St Peter's 2-8 Newsletter I 23

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process, I am pleased to announce that Mrs Charlotte Jones will become a full time teaching assistant with immediate effect in Year 2. I am sure you will join me in congratulating Charlotte on her new post and I know she will be a huge success.

Alex Tyler has been completing work experience in Nursery and she will become a teaching assistant in Nursery (Acorns) until the end of the Summer Term and once again I know she will be an amazing addition to our wonderful Nursery team.

This week we hosted Parent consultations with all teachers, I hope you have found these productive.

One of this week’s highlights has been the House Football competition, with Year 2 and Year 3 playing against each other within their year group bubbles. The competition was hotly contested with Monk the eventual winners. Well done to all planning to welcome the children in school in our football stars and thank you to Miss Flockhart, January, to change to a remote learning approach Miss Beaumont and the staff who helped to run it. overnight and then a return to face to face teaching over the past three weeks. The staff have Next week we will be running an Easter Holiday displayed so much creativity in their delivery of the School and Miss Flockhart, who is organising the week, has prepared a brilliant selection of fun curriculum to enable each child’s education activities for the children. The timetable and journey to be as exciting and motivating as possible. Despite all that has happened this term, I instructions of what the children need to bring will be sent out today and we look forward to know the children have thoroughly enjoyed their welcoming the children to St Peter’s 2-8 on learning.

Monday.

This week the children in Reception celebrated The staff have been busy planning their themes for Holi, one of the major Hindu festivals. Holi is an ancient festival also known as the ‘festival of love’, next term and although they are top secret at the the ‘festival of colours’, and the ‘festival of spring’. moment, I can assure you they will be extremely It is celebrated in South Asian countries, especially exciting and motivating for the children.

I would like to convey my sincere gratitude to the in India and Nepal. The festival is celebrated for two to three days. Hindus believe that spring is full teaching and teaching assistant staff, who have had of colours so they throw coloured water on each to adapt in response to many iterations of other. The children had a wonderful time joining in Government guidance throughout the term. Their a paint party as can be seen in the pictures below.

On Saturday last week I was incredibly fortunate to join the Reception children with their swimming lessons. Mr Maycock, Miss Flockhart, Miss Beaumont and Mrs Jones have been teaching the children throughout the year and it was wonderful to be able to be in the water to support the children. I was astonished by their confidence in the water, how much progress they have made over the year and most importantly how much fun they were having during their lessons. I am looking forward supporting the staff team next term.

This week we have had interviews for the teaching assistant vacancy following the departure of Mrs Moss in March. After a thorough recruitment

Newsletter No: 23 Friday, 26th March 2021

We observed a minute’s silence at 12 noon on Tuesday to recognise the National Day of Reflection after a year since the first lockdown announced by our Prime Minister. What a year it has been! This term has been extraordinary,

commitment and positivity to prepare, preserve and deliver as much of St Peter’s in different ways has been astonishing. These words are not said lightly and we are incredibly lucky to have them teaching and looking after our children. I am so proud of our children who constantly display incredible resilience throughout the past twelve months. They continue to adapt to the changes presented to them always with a smile on their face. Finally, can I thank you- the parents, grandparents, guardians and friends of the schoolfor your constant support. Your letters, emails and thoughtful gifts to staff have kept us all going through this difficult time and is very much appreciated by all. I hope you have a wonderful Easter Holiday, a time to spend with family and friends when we are able to do so.

Thank you to all the families who took part in the Comic Relief videos– I hope you enjoy watching the compilation.

My very best wishes,

Bea C (2H) has managed to cartwheel her way to raise £45 for Age UK. She was sponsored 10p per cartwheel – that's 450 cartwheels! Well done Bea– what a superstar!

Notice Board MUSICAL NOTES I can’t quite believe we have made it to the end of another slightly unusual term. The children have shown such resilience and continue to demonstrate the fantastic learning they carried out at home. Year 1 have especially impressed me this week by performing a song we learned in lockdown on their recorders and chime bars. It was called B A Star which I think is quite apt!

MRS JONES—OUR NEW YEAR 2 TEACHING ASSISTANT

HOUSE FOOTBALL WINNERS

MONK

Our children in Reception have really developed their listening ears, it is quite tricky to sing in tune when you are only four, but our children have really found their singing voices this term!

This week they have been making up their own lyrics to our new song “Here I come!”

Year 2 have also been working hard on their singing voices, they are loving our new Oliver!

Medley. A number of our children would happily take on the role of Oliver on stage, fantastic singing all round!

