From the Head
Dear Parents
This week, I am reminded of the importance of equipping our children with the skills to be resilient and independent. It's a lesson I’ve been reflecting on deeply as my own daughter Grace prepares to embark on the first half of her year abroad in Germany next week. Helping her prepare for this significant chapter, I’ve felt both the swell of pride and the familiar pang of worry that all parents know too well. But it’s in these moments that I’ve had to remind myself that my role isn’t to shield her from every challenge or disappointment, but rather to empower her to face these moments with courage and confidence.
We all want the very best for our children. The instinct to protect them from life’s inevitable ups and downs is strong. Yet, in doing so, we sometimes risk holding them back from the very experiences that will help them grow into the capable, confident individuals we dream for them to become. Life’s challenges - whether they come in the form of a setback in school or the leap of moving to a new country - teach resilience, self-reliance and the invaluable lesson that they can overcome obstacles and thrive.
I am proud that at St Olave's we have strong, trusting relationships with parents and we work together to navigate these challenges as our children journey through school. From dropping our youngest children off on their first day of Nursery or Reception, to anxiously awaiting news of allocated secondary schools in Year 6, it can be tempting to try and smooth the path for our children and not let them feel upset or disappointed. After all, letting go isn’t always easy; but we must give our children the space to spread their wings, knowing that even when they stumble, they are building the strength to rise again.
As we work together to support your children through their learning journeys, I encourage all of us to trust in their ability to navigate the world ahead of them and to celebrate every moment of independence they achieve through their effort and brilliant attitudes that we see displayed every day at school.
Wish me luck for what I am sure is going to be an emotional weekend; I hope you all enjoy a relaxing time with your families and I look forward to seeing you all next week!
Miss C Holloway
Headteacher
The week ahead...
Safeguarding Team
Safeguarding News!
On Wednesday, Mrs McNamara led our first Safeguarding Assembly of the year. Following guidance from the NSPCC, she introduced the children to ‘Buddy’ , a green speech bubble who encourages children to “Speak Out and Stay Safe”. Mrs McNamara taught everyone about the several different ways children can be mistreated by others, including bullying, neglect, physical and emotional abuse. She explained that it is never ok to be mistreated and that it is very important to speak up and to tell a trusted adult.
Mrs McNamara told the story of Ruby’s Worry by Tom Percival which highlighted how crucial it is to talk to someone about a worry otherwise the worry will keep growing. After this, she reminded the children about the Time to Talk Box, which is located in the playground outside the Wellbeing Room. Here the children can write down any worries on paper and pop it into the box that is checked daily by our Wellbeing Lead, Mrs Pons, who will always talk to children as soon as she can.
All the children have a range of adults who they can speak to at school, from their class teachers to the lunchtime supervisors - we are united in keeping our children safe and happy.
Community News
Rucksacks Wanted (with school logo or without)
One of our former parents is a Doctor and Trustee of an educational charity in Sierra Leone. She spends 4-6 months every year volunteering in a primary care clinic and teaching children and medical staff. The charity, Transform Salone, supports children with sponsorship throughout their educational journey - currently supporting 60 children in primary and secondary school. They also have students in university and colleges; studying medicine, economics, midwifery and nursing. The charity has asked if we can help provide rucksacks for students - school rucksacks, or any other suitable rucksacks - they do not have to be new, just in good condition.
Please hand any donations to Mrs Farrell on the gate. Thank you very much.
This week at St Olave's
Tag Rugby
This week children from Year 5 and Year 6 took part in a tag rugby event. Year 5 played against Merton Court Prep School, and demonstrated great skills in a thrilling game, which resulted in a 6-6 tie. Tries were scored and shared amongst the team. Excellent team work and determination Year 5!
Year 6 competed in two fixtures, one against Merton Court Prep School and the other against Benedict House Prep School. Both fixtures saw closely contested matches, with St Olave’s coming out victorious by only 1 try difference! Lots of tries scored throughout the afternoon and lots of different try scorers in the team. Excellent collaboration and resilience to overcome our challenges. Well done Year 6!
