From the Head
Dear Parents and Carers
Happy New Year! I hope you all had a restful and joyful holiday season and are feeling refreshed for the exciting term ahead. It’s always a pleasure to see our school full of energy and enthusiasm once more as we welcome back our children, staff and families to another wonderful year of learning and growth at St Olave’s.
A very special welcome to our new families who are joining the St Olave’s community this term. We are delighted to have you with us and look forward to seeing your children thrive as part of our school. At St Olave’s, we are proud of the warm and nurturing environment that helps every child feel valued and supported from their very first day.
I am thrilled to share some fantastic news to start the year on a high note. This week, St Olave’s was independently reviewed for the second time by the prestigious Muddy Stilettos and the feedback truly captures the essence of what makes our school special. You can read the full review here. The review highlights our holistic approach to education, the vibrant and inclusive atmosphere of our school and the many opportunities we provide for children to excel academically and creatively. It’s a testament to the hard work, dedication and passion of our staff, children and families alike. I hope you feel as proud as I do reading it.
As we embark on this new term, I want to reaffirm my personal commitment to ensuring that every child at St Olave’s receives an excellent education. At the heart of this is the strong partnership between home and school. Together, we can ensure that each child is supported, challenged and inspired to achieve their very best. There is so much to look forward to in the coming weeks, from exciting curriculum projects to enriching extracurricular opportunities and much more. Let’s make 2025 a year to remember for all the right reasons!
Thank you for your continued trust and support. I’m looking forward to all that we will achieve together this year.
Kind regards, Miss Holloway
The week ahead...
Lunch Menu
Safeguarding Team
This week at St Olave's
Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health
The Wellbeing Champions led a fantastic interactive assembly on the moral compass. Through engaging activities, they explored qualities like honesty, fairness, loyalty and kindness. Please read the year group sections below to find out about all the activities the children took part in.
Cake Sale
I wanted to raise money because I know St Olave's has spent a lot of money re-decorating and making the school look great!
I chose to hold a bake sale as I love to bake with my mum at home. I also wanted to involve my friends (Oliver, Bhagat, Jaiden and Sidiq) in the cake sale, as we needed lots of help.
I think the sale was very successful and we even had extra cakes for the teachers and staff! Thank you to everyone for donating.
Joshua V
Notices
Charity Donations and Fund Raising
In November the Prefects raised £430.21 for the Royal British Legion selling poppies before school.
The FRSC Christmas Fayre raised a grand total of £5303.16. Thank you and congratulations to the Fund Raising & Social Committee, and all the parents, friends and staff who helped make our first Friday evening event such a great success.
Our Christmas Jumper Day in December raised £217.00 for Save The Children.
Thank you to all our parents and school family who support us in all our events and fundraising activities.
Mrs Farrell
Calling all rugby fans - Offer from Blackheath Rugby Club
Hopefully you have seen the information emailed home this Thursday about an exciting offer from Blackheath Rugby Club for all St Olave’s families to attend (and park at) the next home game free of charge (adult tickets usually £20 on the gate)! Blackheath Rugby Club is our highest performing local rugby club, currently playing in National League 1 (tier 3) of the RFU competition. They have had a brilliant start to the season and are currently sitting in fifth place. On Saturday 18th January the Club take on Birmingham Moseley so why not come along to support a local team.
Nursery
Happy New Year to all our families. The children have started the new year full of energy and enthusiasm and we are delighted to welcome four new children into Little Acorns this week. We have been so impressed with their confidence and they are already settling well into the routines of school.
We have spent some time this week thinking about all the things we have to be grateful for. We read a story called Thank you for the Little Things by Caryl Hart and thought about things we do everyday which make us smile. We have also talked about all the people in school that do things for us, some of whom we have never met. We have made a point of thanking them for all the things they do and making sure they know we appreciate them. Mrs Brame, our Bursar, came and visited the children and explained her role and the children each made her a flower to put in a vase on her desk. Thank you Mrs Brame!
Reception
Happy New Year!
Welcome back and what an amazing start to 2025 the children in Reception have had. It’s been a very cold week and we’ve been hoping for some snow. The children have been learning a new snow dance to get enough snow to make a snowman (we are still hopeful it will come soon).
This week, we have been focusing on thankfulness and gratitude. We have spoken about what the words mean and how we show thankfulness. We have spoken lots about what the children have been up to during the holidays and we linked it to how they may have felt thankful during certain times. We made 2 cards to give to members of staff at our school to say thank you for making our day special!
We have been reading the story ‘Thank you for the little things’. The story highlights appreciating the small things in life. We used this story to inspire our drawing club.
Next week, we look forward to visiting the library and having a story time with our wonderful librarian, Sally.
We hope you have a lovely weekend.
Year 1
It’s 2025! Year 1 have hit the ground running and have been working very hard in their first week back. We enjoyed our two mental health days and it was nice to get into our usual routine on the last two days back this week. In maths we began our expansion into larger numbers, with all of our maths now going to 20. In English we practised how to set out a formal letter and in Geography we learnt about the different countries that make up the UK. One of the highlights of the week was our vegetable painting; who knew you could get such great shapes from a cabbage leaf?!