Year 3 have been discovering what makes Beethoven such an amazing composer; seven minutes worth of fabulous music all from only four notes in his 5th Symphony. They have tracked his opening motif through listening following both a graphic score and a traditional music score and this week performed the opening on percussion instruments. Our team of lovely instrumental teachers have been very impressed with how the children have transferred back to face to face lessons and we are all looking forward to next half term when the children will have the opportunity to perform again in a concert.

house points trophy Winners Week 1

Monk

Notice Board

Winners Week 2

Winners This Week

Walmgate

value champions

Micklegate learning superheroes

•All of RA

•Jojo S (RA)

•Alfie S-D (RC)

•Thomas B (RA)

•Ethan P (1C)

•Esmé C-C (RC)

•Giorgio M (1E)

•Finbar Y (RC)

•Ciara R (1E)

•Kiron N (1C)

•Lucy H (1J) •Olivia A (2H) •Gerard B (2J) •Joy Elise McA (3C)

•Martha T (1E) •Albert T-P (1J) •Bea C (2H) •Annaliese H (2J) •Xi Z (3C)

•All of 3M

•Scarlett D (3M)

•Toby M (3S)

•Hildy W (3S)

PE award •All of Year 2

•All of Year 3

Music award •Nina H (2J) •Seb L (2H)

The highlights of our week for PE were the inter-house football tournaments for Years 2 and 3. Year 3 competed first on Monday morning and were blessed with glorious weather for it – you’d have thought it was summer! All the children were very excited and arrived filled with house pride, raring to go. All the matches were hotly contested and there were some very close scores which made for very exciting viewing.

All the teams demonstrated excellent teamwork and sportsmanship and it

was brilliant to see everyone getting stuck in and fully committing to the match play! The ‘Don’t Get Stung’ activity provided a fun break from the matches and once again, the children excelled at this, overcoming the obstacle course with excellent dexterity and coordination. Overall we were super proud of Year 3 during their tournament, well done!

had very little prior football experience but you would certainly not know this watching their matches! Once again, the competition proved to be a thrilling one with extremely close results! Everyone exhibited brilliant teamwork skills and determination throughout the tournament which was brilliant to see. The children carried their enthusiastic and Unfortunately for Year determined attitude 2, Tuesday’s matches through into their were a lot colder, ‘Don’t Get Stung’ game, however this definitely avoiding the obstacles did not dampen their with excellent spirits! Some of the coordination! We were children in Year 2 have exceptionally proud of

PE Year 2 throughout the whole morning! Well done!

Finally, our thanks must go to all the teachers and teaching assistants who assisted in the running of the competitions, ensuring the children knew what they were meant to be doing and when they were playing. We could not have done it without you, so thank you!

PE

ACORNS

Spring has most definitely arrived in the Acorns, and after a visit from the little ducklings last week, we are all excited for Easter!

We have been enjoying lots of Easter crafts, a big egg hunt, chocolate water, decorating our Easter tree and even squirting each other with water in the warmer weather!

CONKERS

Conkers have JUMPED into Spring with face paints, planting seeds, Easter egg hunts and chocolate egg treats!

RECEPTION

Our last week before Easter, the sun has been shining and we’ve been having so

told, with children acting out their friends’ stories about monster trucks, spiders, skipping turtles and dogs! The children have also been enjoying our Numicon challenge of the week. The children have been working out whether a number is odd or even and then much fun! shooting it from the top of the tower and down into the baskets on the ground. We even had fun trying our different ways of We have been so busy inside and outside this week! On Monday transporting the Numicon back up to the top of the tower! The morning we were all very excited to be greeted by lots of little children have also been outside practicing their phonics with tadpoles swimming around in our tank. The children have loved Sonic! They have had great fun reading and then shooting words using the magnifying glass to spy on the little creatures and there on the wall with their mini nerf guns and bullets. We have also has been lots of discussions about frogs and life cycles! Our love been carrying on practicing our woodwork skills of hammering. of Swan Lake has also continued to grow this week. We have been We have been so impressed with the care taken by our little gifted the most gorgeous ballet outfits by parents - thank you! The builders! To top off what has been the most beautiful few weeks children have loved dressing up and practicing their ballet moves with the Reception children back in school, we decided to in them. They have also enjoyed our new pop up role play area - a celebrate in style with lots of fun and smiles! On Thursday, theatre dressing room. They have been preparing their hair, after learning all about the Hindu festival of Holi, we decided to makeup and outfits, all ready for their shows. Following the go outside and celebrate with a paint party! It was magical children’s passion for performance and story telling, we have also dancing to music out in the sun! We then carried our adventure been creating our own theatre in each classroom… our rugs have with an Easter egg hunt and we all enjoyed the reward at the end! transformed into a stage! The children have been given their own story telling class books which they can come and write in at any It has been the most wonderful three weeks with the children time and when the stage magically appears again, the story can back in the school with us. We are so proud of you Reception! be acted out and performed by all! Our mini actors and actresses Have an amazing Easter break. We can’t wait to see you very have loved it! We have already had some wonderful stories being soon.

RECEPTION

YEAR 1

Wow the last three weeks seem to have flown by in an instant.

It has been so lovely to have the children back in school and we have been enjoying each other's company and getting reacquainted once again. The last few weeks have been mainly about ducklings if we are honest... the children have loved having them in the classroom, learning how to handle and care for them and watching them grow. Now they have all gone on to new homes we will miss them! We have used this wonderful experience to learn about duck lifecycles and

other animals that come from eggs too. Did you know a duckbilled platypus lays eggs?