Tennis Tournament
Thursday saw children from Years 3 and 4 travel to Shooters Hill College to take part in a fun tennis afternoon in which 4 schools took part. Our children really enjoyed all the different activities based around tennis and then moved on to the small sided matches and rallies. At the end of the event St Olave's were announced and awarded the winners of the day, as we were noted as demonstrating excellent commitment, respect and determination. Well done everyone!
Parksfest
It was lovely to see so many of you at Parksfest in Southwood Park on Sunday. It was a great day weatherwise and the park was very busy. We were supporting the Friends of Southwood Park who have really transformed the park in lots of ways. One of those has been to build a concrete path which now spans around the whole park. We had a stand selling our allotment produce and books, with a colouring table for the younger children. We managed to raise £154.22 for the group so thank you one and all!
Pupil Achievements
Huge congratulations to Millie in Year 4 who has passed her Grade 1 piano exam with distinction!
Nursery
The Little Acorns have really got into their stride this week and have been busy with all aspects of school life. We have loved getting out in the September sunshine and exploring the water, sand and mud (sometimes all at the same time!). As you may have noticed all this messy play sometimes ends up on our uniform so please ensure that we always have a spare set of clothes in school. We have begun to teach the children how to put on their waterproof all in ones and wellies and the children are quickly becoming independent with this.
One highlight of the week was the beginning of ‘Squiggle while you wiggle’ which is when we put on some funky tunes and have a good boogie! We wave scarves to the music and strengthen our arm muscles, getting them ready for some mark making. This week we danced to ‘I like to Move it, Move it’ and we made our way through the EYFS building and outside area doing the conga!!
Thank you to those who have sent in a family photograph, the children have enjoyed talking about the special people in their lives. Please email or send a printed photo if you haven’t yet.
Reception
FEE FI FO FUM…
Following on with our Julia Donaldson theme, we have read ‘The Smartest Giant In Town’. The children have had a wonderful time dressing up in the Giant’s clothes and making him some food in the sand pit. The food was a little gritty but he said it tasted DELICIOUS!
The children sorted through a huge bag of the Giant’s socks and they had great fun matching them into pairs and even wearing some.
Thank you so much for bringing in conkers this week. We have used them to make natural pictures in our photo frames. The children took so much time and care to create amazing masterpieces.
As part of our curiosity approach, we took some time to delve into the Giant’s suitcase. The children were amazed with some of the things we found inside it. We discussed what they could be used for and when they were made. The children shared facts about things they have at home and how they are different from the Giant’s.
We have had so many family pictures emailed and sent in this week. The children have really enjoyed sharing them with their friends. We are still adding to our display so it would be great to receive many more if you haven't already sent them in.
Have a wonderful weekend.
Year 1
We have had another wonderful week in Year 1. The children are settling into their routines and have enjoyed working with a variety of teachers, in their specialist lessons and clubs after school. They have already started writing in French and can explain what an algorithm is. We are sure they have had so much to share with you!
In English, we have been reading the book ‘Not a Stick’, the children have been using their imaginations to think of their own purposes for their sticks. They have orally rehearsed and written sentences using capital letters and full stops. They have also been writing ‘bossy’ sentences to give instructions. We are sure they will continue to practise these at home over the weekend!
In maths, the children are continuing their unit on place value. They have been exploring finding one more, one less and comparing amounts. In preparation for next week, you may want to begin to discuss the maths vocabulary ‘fewer, more and the same’.
The children were very excited to take part in a live Science lesson on Wednesday. They carried out their own investigation to find the height of bubbles produced when combining bicarbonate of soda and vinegar. The children were fantastic at making sure they carried out a fair test and recorded their results. In our humanities lesson the children started their topic all about transport! We have been discussing the changes to transport throughout time. We look forward to a trip to The London Transport Museum later this term.
Year 2
We LOVED becoming super scientists this week with an incredible experiment to discover just how much foam we can create with bicarbonate of soda and an acidic solution! The children made their predictions and then watched the bubbles fly!
We chuckled along with Edward Lear and The Quangle Wangle Quee who suddenly found lots of curious creatures living in his hat! The children worked hard to use nouns, adjectives and prepositions in their writing. As mathematicians, we estimated, compared and ordered numbers.
