Godstowenews

Spring Term 24 February 2023

Key Dates for next week

27th February

3 30pm U9 A-C Netball vs RMS (away)

U13 Football ESFA Round 2 match (home) World Book Week

28th February

Sports Team photos

3 30pm Senior Schools Fair, JK Theatre

1st March

Main School Activities Day

4 30pm U13 A-B District Netball at Wycombe Abbey (away)

Our year 5 and 6 runners

A letter from the Headmistress

Having been to many larger school events before starting at Godstowe, I was delighted when I realised the Summer Ball was scheduled to fall in 2023 I do hope that you have now all seen the ‘Greatest Showman Summer Ball’ posters around Lodge and Main School- what a brilliant theme, and what a night of fun lies ahead for us all on Saturday 1st July Please do buy your tickets and do come along for what will be a super night of celebration, fundraising and dancing. We shall be buying several staff tables, and it will be a chance for us all to spend the evening together, with a silent auction and some dancing into the small hours Tickets were released this week and do get purchasing and organise your tables for a night to remember!

2nd March

8 15am Positive Parenting with The Wellbeing Hub World Book Day in Main School and Lodge

4 30pm U13 Lacrosse vs St George's, Harpenden (home)

3rd March

EXEAT - timings to be found on page 17 of red term diary

4 30pm - UIII's Parents Evening

It was wonderful to see so many of you at our Senior School Information evening and our ‘What Lies Ahead in Years 7 and 8’ event last night. This was the first event of this nature at Godstowe and it was good to welcome along your daughters so they can begin to see the wonderful benefits of staying in Years 7 and 8 Chef Adrian made it along and he mentioned how good it was to meet so many of you On that note, I have been impressed by two new features in our dining room this week Firstly, there is a rather large gratitude board full of thank you letters from the girls to our kitchen team, expressing their thanks for recent food and the effort gone into the menus. The girls in Main School have also been offered the chance to give their feedback every lunch time on feedback cards Chef Adrian has just been in to see me to say the feedback has been very good, but where there is room for improvement, he has listened and will endeavour to make the changes that matter to your daughters. We are very lucky, the food has been delicious and this is just the start of that journey!

Claire Gillett, Head of Lodge Hannah Smart, Head of Nursery

We are learning about traditional tales in Nursery and this week’s theme was Goldilocks and the Three Bears The children have enjoyed making a display for the Nursery by collaging bears using various art materials. We have been exploring sizes and learning how to order and group objects determined by their size, as well as learning to story sequence and retell the story in our own words. You may have noticed that the children's uniforms have been extra messy this week as they've loved weighing, scooping and playing with porridge oats. We apologise for the mess, but it's all in the name of fun! In Cookery, to celebrate Shrove Tuesday, the children made some delicious pancakes and used fruit to decorate them into one of the three bears

The sound of the week ' u ' has been a slightly tricky one, however the children bought in some fantastic items from home for our magic bag activity which was a great help. This lead onto a great discussion about unicycles which the children were mesmerised by! Throughout the week the children had fun getting creative with water paints on their ' u for umbrella' art work. To end a fun-filled week, we enjoyed some relaxing Goldilocks and the Three Bears yoga and went on an adventure to the woods to see if we could find the three bears’ cottage.

It has been wonderful to have Beginners back after their half term break They are refreshed and raring to go! We have introduced them to their new topic ‘Growing and Changing’ and have completed work based around the story Jasper’s Beanstalk We have sequenced and retold the story as well as planting our own beans and written instructions for how to do this. We can’t wait to see how tall they grow! In Maths we have focused on number bonds to 10 and worked on a number bond rainbow. We have also been learning our colours in French What a busy week! We look forward to our school trip which is coming up soon and thank you for returning your child’s consent form promptly

In Literacy, Kindergarten children have been looking at the story "The Way Back Home", first as told in a short, but silent, animated film and then the book by Oliver Jeffers. They identified the similarities and differences between the two versions and went on to write about and illustrate these comparisons This was a good introduction to our new topic "Space and the Solar System" Using the favourite mnemonic , "My Very Excited Mother Just Served Us Noodles" the children are learning to place the planets in positional order from the sun The theme continued into Art, when the children learnt how to create different patterned paper, using marbling ink, which they will use next week in a Space composition

Transition and Kindergarten enjoyed an assembly this week about thinking before you speak. They learnt to decide whether what they were saying is True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary and Kind, and using the example of toothpaste, they realised that it is hard to take words back once spoken!

Transition also loved joining with Lower School for their assembly on Wednesday They heard about Shrove Tuesday and some of the traditions associated with it They also enjoyed watching some of the teachers tossing pancakes! Transition have been focusing on dragons this week, using similes to describe the dragons they painted in Art. They have listened to various stories about dragons and then wrote their own dragon-themed story In Maths, we have been looking at 2D shapes, investigating their properties and whether shapes are symmetrical