The Bulletin – Edition 23
I continue to enjoy meeting with parents to talk about their children, and how they are getting on here. We have a particular focus on meeting parents of boys in Year 5 this term, as they consider and prepare for the rigours of Year 6 and the next school entrance exam process. I was especially delighted to veer off in all sorts of, at the time, unexpected directions when I met with the mother of one Year 5 boy on Tuesday this week. With her son’s effort and progress here in lessons and preps as the spur, we then both quite swiftly found ourselves discussing what the real purpose of any excellent education is. We got onto talking about how society considers the importance of facts and knowledge, compared to how society should consider and value the lifelong development of the so-called non-standardised skills in every citizen. It was fascinating and weighty stuff! I greatly enjoy talking about the boys and girls here with all parents; it is one of the significant privileges of my role. A reminder from me now – if indeed it is needed – for you please to come to any of us whilst your children are pupils here to talk about matters of the moment or indeed any other aspects of their education going forward. When we all get going talking about your children it is sometimes difficult to stop!
Prep
An Update from Mr Barber on his Assembly and our Theme:
In my assembly this week I led the boys on a journey to the lands of Discworld through the literary masterpiece that is Terry Pratchett’s THUD! The boys were tasked with understanding why dwarfs and trolls are natural enemies and whether the animosity is actually justified.
Friendly Parks for All Project:
We consider ourselves extremely fortunate to have Carlisle Park to spill out onto in the afternoons for our boys’ Games sessions in the Prep. We are ever mindful that this is a community recreational space, and although we pay our way to use it of course, there are many other members of the local community who greatly enjoy making as much use of it as we do.
News from Mr Salt, Head of Games:
After an absence of a year, House Cross Country returned on Monday. It felt very special to have Year groups from 1 to 6 out in Carlisle Park, in the sunshine, all taking part, competing, supporting and cheering each other in good spirit. A big congratulations to Lancaster House who were the overall winners of the competition.
Pre-Prep
A word from Mrs Murphy
There’s nothing better than starting a summer term with plenty of sunshine and a lovely blue sky! The good weather has lifted everyone’s spirits this week and none more so than the children who have completed an excellent first full week back in school after the holidays. Whilst on the subject of warmer days, please do ensure your child has a thorough application of sun cream each morning before coming in to school, and that she or he brings in their water bottle and sun hat every day. Blue school sun hats are available from the school shop.
Kindergarten
Kindergarten have been finding out about what plants and flowers need to grow, we thought sun, water and air, so we decided to carry out a cress investigation to see if this was true. We filled 3 shallow dishes with cotton wool and sprinkled cress seeds over the top. In the red dish, we added some water but put it in a dark space, in the yellow dish we watered it and placed it in the window. Finally, in the blue dish, we only placed it in the window. Using the magnifying glasses, we kept an extremely close eye on the changes occurring and were happy that our predictions were correct.
Reception
This week has been a rather mindful week in Reception! In class, each child has started a Gratitude Diary, which we will be writing in every week. This week’s entry was to write and draw a picture of a person we are thankful for having in our life. The children understood the concept of being thankful in a remarkably mature way – and we had a lovely discussion about what we were grateful for in our lives. Many of the children spoke about being grateful for friends, family and new experiences – it was heart-warming to hear.
Year 1
Year 1 have ‘bean’ fantastic and have thoroughly enjoyed reading various versions of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’ this week. We rewrote our own versions of the giant’s rhyme, thinking carefully about making rhyming couplets. Later in the week, we talked about how there are variations within the story and made comparisons between an e-book, video and oral retelling. We completed a ‘Spot the Difference’ activity to show the differences between them.
Year 2
In Year 2, we are enjoying getting stuck in to our new topic, ‘The Rainforest’! In our English lessons, we have been using the story, ‘The Great Kapok Tree’ by Lynne Cherry to inspire our writing. So far, we have made predictions about what is going to happen in the story and have used our senses to write descriptions of the rainforest. We are busy writing up our work in neat for a display at the moment, but do look out for a picture of our finished work in the next bulletin! Next week, we will write persuasively as one of the animals, begging the man to not cut the tree down.