From the Head
The glorious spring sunshine this week has lifted everyone’s spirits. Playtimes have been filled with energy, laughter and the simple joy of being outside. Our allotment is looking beautiful as the seasons shift and the children have been making the most of the fresh air and space.
Our Year 4 children returned from their first residential trip to Danbury in the glorious sunshine full of stories, smiles and a sense of accomplishment. From high ropes to team challenges, they embraced every activity with courage and enthusiasm. It was a joy to see them stepping out of their comfort zones, supporting one another and growing in independence. A huge thank you to the staff who made the trip such a positive and memorable experience for everyone involved.
We were delighted to welcome so many families into school this week for our Parents’ Evenings. These conversations are such a valuable part of our partnership with you, offering time to reflect on each child’s progress and celebrate their achievements. Thank you for your continued support and for working so closely with us to ensure your children flourish.
As part of our Year of Reading, we’ve been inspired by recent research from BookTrust highlighting the power of reading to support children’s wellbeing. The findings show that reading regularly – especially for pleasure – can help children feel calmer, build empathy and develop resilience. It’s a timely reminder of the emotional as well as academic benefits of reading, and we’re proud to be nurturing these habits across the school.
To help keep the joy of reading alive at home too, our FRSC held a second-hand book sale this afternoon. It was a brilliant opportunity to pick up some much-loved titles, discover something new and support the school at the same time, we hope you all found something to take home and enjoy over the Easter break. Thank you to all our parent volunteers for their time and support in organising this event.
On Monday we will be welcoming Lisha and her mum into assembly to share how their family celebrates Hindu New Year and we look forward to learning more about this special occasion. As you will see in this week's menu, Monday is a celebratory lunch for Hindu New Year and Wednesday's lunch will have a very 'St Olave's Green' theme - don't forget to check out our Instagram account for photos! I shall be wearing green on Wednesday to support a brilliant cause and I thank you in advance for your support of these events.
I hope you all enjoy a lovely weekend; Eid Mubarak to all our families celebrating, we wish you and your families a peaceful and blessed Eid.
Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Safeguarding Team
This week at St Olave's
Year 4 Residential to Danbury
What a fantastic few days we all had in Danbury! We are so proud of all of the children for their resilience, bravery and collaboration. Over the three days, the children were treated to eight activities (caving, vertical challenge, aerial trekking, low ropes, zip line, bush craft, orienteering and obstacle course), and although some of the activities were challenging, all of the children persevered and tried their best! On the first night, we had a movie night with hot chocolate and on the second night, we celebrated the end of the trip with a campfire and toasted marshmallows! Thank you to all of the staff who came and supported the children as well.
Latin Assembly
On Wednesday, Year 6 performed Nivea et Septem Pumiliones, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, in Latin. It was an excellent performance with handmade props such as beards, crowns and signs. We even had a doll as the baby Nivea! We really enjoyed preparing and rehearsing the first ever Year 6 Latin play! It was a great opportunity to showcase our Latin skills, and we hope the audience enjoyed our performance as much as we did.
Chloe and Arianna (Regina et Nivea)
Harp Concert Trip
Today, our lovely team of St Olave’s harpists travelled to Greenwich to experience another wonderful Harp concert! In the marvellous surroundings of the Old Royal Naval College Chapel, our children got transported into the magic land of music and followed the flying hands across the 47 strings of the harp, dazzled by the beauty and the breadth of the performance. The skillful harpists from Trinity Laban played Variations by Grandjany, Overture by Britten, Greensleeves by Vaughan Williams, and we also had the pleasure of listening to a harp and flute duo. With our harp exams fast approaching in the Summer term, we certainly felt inspired to reach for the stars!
Mrs Mossone Evans
Sporting Round Up
Year 6 Basketball
This week a group of Year 6 children travelled across to John Roan Secondary School to take part in the Greenwich School Games Basketball tournament. The eventual winners of the tournament will go through to the London Youth Games to represent Greenwich. There were 7 schools in total on the day and each team would compete against everyone once. St Olave's Year 6 were amazing and fluently moved and controlled possession of the ball well in each game. We won 5 games and lost 1, which made us joint top of the league but tied on points. We then went through to the final but unfortunately came up just short and lost the game by a single basket. The group were fantastic throughout the day and were awarded by all the officials, with the best teamwork certificate! Congratulations Year 6 and thank you for a great afternoon.