In art, we experimented with charcoal to create images of different words from wiggle to thunder and lots in between. We compared London now to London in 1666 in history, explored whether it is possible to be kind to everyone all of the time in PSHE and reached the end of our class text ‘The Iron Man’. Phew! What a busy week.
Year 3
Another productive week in Year 3! In English we have been working on using expanded noun phrases and ambitious verbs to develop setting descriptions for Mrs Cole’s house from our story ‘I’ll Take You to Mrs Cole’. We ended the week by writing a full paragraph to put our skills to the test where we had rusty, old gates and scruffy, messy children galore. There were also rabbits chomping on carrots and babies wailing to add to the chaotic scenes!
In maths, we learned about partitioning numbers to 1000 in various ways. We used our whiteboards to play around with part-whole models and bar models, exploring the other ways we could pick apart the hundreds, tens and ones flexibly. We also began using HTO charts to represent three-digit numbers to help us prepare for our addition and subtraction lessons next week.
In RE we continued our exploration of the concept of belonging through learning about Hinduism. We discussed how when we belong we share values and, after listening to the story of Rama and Sita, identified the values of the characters and how they are shared with Hindus. We then compared these to the values that we have as a class and found that many of these were shared between Hindus and ourselves as classmates.
In Science, we explored different types of rocks, adding sedimentary and metamorphic rock knowledge to what we learned about igneous rocks last week. We performed density tests, scratch tests, water tests and magnifying tests to attempt to classify each rock. We found that what we recorded did not always match up to the known properties of each rock type and discussed why this might be!
We are looking forward to another interesting week in Year 3 as we continue our topics and explore even further!
Year 4
Our second week has proved to be a busy one! The sunshine has definitely helped us though. This week in English, we have been concentrating on the use of conjunctions to link clauses together. We have enjoyed exploring a couple more fables. On Friday, we planned and wrote a letter in the role of the ‘Lion’, from the ‘Lion and the Mouse' fable, pretending to explain what happened to him using conjunctions.
In maths, we have continued to consolidate our place value knowledge by partitioning numbers up to 10,000. We were very impressed with their ability to flexibly partition numbers. We then applied our knowledge further by adding and subtracting 1, 10, 100 and 1000 from a 4-digit number. As well as this, we have managed to fit in some times table practice. Any additional practice you can do at home, would benefit your child too.
In science, we explored how particles behave in different states of matter. This built on the home learning the children had done at the weekend. We even talked about other states of matter including plasma and the Bose-Einstein condensate!
In PSHE, we discussed what it means to be included and how important it is to empathise with others when we can. We ended our week with art where we explored proportion and tone while using charcoal. We were blown away by our work! Alongside all of the above, some children took it upon themselves to produce a presentation for their MP pitches. We were very impressed by their confidence and fantastic ideas if they become our class MP!
We hope you all have a lovely weekend.
Year 5
We have had another busy week in Year 5! In English, we have enjoyed exploring more of The Jungle Book. We used the painting ‘Surprised’ by Henri Rousseau to explore similar settings of the jungle. We thought about our senses to enhance our description and explored how we can use ambitious vocabulary to further extend our writing.
In maths, we have been finding 10, 100, 1000 and 10 000 more or less than a number, using our knowledge of place value to partition numbers to 1,000,000. We explored how to flexibility partition the numbers using addition and subtraction to help us.
In science we have been learning about the earth’s movement and the effect is has on night and day. We explored how there are different time zones in the world, it was interesting to hear how many different time zones we have all visited! We also learned about the different phases of the moon and how eclipses occur.
We hope you have a lovely weekend.
Year 6
Year 6’s second week has been a busy one! After being incredibly resilient and working hard towards some more entrance exams over the weekend, the children came in bright and beaming Monday morning ready for some learning!
In English, we have started reading Northern Lights. It is set in Oxford and is about an alternative world which involves daemons, poison and mystery. We have really enjoyed it so far and have looked at a variety of different setting descriptions thinking about how to create an image in the reader’s head. We can’t wait to see what happens next in the story!
In maths, we have started our place value topic, focusing on numbers that reach up to one million. Some of us have found it tricky to say these numbers out loud but we have been working extremely hard to read them slowly and carefully. We even worked on powers of 10 where we made these numbers even bigger!
