in their Inter house Tag Rugby tournament. Their high energy and enthusiasm ensured a thrilling 6 games of rugby. The children persevered all morning showing great sporting values to deliver another morning of high-level sport. A key focus was around endurance, a skill we work on throughout PE, which the children embraced whole heartedly. It was fantastic to see the children so muddy! In both tournaments, the St. Peter’s Sports Graduates joined the children on the 1st XV Rugby pitch, for this we are very thankful. Another thank you is needed for the class teachers and teaching assistants of both year groups for being so helpful and playing the most important role of them all, class motivator! And, lastly, to you the parents a massive thank you is needed for all your ongoing support. The children certainly love putting on a performance for you!

Education

Musical Notes: We have a had a very busy term in music culminating in two fabulous concerts for our Year 2 and 3 children earlier this week. It was lovely to hear how the children have been getting on in their instrumental lessons and a good opportunity for them to perform to their families. It is quite nerve-wracking performing in front of a live audience, the children were all amazing and didn't let their jitters show. The choir sang in both concerts, they have worked so hard this term and were able to sing confidently in harmony in all of their songs! We had two new groups performing on Tuesday, our Year 3 Ukulele group and Mrs Haley's string group. It was great to hear the children playing together developing their ensemble skills. A huge thank you to all our visiting music teachers who work so hard with all our instrumentalists. What a talented bunch of children we have at 2 8!

ACORNS

The Acorns have loved setting up picnics in Nursery and so we thought the best thing to do was to take them all on a real picnic. The weather was stunning and so we set off to Museum Gardens with our pack packs and snacks. We enjoyed a lovely morning climbing trees and jumping off logs. We saw some squirrels too! We have been very grateful for all the contributions of food that have been given for York Food bank. The Acorns played a part and helped us pack all the food into crates ready for delivery. They were little superstars. We have put our baking skills into practice and, not only did we view the delicious and stunning creations made for the Clifton Bake Off, but we made our very own ginger bread biscuits. The eyes and buttons were strategically placed by the children! We have enjoyed being outside in the sunshine as well as playing inside with our friends. Threading has been a new skill we are learning too. We hope you all have a lovely half term break.

It's been another jam packed week in Conkers. Halloween has been in full swing, catching spooky spiders with tweezers, having our own Halloween parties in the home corner and we've even been trick or treating! We finally made it all the way to Forest school and had a fabulous time exploring the area. The 'Conkers Mouth Gym sessions' have also been super popular, strengthening our mouth muscles to help us develop into bigger, better and stronger chatterboxes!! We all hope you have a lovely relaxing half term!

Reception have had a wonderful final week of this half term - we are over the moon at how well they have settled into Reception life and the way they embrace learning through play. Our phonics lessons this week have had a distinctly spooky feel with lots of ghosts appearing outside - the children became ghostbusters reading words in order to blast the ghosts with our waterblasters! We have also had some amazing spooky bubbling potions brewing outside and Halloween plays being created on the stage! RC were the first Reception class to venture to see the Ghosts in the Garden in the Museum Gardens. This is an incredible exhibition with 25 ghosts to find in and around the area! We definitely recommend you making the journey there before 7th November if you can! In maths we have been busy learning how to write the numbers 1,2,3 and playing games which build our understanding of these numbers such as noughts and crosses and reading and acting out children's favourites such as 'the three little pigs' and 'Goldilocks and the 3 bears'. As always we have been inspired and delighted by the play of the children which brims over with imagination, creativity and joy! We look forward to seeing you all in November have a wonderful two weeks!

A brilliant final week of this half-term in Year One. We are so incredibly proud of all the children and the progress they have made so far! We can't quite believe that we have been back at school for 7 weeks already. The children have been super story tellers this week and have drawn fantastic story maps to re tell the story start of our key text, 'Journey to the River Sea'. I wonder if they can re tell it at home too?

We have been superstar writers this week too and the children have been brilliant at using the Year 1 checklist to help them check their work for capital letters, full stops, pencil grip, reading it back and finger spaces. Well done Year One!

The children have continued to explore the rainforest and all it has to offer, we have been drawing detailed pictures of animals, sharing pictures from the children's travels, building rainforest habitats, making fact books, and watching videos.

We hope you all have a restful and fun half term, and we are looking forward to a jam packed Christmas half term get ready!

This week in Year 2 we have been continuing our magical, mythical creature project and have been busy creating a new 13th Labour for Hercules! We have explored how to plan a story and used a story mountain to help us structure and map out our ideas! We came up with some great settings for our stories, from spooky, eerie graveyards to haunted, abandoned caves! In maths, we have been continuing our addition topic by using our place value knowledge to add and subtract 1 and 10 from any number! In Science, we have seen the revolting results of our hygiene investigation and it has made us think more about how well we are washing our hands! We noticed that the most bacteria grew on the bread rubbed on an iPad! This got us thinking and we have asked Mr Hardy if each class can have some iPad cleaning wipes to clean the screens more regularly! At Forest School we were celebrating all things spooky! The children had a fantastic time finding pumpkins to carve and chop up for our pumpkin soup! It was delicious and despite the torrential downpour, the children and staff all had the best time! We managed to keep the fire lit, used knives for carving and built dens to shelter us from the rain! What a wonderful way to end our half term!

We wish you all a happy half term and we can't wait to see where our topic takes us next!

This week's Year 3 news has been written by Annabel, George, Grace, Mathilda and Olivia.

What an exciting busy week we have had in Year 3! We had great fun at our inter-house rugby tournament on Monday and showcased our musical talents in our concert on Tuesday afternoon. On Wednesday, we participated in a fantastic dance workshop about the importance of looking after our planet during our drama session, and Thursday saw us travelling by train to the Life Centre in Newcastle.

The Life Centre is a science village where people work together to promote the advancements of the life sciences. It is full of amazing exhibits, and the one about space and our solar system was awesome. We experienced what life was like in Mission Control and on the international space station, and we learnt so many fascinating facts! Did you know that when you cry in space your tears gather to form a huge bubble of water in or next to your eye?! We watched a fantastic video demonstration of this by an astronaut in the space station!

Our day was full of amazing activities, shows and workshops too. During the space survival workshop, we found out that solar panels are used to create the electricity on the space station and that robots are used to fix them when they do not work. We put ourselves in the shoes of the space crew and used robot arms to fix some broken solar panels on our model space stations! We also tasted dehydrated strawberries, a popular snack whilst in space. We also had fun exploring how astronauts cope without going to the toilet for over 11 hours whilst completing their space walks in their huge space suits (they use space nappies called MAGs, if you are interested!)

Another of the many highlights from the day was the science theatre show and our visit to the planetarium. We loved listening to the stories and watching amazing science demonstrations, including a sparkler spinning round on a drill! In the planetarium, we watched a spectacular film all about life on earth and how scientists are looking for life on other planets in our solar system and beyond.

It was a wonderful day and a fabulous finish to the first half of the Christmas term!