Girls Football League
After school on Tuesday, our Year 5 & 6 Girls continued their unbeaten run, winning both their games 4 - 0 and 6 - 0. A real dominant performance with goals being shared out amongst the team. Well done girls on another impressive display. Also a big thank you to Miss Foreman and Mr Russell for taking the girls and supporting them on the day!
Gymnastics Plus
Thursday was Year 5’s opportunity to develop and enhance their gymnastics skills as they travelled to Sutcliffe Park for the afternoon. The children loved the afternoon, with lots of laughter and smiles throughout each activity. Well done Year 5!
Notices
Wear Green to be Seen Day on Wednesday
On Wednesday 2nd April, we’ll be holding a special day called ‘Wear Green to be Seen’ to celebrate Neurodiversity and raise money for CASPA – a brilliant local charity that supports autistic children and young people. Throughout the day, children will enjoy fun, inclusive workshops and a special assembly all about kindness, understanding and celebrating differences.
To join in, we’re inviting all children to wear something green – it could be a hairband, a hat or any accessory – along with their usual green school uniform. Our catering team is even planning a fun, green-themed lunch to add to the celebrations!
If you’re able to, we’d really appreciate a voluntary donation to CASPA. You can send this in with your child on the day or donate directly through Just Giving by clicking the button below.
Nursery
The Little Acorns have been busy bees this week as they have created cards and special gifts for their mummies. They have made ‘seed bombs’ and flower arrangements with great care and we hope all the mummies enjoy their special day on Sunday.
The children continue to go from strength to strength with their phonics learning and some of the children are even beginning to put some sounds together to make some words which is an impressive achievement.
Outside, the water tray has been a popular activity as the children have had great fun causing floods and using the gutters to make water flows.
Reception
We don’t want to get carried away but 5 days of sun… has Summer arrived?
This week, we have had the best time taking our learning outside. The children created their own game using the tyres on the playground and riding their bikes around obstacles. We loved diving into the mud kitchen where dinners, cups of tea and cakes were made using the sticks and the mud. We also used the litter pickers to pick up some sticks, using them to create numerals to 5.
It was time to bring out the suitcase of wonders. The suitcase was full of wonderful items that were used in the past. We had a great time talking about cameras with a film and passports. We spoke about why you need passports and the information they hold. The children then asked to create their own passport and they used them to board their flights during role play.
This week in Drawing Club, we read the story ‘Blue Balloon’. The children created their own balloon and made up codes to explain what special powers it has. They then created a scene and thought about where their balloon would fly to.
It was so lovely to see you all and catch up during parents evening this week. The children have been busy creating a beautiful gift for Mother’s Day, if they have managed to keep it a surprise, we hope you enjoy looking at it on Sunday. We wish you a wonderful weekend and our fingers are crossed for more sun!
Year 1
Year 1 have enjoyed a full week and it was lovely to meet you all for our Parents Evening!
In Maths, we have had a great time with the practical side of maths where we have learned about mass and weight. Next week, we learn about volume and capacity, so mops at the ready!
The children loved their English lesson on using a dictionary and had a great time working together to use their alphabet skills and look up words.
We hope you liked seeing our spider sculptures inspired by Louise Bourgeois, we might not be able to display them outside the Tate Modern but we're very proud of them!
Year 2
What a splendid week we have had! So we started the week with our wonderful Spring concert, with the children putting on a toe tapping performance. Thank you all for coming to support the event. The children worked incredibly hard to learn the songs and poems and we were very proud to see them performing so confidently. We were all humming the tune of ‘I love the flowers’ as we left the hall - what a lovely song.
Our English lessons have focused on reading and analysing poems, noticing rhythm, rhyme and the use of onomatopoeia to produce sound effects. We had a lot of fun coming up with words and wrote some great poems of our own which featured fireworks, waterfalls and of course animal sounds! We have also been busy with spelling and learning about homophones.