We have really enjoyed thinking about achievable goals in PSHE this week. We created a vision board which has helped us to think about all the things we would like to achieve in the immediate future as well as when we are older - it has really brought up some interesting insights into how we want our life to progress! We also had a great time during science exploring whether light reflects through different materials using a light box and a data logger - it was really exciting to create our own experiments and see if we could work out how to measure light!
Hopefully, over the next few weeks, we will apply and find out what our school responsibilities are going to be and we are very excited to be able to begin to show how we can be fantastic role models for the rest of the school.
Have a wonderful weekend!
Outdoor Learning
The children have been busy picking lots of our fruit and vegetables. We picked over 150 apples and some cucumbers and tomatoes which Chef used in the school lunches this week. The children have also picked up lots of leaves which have already begun to fall to use as a leaf mulch and collected seeds from some of our flowers to keep ready for next year. The older children also helped tidy the concrete shed, putting all the old netting and plastic away to give us a lot more space.
Languages
What a super week we had! All the children started their first topic, making a great start.
Nursery and Reception learnt a new song and they listened to a new story called “Je veux ma banane”. Year 1 used their French books for the first time and they loved copying down the date and sticking their first sheet in. Year 2 has done writing and speaking practice of numbers up to 30.
Year 3 went on holiday and started to learn ways of transport, on top of revising colours, whilst Year 4 studied places in town. Year 5 used the Spanish textbook for the first time and practised listening and speaking skills: the children learnt how to introduce themselves to others and answer some basic questions. Year 6 has carried on working on their termly topic, practising their writing and speaking skills and testing their memory. In Latin, Year 6 has discussed the spread of the Roman Empire and enjoyed finding derivative words. Well done everyone!
Design & Technology
Year 3 Cardboard Castles
Pupils in Year 3 practised designing their castles by reviewing their specifications and ensuring that their designs met their success criteria.
Year 4 Torches
Year 4 pupils learned about their target customer. They applied the interests of their target customer to the design of their torches.
Year 5 Pop Up Books
This week pupils experimented with pop up mechanisms and structures. They learned how to make moving links and create folded 3D effects using cut and folded paper.
Year 6 Motorised Car
Year 6 pupils completed their motorised cars and evaluated their success.
Music
In Nursery and Reception this week, we have been learning lots of songs with actions including ‘Five Little Speckled Frogs’ and ‘There’s a Spider on the Floor’!
In Year 1, we have been focussing on keeping a steady pulse and using body percussion to perform a variety of rhythms against the steady pulse.
In Year 2, we went on a musical safari, creating sound patterns and rhythms to represent each animal on our safari and clapping these against a soundtrack.
Year 3 recapped the key features of a ballad and went on to analyse ‘Space Oddity’ by David Bowie to discuss how facial expressions and actions could portray the emotions in the song.
Year 4 learnt what a ‘motif’ is and learnt to play a motif on the tuned percussion. We then went on to play the motif along to the Roman song we have been learning.
We have been exploring notation in Year 5 and used our theme of the Egyptians to use hieroglyphics to represent sections of the song ‘Walk Like an Egyptian’ by The Bangles. We then went on to create our own sounds for images and performed them, reading across the page like a music score.
Year 6 were introduced to the concept of graphic scores. We created our own graphic scores to interpret dynamics and pitch, which we conducted and performed.
Postcards of Praise
Next Week's Menu
Charity Event
Demelza Children’s Hospice is a charity close to our hearts at Boppin' Bunnies.
Demelza are there to make life better for babies, children and young people who have life-threatening or life-limiting conditions, and to support their parents, brothers and sisters, and all those who love them. Demelza gives them choice and control of how their child is cared for, through support in their hospices, at home or in school. Demelza is there to help families cope with the fear, challenges and complexities of having a seriously ill child – from diagnosis, during day to day family life, times of crisis and through bereavement.
Tickets for the Music Show can be found here: https://www.boppinbunnies.co.uk/shows
Every penny goes to Demelza Children's Hospice as we are sponsored by Winkworth Estate Agents and our musicians are donating their talents and time for free.