March has arrived!
We look forward to welcoming author Gareth Jones on Monday 4 March as part of our World Book Day 2024 celebrations. Remember to email class teachers with photos of all the unusual places your children have been reading for the Extreme Reading competition. On Thursday 7 March, children can arrive at school dressed as their favourite book characters and will be completing their fabulous class Fairy Tales. The BIG BAD WOLF appears in each one so look out for the stories displayed along the corridors next you are visiting!
KCPPA Mothering Sunday Fayre - 7 March
Mother's Day is on Sunday 10 March and the KCPPA will have some wonderful gifts for the children to buy to spoil their mum or special lady in their life on Thursday morning next week. Children will need no more than £10 to buy something lovely.
Red Nose Day - 15 March
Friday 15 March is Red Nose Day and it will be a home clothes day for everyone. The theme for this year is "do something funny for money" and the Comic Relief Website have various ways on how to donate towards their causes this year. You are welcome to bring your donations to school and our Charity Prefects will be at collection points to meet you.
Comic Relief have four fun characters to collect this year, Gigglesworth, Chortle McChortleface, Smirkle Thorpe and Lol E Pops as well as the rare The Golden Hooter – a limited edition Rare ‘Gold’ Nose! The Noses are made from plant-based materials meaning they can be recycled at home and are suitable for children aged 3 and above. Order your Red Noses now from the Comic Relief shop, or Amazon.
Prep School Notice
- Lower School Choir Cancelled - Due to the KS2 Parent Teacher Consultations, choir practice will be cancelled on Wednesday 6 March.
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The Mystery of Edwin Drood invites the audience to help solve a mystery and determine the outcome of every performance.
Set in the colourful world of a Victorian music hall, the story follows a range of characters who are entangled in a web of intrigue and secrets. When young Edwin Drood mysteriously disappears, the audience must deduce the culprit from this cast of quirky suspects. The Mystery of Edwin Drood written by Rupert Holmes is a musical based on the unfinished Charles Dickens novel of the same name. The show was the first Broadway musical with multiple endings! The musical won five Tony Awards, including Best Musical from among eleven nominations.
This is not Nicholas Nickleby set to music – it's not a Dickensian work. It's light and fun and entertaining. But I hope – I think – that Dickens would have enjoyed it." Rupert Holmes
What happened in school this week?
During our Assembly this week we celebrated some wonderful achievements. Margot in Y2 joined the Junior Brighton Marathon, running 1.5 miles for the Rocking Horse Charity and our gymnasts achieved 1st and 6th place at the Independent Schools' Gymnastics Association National Championships. Congratulations everyone!
Our Art Captain Ella announced her comic strip competition winners this week. Congratulations to our winners Frieda and Isabella whose humorous, vibrant and detailed entries made them worthy winners. Chaplain Katie's 'Empathy' assembly this week helped us understand how to "read" people's feelings to understand them better. We also learned how we can help people if they are sad or angry. The children also shared their thoughts on kindness and how we can let people join in to make them feel included.
Forest Explorers
We have had great fun this week learning all about the people who help us. We had great fun dressing up as Vets, Police Officers, Firefighters, Paramedics, Traffic Wardens and Chefs! We have been making Emergency service vehicles from very large boxes and using our new traffic cones and signs.
Reception
Our story this week in Reception has been ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ by Michael Rosen. On Monday the children read the story and they had lots of fun making up some actions to go with it. We have had our own bear hunt, looking around the school for our bear and found it sitting outside Mrs Hall’s office! The children then created their own bear hunt and drew the different places to go through on their own story maps. There were thunderstorms, snow storms, herds of zebras, forests, fields of flowers, rivers to name just a few of their brilliant ideas.
This week the children learnt about St David’s Day and why it is celebrated. They compared St David’s Day to other celebrations that they know or we have learnt about in school, discussing the similarities and differences between them. The children each made a daffodil and enjoyed eating welsh cakes.