In maths, we have continued to learn about grams and kilograms, reading measurements on scales and comparing various weights. We also did some problem solving involving mass. The children were very interested to know that 1 paper clip weighs 1 gram while a large bag of potatoes or sugar can weigh 1kg. Please encourage your children to look at the weights on packaging at home to relate their knowledge to everyday life.
Our Science lesson was very exciting this week, exploring the lifecycle of a butterfly. The children had a fantastic time making their own diagram, showing the lifecycle using plasticine! Some of them had never used this versatile modelling material before and really enjoyed the opportunity to present their information in this way. We also managed to fit in a cooking lesson with Mrs Dourmoush on Wednesday, making some very sticky, delicious flapjacks with a chocolate egg on top. Roll on Easter!
We are looking forward to a Royal Tea Party next week, after we learn about Queen Elizabeth II in our final lesson on British monarchs.
Year 3
We've had an explosive week in Year 3 as we continued our learning about Volcanoes and Earthquakes in Geography. Our visit to the The Natural History Museum was a success as we deepened our understanding of how and why volcanoes and earthquakes occur and even had the chance to experience what an earthquake would feel like in the simulator. We all concluded that the footage of the Kobe earthquake from 1995 looked incredibly scary and that the people of Japan were very brave to have experienced such an event.
In addition to our exciting trip we also had fun in our many lessons this week. In Science, our exploration of light and shadows continued as we investigated how sunlight can affect the length of a shadow throughout the day. When looking at the data we concluded that shadows were shorter when the sun was at its highest in the middle of the day and longest when it was low in the morning and evening. We then used that data to create graphs that used scales and bars. We loved the maths/science crossover of the activity!
In English, we honed our comprehension skills by looking carefully at texts and then answering questions on them. We then went through our answers to see if we were able to use our retrieval and inference skills correctly. We also made use of this term’s poetry learning as we created our own poem based on a photo for stimuli.
Maths saw us continuing our understanding of Mass and Capacity. This week we compared masses as well as adding and subtracting them. We then moved on to learning that capacity is how much an item can hold and that capacity is measured in millilitres and litres. All of our learning about scales from this term came in handy as we read scales on a variety of capacity diagrams including cups, jugs and bottles.
Finally, our Faster Read book is still going strong and we have been enjoying experiencing adventures with Stig alongside our main character Barney. This week, Barney has traded marbles with Stig for costumes so that he can attend a fancy dress costume dressed as a caveman. We look forward to finding out what happens next and learning lots of new vocabulary as we do!
With only one week left until the end of the Spring term we are excited to fit in as much fun and learning as we can and hope to wrap up many of the exciting topics we have covered this term. We look forward to sharing it all with you again next week and wish you a happy Mothering Sunday for this coming weekend!
Year 4
Year 4 have had an amazing week on our residential at Danbury - read all about it in the post further up! We hope the children all get lots of rest over the weekend so we're all fresh and raring to go for our busy last week of term!
Year 5
We have had another busy week this week. In maths, our focus has been on developing our understanding of perimeter and area of shapes. We applied our understanding and problem solving skills to find missing lengths and used inverse to check our calculations. By the end of the week, we were delving into a Year 6 concept of finding the area of triangles.
Within English we explored extracts from ‘Skellig’ and ‘Oranges in No Man’s land’ and answered a range of questions. We have been focusing on identifying information from texts to support our understanding and to unpick implied information. Following this, we used the Greek myth of Daedalus and Icarus to develop our understanding of sentence structures. The children ended the week by writing creatively, applying their work on subordinate clauses and adjectival phrases.
The focus for NVR this week was similarities and differences. The children worked hard applying the techniques taught and demonstrated excellent accuracy and speed. Within VR, we became detectives and developed our understanding of letter sequences and letter codes. On Thursday afternoon, Year 5 had the very exciting opportunity of our Gymnastics Plus afternoon. All of the children had a fantastic time and challenged themselves in this new environment- well done Year 5! We wish you all a lovely weekend and Mothering Sunday.
