St Bartholomew’s C of E Primary School

Although the spring term is the shortest term of the year, we have still managed to achieve such a lot in a short space of time. Below are just a few of the highlights that each year group has been doing this term.

Our Early Years children were full of dinosaur adventure for their topic ‘Dangerous Dinosaurs’ this term. They have written letters to the T-Rex and he even replied! They have also spent quite a bit of time exploring in our wildlife garden where they played and used the outdoor instruments. They even found time to build their very own car wash!

Year 1 have been very busy! In English they created new characters for our focus book, 'The Day the Crayons Quit' and have written letters in character. They had an exciting day celebrating Chinese New Year - printing, making lanterns and hearing traditional stories about how the years came to be named after animals. They have been developing their cooking skills, making delicious salad baskets with Mrs Duly and a very kind and generous team of parent helpers. They have explored rhyming words in poetry and written directions using their own imaginative maps based on those used by those dastardly burglars Hefty Hugh and Lanky Len in ‘What the Ladybird Heard’ by Julia Donaldson. They even had an explosive start to their ‘Moon Zoom’ topic with a rocket launch!

Year 2 have really enjoyed their music topic 'Beat, band, boogie' where they focused on six movements from 'Carnival of the Animals’ by the composer Saint Saens and learnt which instruments represent the different animals in the piece.

This term the children also received lots of replies to their letters from residents at three local care homes. It meant a great deal to the children to have such loving responses to the heartfelt letters that they wrote before Christmas.

Pirate Day was loved by all the children when they came to school dressed as pirates and used the hall to gather their crews, build pirate ships, paint flags, climb the rigging, sing sea shanties and dance away to 'the Wellerman'.

Year 3 studied ‘Gods and Mortals’ for one of their topics; they had a visit from the almighty Zeus and were shocked to hear some of his stories. They looked at a timeline of Ancient Greece, made Ancient Greek masks out of mod roc and created some great presentations about Greek Gods using PowerPoint. They also learnt about predators and prey and looked at food chains for their ‘Predator’ topic. They also designed electrical posters in DT and had fun making up Salsa dances in dance lessons.

Year 4 showed great enthusiasm for learning in their topic of 'Potions'. They sketched some fantastic bottles which could hold a magical potion, with a focus on using shading to show shape and form. They were also set a challenge to design an anti-forgetfulness potion and applied all their learning to write some mysterious and intriguing spells to accompany the potions. They thoroughly embraced 'I am Warrior' topic with an epic battle pretending to be Romans and Celts on the school field trying out many tactics of defending their property and 'attacking' the opposition. They also learnt about the differences between Romans and Celts, the chronology of the Romans and how Boudicca was involved in their disagreements.

Year 5 undertook a ‘stargazers’ topic exploring our solar system and looking at the order of our planets and wrote mnemonics to help remember the order. They also covered a topic on Pharaohs where they looked at the mummification process of ancient Egypt (very gory) and mummified some tomatoes which they bathed in salt to dehydrate the 'bodily fluids' and found that after one week there was on average a dramatic drop from 80g to 35g!

They also visited Haslemere Museum where they each mummified a toy (no toys were hurt in the process!), and also made some fantastic clay pots to hold organs from the mummification process.

Year 6 donned artists’ berets and undertook a ‘Gallery Rebels’ topic where they looked at the history of artistic movements of the 19th and 20th centuries from Realism, through to Expressionism and right up to Pop Art. They really enjoyed learning about the Impressionists and drew their own versions of Monet’s Lilies by using the ‘tache’ technique that Monet pioneered. Year 6 also enjoyed their ‘Tomorrow’s World’ topic this term with the highlight being a fantastic trip to Winchester Science Centre where they learned how to program bots and back in school they designed websites using Edublogs.

All these wonderful events and learning opportunities for the children would not take place without a dedicated team of teachers, learning support assistants and parents along with the support we receive from the church. We are, as always, very grateful to them all for the work that they do.

Simon Avenell Headteacher

Palm Sunday visit

It was Palm Sunday, but because of a sore throat, five-year-old Bobby was kept home from church with his grannie. When the family returned home, they were carrying several palm fronds and Bobby asked them what they were for. “People held them over Jesus' head as He walked by,” his father explained.

Bobby was aghast. “I don’t believe it! The one Sunday I don't go, and He shows up!”

New Sunday Morning Children’s Group

On Sunday 5th February the CAF team started a new group for children.

On the 1st Sunday of each month, during the 10am service at St Bartholomew’s, children are able to leave the service and join the CAF team, in the Link, for a short lesson, prayers, craft activities and games! Children and helpers then re-join the service for a blessing and to show the congregation what they have been making. The group is supported by a number of volunteer helpers.

Our first session looked at, ‘The Sermon on the Mount’ when we learnt that the teachings of Jesus can be different to the view of the world and on Sunday 5th March the focus was on the promises that God made to Abraham. During this session there were several crafts connected to stars and we also made tents to show how Abraham and Sarah would have lived.

Our next session will be during the service, at St Bartholomew’s, on Mothering Sunday (19th March) followed by a Palm Sunday session on the 2nd April.

I would like to thank all of the wonderful volunteers who have made this group possible

Written by Victoria Martin