JUNIOR SCHOOL
NEWSLETTER Friday 12th October 2018 Dear Parents After the peace of Quaker Week we’ve had a much noisier time over the past five days. This partly comes from the range of sports fixtures we have had, including almost all of Key Stage 2 being involved on Tuesday afternoon. Thankfully in much pleasanter weather than the more typically autumnal gusts and rain besieging us at the moment. We also had to contend with the crack and bang of musketry on Wednesday. You’d be right to think this isn’t terribly Quakerly, but it is not without a valid reason or indeed historical connection! As part of their work on the Civil War Year 9 have a yearly visit from Sealed Knot who re-enact the lives of soldiers and their families during the conflict. Hitching a ride with the Senior School, some of our classes went out to learn about all sorts of aspects of daily life then, from gruesome medical treatment to cooking and diet. They also got to see how soldiers would face a cavalry charge and, while they were doing their Kids Marathon laps at lunch, faced a musket volley (no projectiles involved you’ll be glad to hear!) As the topic of Under the Sea is drawing to a close, the children in Foundation have been taking part in a fact-finding hunt about different sea creatures. They've learnt that scientists call Starfish, Sea Stars because they are not actually fish and they have measured how big the wingspan of a Manta Ray would be which is up to 20 feet. The children have made multi-coloured fish pictures using celery sticks to make the patterns and have used pipe cleaners to make beautiful coloured sea anemones. In Maths the children have been working on counting accurately 1:1, which is much harder when the pictures you are counted don't move. Helen Hoy has been encouraging the children to try and say the number at the same time as moving their fingers; sometimes we speak quicker than our fingers move. The children have also been learning circle game rhymes which will help with reading as they can hear the rhythm and pattern in the rhyme. The children in Year 1 and 2 have been working thoroughly hard this week and luckily the wet weather from the weekend didn’t hang around, making their outdoor lessons a little drier than they could have been! They quickly realised that shapes are all around us and started the week with a shape hunt in their playground. Some of the children were quite surprised to see shapes in familiar objects that they play with on a daily basis.