Year 6
It has been another fantastic week in Year 6, filled with creativity, problem-solving, and exciting new challenges! This week, the children have been focusing on instructional writing. We started by discussing the steps to make toast as a group before the children branched out and chose their own instructions based on a sporting technique, a crafting skill or a hobby they enjoy. They excelled in using all the appropriate features of instructional writing, producing clear, precise, and engaging guides. We then explored explanations and the children read about the ‘Maillard reaction’ the reason toast, biscuits and cooked meats turn brown. Ask them about it!
A particular highlight in maths was The Mystery of the Missing Skeletons—a Key Stage 3 mathematical challenge that encouraged the children to apply their problem-solving skills and logical thinking. They enjoyed pushing themselves with concepts they know well, demonstrating great perseverance and teamwork along the way.
We had a one-off special swimming lesson this week, which was a fantastic experience! It was great to get back in the pool, refine skills, and continue making progress in a fun and supportive environment.
We have been incredibly impressed with the children’s alphabet projects and the enthusiasm they have shown in their independent research. Each week, they continue to rise to the challenge, choosing a diverse range of topics that showcase their creativity and curiosity. This week, for the letter F, we were treated to homemade fudge and flapjacks, intricate model flies and fishing rods, and even fascinating writing on the French Revolution! The effort, dedication, and originality in each project have been truly inspiring. We are so proud and honoured to read, share, and celebrate all your hard work—well done, Year 6!
Finally, we would like to wish all our Year 6 mothers a very Happy Mother’s Day on Sunday!
Outdoor Learning
This week the weather has been wonderful and the children have continued to sow lots of new seeds. They have put in tomatoes, chillies, beetroot, lettuce and lots of flowers ready for our plant sales. They have been watered and put into the heated greenhouses to grow on. Incredibly, some of the chillies have already started to show some growth after only a few days! I have had lots of children helping to clear the beds at lunch time as well, which has been lovely. Long may this weather continue!
Languages
It is finally Spring!! In Early Years, both Nursery and Reception practiced animals: they now recognise and can say the names of 10 animals, making actions for all of them as we go! Year 1 put this term’s learning together and the children practised making long sentences talking about their family and pets. The children played a game called “ fridge magnets” on our Language Platform, and I would encourage them to do some home practice with this fun activity. Year 2 carried on with the alien project: the children drew and coloured their alien and they started to write sentences to describe it.
In the Upper School, in French, Year 3 started revising the topic learnt this term: the children worked on creating and translating sentences about the weather, and they practised writing, both on the board and in their books. Year 5 children worked with the core vocabulary from last week, spending their lesson doing a reading-comprehension task and a translation. Year 6 started a new topic which involves the use of past tense: recycling the core vocabulary of the last topic, the children learnt a different construction, in transforming the presents into infinitives and adding the past tense at the start of the phrase. Time sentences in the past have also been part of this week's learning.
Design & Technology
Year 3 Electrostatic Games
Pupils in Year 3 customised the cases and inserted the game characters and elements for their game to function.
Year 5 Wooden Bridges
This week pupils in Year 5 evaluated their final products and explained how they can make improvements to their designs. Pupils started to use Tinkercad 3D design software to draw their bridges on computers.
Year 6 Automata toys
Year 6 pupils inserted the cam mechanism that allows the automata toy to function.
Music
On Monday afternoon, Year 2 performed brilliantly in their Spring Concert. We were treated to Spring themed poetry and songs, which the children performed with great enthusiasm and confidence. Well done to all of the children in Year 2 and many thanks to all the friends and family who came to support them.
We’re so lucky to have so many children at school who are keen and confident to perform. I’ve been inundated with children who would like to play in assemblies, which has been fantastic. On Tuesday, George (Year 2, piano), Marco (Year 3, guitar), Tiana (Year 5, harp) and Hanna (Year 5, harp) treated us to some beautiful playing at the start of our singing assembly. Four of our harpists also visited Nursery and Reception in the afternoon to play to them too.
This week, the Upper School children have been rehearsing their songs without the words ahead of the Easter Concert next week. Their homework is to continue to rehearse their songs and learn their song words at home up until the concert next week. We are looking forward to seeing you at the concert.
The Nursery children are also looking forward to welcoming their friends and families along to their Spring Concert next week too! See you there!