Year 1
Year have started a new topic of Nature Sculptures allowing us to explore the world outside the classroom. We are looking forward to making patterns and creations in outdoor learning but we started with observational drawings of the natural world. We looked carefully outside at the difference between man made things and the items which come from nature and each chose something to draw. We had to study the shape and any patterns or details that we could see. We learnt to take our time and observe what we could see specifically; it was also fun testing out the sketching pencils and seeing how well we could shade in as we weren't allowed to use any colours!
Year 2
In Science, Year 2 are investigating 'What plants need to grow'. They set up an investigation to find out if plants need water, light and a suitable temperature to grow and stay healthy. Using their observations skills over the next few weeks, they will find out the results!
Year 3
As part of their topic on the Ancient Egyptians, Year 3 have been creating The Eye of Horus from clay. Horus is the God of the Sun and Sky. It is a symbol in Ancient Egyptian religion that represents well-being, healing and protection. We are looking forward to painting them once dried.
Year 4
This week, Year 4 looked closely at the beautiful colours in fruit. They went on to blend and match a wide range of shades and produced colourful paintings of their favourite fruits. We hope you’ll enjoy seeing them in the Prep school art exhibition.
Year 5
Did you know that the English language has many Greek words, or words that have their roots in ancient Greek? From everyday words like “telephone” and “television” to scientific terms like “biology” and “psychology,” Greek has had a profound influence on the English language. In fact there are approximately 150,000 words of Greek origin in use in our language. During their humanities lesson, Year 5 were words detectives this week. In pairs and small groups they paired Greek words with their definition. They were incredibly glad to have a set of clues to aid them in their challenge. Rich conversation filled the classroom for the whole lesson and the children were especially interested in the prefixes, zoo-, photo-, phono- and chromato-.
We also had lots of fun with our Buddies this week and just love the time we get to spend with them.'' Year 5
Year 6
This week Year 6 completed their preparations for a debate on whether or not you should be paid to give blood. They organised the roles that they would take on, practised in their teams and presented the arguments to Chaplain Katie on Wednesday. She was extremely impressed with everyone involved.
In science they have started the new topic on electricity, refreshing their memories with how circuits work, the different components that they can use and looking at what is electricity. In music Ms Rivett has continued to work on their drumming skills, whilst in maths – alongside problem solving – the children have been studying scale factors. Everyone was very excited to have a football match and to improve their skills in the lessons as well. All this and reading with our buddies, having French and German lessons, finding out about the Year 6 production and preparing for next week’s World Book Day. Finally, we teamed up with Reception, and it was difficult to know who was having the most fun!
Bonjour
French has been fun ! Nursery pupils have been learning a few nursery rhymes in French whilst Reception have learned how to say what they like and don't like. "J'aime et je n'aime pas"
Year 1 & Year 2 have learnt vocabulary about the seasons and the weather and learned how to say I am fine and the opposite, ''Ça va bien.'' ''Ça ne va pas!''
Year 3 have been learning new phonemes & graphemes to learn colours and have had fun cutting and matching colours with the French words.
Year 4 and Year 5 are learning the poem Un Petit Poisson and have been playing Lotto! Well done to Nuran and Hana in Year 4 for wining so quickly!
Y6 has revised the parts of the body and studied a French nursery rhyme where they learnt how to plant cabbages with their noses!
Sport News
Gymnastic
The U11 team competed against 16 other schools at the Independent schools gymnastics Association national championships last weekend. The team won the group sequence and were asked to showcase it again at the presentation. They came 6th overall in the apparatus competition ! Amazing results.
You may have seen Mrs Kirkland, mum to Isla in Y3, in the media this week talking about her charity, ARFID Awareness UK, as part of Eating Disorders Awareness Week 2024. The charity raises awareness and provides information about Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder. To find some really useful information, please follow the link
Upcoming Workshops for Parents
Following on from the success of our Digital Resilience workshop before half term, please see the details below for the next free workshops in our series. Booking for the next workshop on March 4th, How to Help your Child Build Resilience, is now open. Please click the button below to sign up.
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