Year 2
Happy New Year everyone! We have loved welcoming the children back into school this week. They arrived in school smiling and ready to learn on Tuesday, and we’re pretty sure they had all grown a little too!
We spent a lovely couple of days focusing on our emotional wellbeing and mental health. After listening to a couple of lovely stories ‘Thank You for the Little Things’ and ‘Gratitude is my Superpower’, we took ourselves on a gratitude walk around our local area to spot the things that make us smile and feel grateful - from birdsong and trees for climbing to doggy paw prints and safe pavements to walk on, the children were excellent at reflecting. We also explored the importance of good manners and being polite and the children set themselves some kindness challenges to carry out at home.
English was a focus on the correct use of punctuation when writing; maths saw us delve into money and work on our coin and note recognition; we finished our landscape collages in art and practised our joining techniques in handwriting! Phew! We are ready for the weekend!
All children have now started our spelling programme, with daily lessons focusing on the many spelling rules they need to get their heads around. We will share more information about this as we pick up speed, but everyone made a very positive start.
We have had lots of hats, gloves and scarves being misplaced this week so please ensure everything is named and please double check that your child has their own!
Year 3
We are back with a bang and ready for 2025 in Year 3. We started the week with a lesson about courage and reflected on times when we needed to use it. We thought about quotes we could use when we needed to muster courage and made artwork to create our own ‘Big Book of Brave’ to look at for advice.
We then turned our minds to think of gratitude, the things we are particularly grateful for, and why. It was great to hear that we had plenty of things in common and to hear some thoughtful reasons for our choices. Taking these ideas, we created gratitude jars filled with pictures to represent these ideas.
After looking at a list of 30 manners all children should know, we ranked how often we show these in everyday life. We were surprised how many ways there were to show good manners beyond please and thank you! We then took freeze-frame pictures to make a guide of good manners to look back on.
At the end of the week, we started our new English topic of fiction writing by reading Fantastic Mr Fox by Roald Dahl. We looked at the adjectives to describe the characters and thought about the images these create in our minds.
In maths, we recapped our understanding of multiplication and division of two-digit numbers by one-digit numbers using part whole models. Please encourage your children to teach this concept to you too!
Year 4
What a great start to the new year! Our first few days have been filled with Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health activities. We have had a focus on self-control, gratitude, appreciation and manners. We challenged our self-control by having a choice of whether to pop a bubble on some bubble wrap or waiting five minutes to pop five! We even had help from the ‘Cookie Monster’ to help us with different self-control strategies. We also spent some time thinking about the people in our school who do unseen jobs. We wrote letters of appreciation to thank them for everything they do for us. On Thursday, we created some role plays to show what good manners look like, and considered how we are all responsible for our actions.
In maths, we started the year by learning about factors and how to use our times tables knowledge to help identify all of the factor pairs. We recapped maths vocabulary such as the product, multiple and even spoke about square numbers! Next week, we will continue with our multiplication and division topic. Any further times tables practice that can be done at home will definitely benefit the children going forward.
We had a rather cold, but fantastic first games session on Wednesday. The children were treated to a new carousel of sports including a new sport, Lacrosse. The children approached this new activity with great gusto and despite having a shorter session, they really enjoyed it. We ended our week with an art session and we explored how paint can create different effects.
We hope you all have a lovely weekend.
Year 5
Year 5 has settled back into school exceptionally well. We have started 2025 with a focus on wellbeing and values that we hold dear at St Olave’s. We started the week exploring trustworthiness and how trust can have an impact across our lives in many different ways. The children enjoyed two engaging activities, ‘Trusty Transmitters’ and ‘Treading with Trust’ which helped to test our trustworthiness, understanding the importance of trust and working collaboratively in an effective way.
We then explored the idea of gratitude and how we expressed our appreciation for others. The children created gratitude messages to fill our gratitude jar that we will enjoy weekly as a class. Every pupil also wrote a letter to express their appreciation to a member of non-teaching staff at St Olave’s after developing an understanding of the impact and importance of everyone’s contribution in helping the school to run. On Wednesday, we explored manners and even wrote an etiquette manual demonstrating our high expectations for St Olave’s students. Finally, we looked at the value of responsibility and what it means to us and our role in our local community. For this, Year 5 went out to litter pick the local area. We were amazed with their enthusiasm and how much rubbish they managed to collect - well done Year 5!
In English, we have started our new topic exploring non-fiction reports, linking this to migration. We explored the features of a non-fiction report and started to gather information to create our own. In Maths, we began our multiplication unit and explored formal written methods for multiplication. We developed our understanding of the area model to support multiplication of any number by 2 digits or more. Year 5 started the term by heading back in time to Ancient Egypt, starting our history topic with a comparison between prehistoric Britain and Ancient Egyptian civilisations.
Year 6
It has been wonderful to see the Year 6 children return to school with such fantastic attitudes and enthusiasm. We have had an inspiring start to the term, focusing on Emotional Wellbeing and Mental Health.