In our maths lessons we have been making the most of the sunny weather and taking our maths outside exploring capacity and weight and we have also been writing all about our theme book the Wild Robot, editing our work and improving it. This book has really captured the children's imaginations this term and we have all grown very fond of Roz and her animal friends. Well done Year 1, we are so proud of you and wish you and your families a happy and restful Easter break. I wonder what awaits us next term..?

YEAR 1

Everyone in Year 2 cannot believe how quickly the last three weeks have gone! Online teaching and Zoom calls seem in the far distance and we have all LOVED being back together again. Our new friends the ducklings all left to go to their next homes on Friday and we are so grateful to the Year 1 parents who adopted them. I would say that our classrooms seem quiet without the constant chirruping and quacking… but the children have made up for that! Our ‘mini-term’ of work, based on our ducklings, is almost complete and within that we have learnt about the life cycle of a duck, facts about duck upkeep, read stories about ducklings and written our own, carried out science experiments, been measuring and learning amazing facts about wing span andof course- done some amazing art! In between all this we have managed to have lots of fun with sport. On Tuesday morning we were so excited to take part in our first Football Tournament! We played short matches representing our Houses and loved being both competitors and supporters!

The children have been learning football skills in their lessons and this was a great way of them putting all of this learning into practice. Massive thanks go to Miss Flockhart and Miss Beaumont for organising this exciting event and to the PE graduates for arranging football games to play whilst we waited to play. We await the results of the competition on Friday!

In art we used different skills such as painting, drawing and some serious cutting out to make Easter cards, based on an Easter egg hunt. Cutting out blades of grass was challenging and lots of resilience was needed. Cutting out skills are often overlooked as being important, but it is something that the staff in Year 2 feel is such a transferrable skill. One to practise over the holiday!

YEAR 2

At the end of the week, we have made Easter nests from chocolate and rice krispies on. Making them involved some learning about science (changing materials) and maths (how many mini eggs do we get?) They were yummy!

This has been an extraordinary term. Throughout it all, the children have kept their enthusiasm for learning, for which we are hugely grateful. We have been sad to lose our much loved Mrs Moss as we returned to school but we are all delighted to welcome now our fully fledged Teaching Assistant, Mrs Jones! Welcome on board, Mrs Jones- Year 2 is a great place to be!

Have a wonderful Easter holidays everyone. We will see you for more exciting learning in the Summer Term!

YEAR 3

What an incredible journey it has been in Year Three this term. Using our themed text ‘The Jungle Book’ as a vehicle for learning, we have been on a rollercoaster of an adventure! We have explored jungles and rainforests across the world, written in depth pieces of writing inspired by our story, learnt all about chocolate, researched famous artists and used their style to create our own work, baked and made delicious treats, written our own jungle themed poems, used iPad apps to create movies linked to our writing, held great debates about deforestation, raised the profile for Fairtrade, delved into the life of David Attenborough and discovered all about India…to name but a few things!

We finished this week on a real high, starting with house football on Monday morning. Thank you to Miss Flockhart for organising it for us. On Tuesday we rounded off our last Forest School session of the term with an eggciting Easter egg hunt! The children worked in pairs to find clues that had been plotted around the forest and enjoyed a nice, chocolatey egg at the end of the hunt. On Wednesday and Thursday we looked at poetry and the many different types of poems there are. We focussed on Haiku poems which are an ancient

form of poem writing renowned for their precise syllables!

Ours were inspired by the jungle and were a good demonstration of the mature vocabulary our children are developing. In amongst the excitement of our final week, the children enjoyed fun swim on Thursday and got creative with some fun Easter activities!

We would like to wish you all a wonderful, relaxing break. It has been a term of great resilience, friendship and enthusiastic learning. We are already excited to welcome the children back to kick-start our Summer term with a new theme and more exciting learning opportunities!

If you would like to fundraise for this year’s designated school charity from the comfort of your own armchair, then please read on!

I do NOT have the Easyfundraising App:Download the Easyfundraising App from your usual App Store (it’s free) Open the App You will be asked to Create an Account or Login. Please click Create an Account In the Cause window, type Friends of St Peter’s 2-8 - York and click Support This Cause Now click Create Account (use email address – pink box) Type in your details and a memorable password Click Create my Account You should now have been transferred to the Easyfundraising Home Page Choose the icon you wish to use (you will be transferred to that website/app) Shop and Check Out as normal Donations will be automatically subtracted and linked to your Account at Easyfundraising

Refer & Earn Once you have set up your account, you will notice a Refer & Earn button at the bottom of the page. If you click this, you can forward the link to a friend/relative to raise money for Friends of St Peter’s 2-8 – York and we will receive an extra “raise £5 and receive £5 on us” Easyfundraising incentive!

I ALREADY have the App, but want to change the Cause Enter the App Click My Account My Account Settings Click Change My Cause Type “Friends of St Peters 2-8 - York” into the Search bar Change to this cause Login again to refresh the settings Shop as before

EVERYONE ALWAYS REMEMBER TO DO YOUR ONLINE SHOPPING VIA THE EASYFUNDRAISING APP Enjoy Shopping!

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