To begin the week, the children have engaged in meaningful discussions about the values of fairness and justice. Their passion and thoughtful contributions demonstrated their growing maturity and sense of empathy. We explored how fairness is a quality we should all strive to embody, as it fosters trust and strengthens friendships—values that are integral to a harmonious classroom and community.
Building on this, we delved into the UK Justice System, reflecting on the importance of consequences as a way of upholding a moral code within society. The children considered how fairness is essential in promoting justice, ensuring equality, and creating a safe environment for everyone. It was a thought-provoking session that encouraged critical thinking and debate, and we were impressed by the pupils’ insight and engagement.
As part of our Wellbeing focus, we discussed the importance of appreciation and gratitude. Each class then wrote ‘Postcards of Appreciation’ for two members of staff we know work extremely hard for our school, Mrs Beresiner our Assistant Bursar and Miss Diniz our cleaner. Both staff members always go the extra mile for our school and we wanted to ensure they felt valued. We also had an open and honest discussion about manners and etiquette and the children created a St Olave's Prep School Etiquette Manual. Chapters included: Polite Communication, Table Manners and Digital Etiquette.
Furthermore, Year 6 embarked on an exciting new topic in English, diving into the world of Shakespeare. They began by reading the prologue of Romeo and Juliet and brought the vivid language to life through freeze frames of phrases such as "an ancient grudge" and "death mark'd by love." The children also created informative posters filled with fascinating facts about William Shakespeare and started reading Romeo and Juliet from Mr William Shakespeare’s Plays by Marcia Williams. In Science, they explored how the body transports water and nutrients through osmosis and diffusion, conducting experiments with gummy bears soaked overnight in different liquids to observe the changes. Meanwhile, in Art, the children delved into the work of David Hockney, learning about his unique techniques and creating detailed artist study pages inspired by his iconic style.
Sport
Happy New Year everyone! This week has seen the change of sports at Games. The children have been introduced to dance, pop lacrosse and netball in the first week back at Games. The children enjoyed the new lessons even with the cold weather. EYFS have embarked upon their dance lessons with great enthusiasm. Lower School have started their topic of health related fitness by looking at agility this week, what it is and how it is used in a wide range of sports. Upper School has started a topic of disability within sport and how inclusion in sport is vital for everyone, specifically taking part in seated volleyball this week.
Outdoor Learning
The children have started their winter curriculum as the weather has been so cold. The children will complete their projects over this term which does involve some trips to the allotment to observe various things. Some classes have already filled up their matchboxes and others will follow next week. Some of the younger children even helped to put some new bark chippings on our paths at lunchtime.
Languages
Welcome back everyone! We had an amazing start in the Languages department and we can’t wait to share our news with you all!
The topic for Early Years and Year 1 this term is family: the children started to recognise the core vocabulary and they met our toy family, Legrand. In preparation for the topic of the term which is describing your hair and eyes, this week Year 2 has revised colours.
In the Upper School, Year 3 started with the topic of weather and explored vocabulary for the weather in French, practising with miming and a treasure hunt game; Year 4 started 2025 with the notes of La Mer, by Debussy: our topic this half term is music and this week the children learnt some instruments in French.
In Latin, the Year 6 children have listened to the experience of the Candidus and Corinthus, two of the family’s slaves, to understand what it could have meant in Roman times to be invaded, to be conquered and to be enslaved. From a grammatical perspective, this week the children have examined the adverbs and their formation.
Music
Following their excellent performance in the Christmas Carol Service, the Upper School children stepped into the Music Room raring to go this week! Year 4 started a new topic on Tuesday, ‘Body and Tuned Percussion’. They will be taking inspiration from their class topic ‘Rainforests’ to compose rainforest melodies, evaluate and improve them this half term. This week we learnt about how effective body percussion can be as we created a soundscape for a rainforest. We performed this to our teachers too and will share with the rest of the school during Singing Assembly next Tuesday.
Year 3 will also be composing their own pentatonic melodies based on a Chinese New Year Theme. This week we focussed on using musical terminology to describe current Chinese New Year music so that we can use this as inspiration for our own compositions this half term. We also used movement to describe what we were listening to and took inspiration from watching a dragon dance clip.
Nursery and Reception learnt two new songs in their singing lesson this week. We learnt a song about a ‘Rhythm Robot’ where we used ‘call and response’ in our singing and added our own robot dance moves!
Design & Technology
Year 3 Electronic Posters
This week Year 3 pupils investigated their new DT topic by learning about information design and methods of communication through imagery.
Year 4 Slingshot Cars
Pupils in Year 4 assembled the chassis for their slingshot cars by glueing the card to their pre-cut wooden dowels. They proceeded further by attaching the axles ensuring the wheel alignment is parallel.
Year 5 Wooden Bridges
Year 5 pupils explored different bridge structures by experimenting with shaping paper to create load bearing structures.
Year 6 Steady Hand Games
This week Year 6 pupils shaped the metal path for their steady hand games.