Good afternoon,
Here I am back from the Bingo extravaganza – what a superb evening complete with Rich Hall zooming in live from Las Vegas! We even had time to enjoy the Las Vegas scenery complete with the air ducts! Rich’s blend of brilliant comedy and bingo calling entertained us truly. Thank you to FOSS for arranging such a fun evening, Jesse and Marvin for their delicious lasagne and crumble and all the parents/ carers who were able to join us for the fun.
Thank you to all those parents who joined us for the Maths Workshop this morning – well over 150! Mr Gane and Miss Whiting took us through how we teach Maths, the resources we use and how parents can support their children at home. The PowerPoint will be made available to all parents along with my rather dubious filming skills!
This week Mrs Allen and Mrs Hayes also took the Year 1 parents on a whistle stop tour of Read Write Inc, (our phonics scheme), explaining how we teach phonics at St Stephen’s and its impact on reading and spelling. Thank you to all those parents who zoomed in for the meeting.
Volcanic Eruption
Miss Kelly’s Year 3 class delighted us with their superb assembly on Volcanoes complete with their own eruption! This was an assembly packed with facts, songs and dances! The children’s confident voices were literally raising the roof in the hall and as Scarlett in Year 6 stated it was ‘Hollywood standard’!
Life Bus
We had our ‘Lifebus’ sessions this half term with an expert from Coram Education. Coram Education is an organisation who plan schemes of work to develop children’s understanding of relationships and health education. The children used role play, art and discussion to tackle some of the topics that can be hard to talk about.
Ecology Centre
The Reception children had a fantastic time at the Ecology Centre and were blessed with beautiful sunny weather. They learnt about the different seasons and searched the park with tick lists for signs of winter. The children learnt about 3 animals that hibernate (hedgehogs, dormice and bats) and made a clay hedgehog, with objects found in the park, before settling them into a safe place to hibernate! They particularly enjoyed learning to identify different types of fungus. One of the favourites was jelly ear fungus!
Liturgy
Year 6 enjoyed learning about the Liturgy of the Church of England and grilled three great friends of the school: Rev Denis, Fr Richard and Jamie Sewell, a Curate in his final year of training for the priesthood. The children enjoyed the Q&A and learnt lots of valuable information.
Tag Rugby
Year 4 enjoyed a friendly game of Tag Rugby against Wetherby Prep at Club de Sport. They scored plenty of tries and had a great time.
Highland Fling – over to Louise and Justine
February 9th – Doors Open at 7pm, be there for 7.30pm
What a fun night we have planned for you! Come and join us for a spot of supper followed by a Ceilidh (think barn dancing but better). Don’t worry if you have never gone to a Ceilidh – it’s definitely a case of no experience necessary and you don’t need to be able to dance either. We have been extremely lucky to get one of the best Ceilidh bands agreeing to play for us. They are Edinburgh Hogmanay’s ceilidh band and have done star studded performances around the globe and now they are coming to St Stephens (https://www.whiskykiss.com/home-1). Tickets available on Parentmail – dig out that kilt!
Lost Property
Please, please, please label all of the children’s clothes clearly, it is quite an uphill battle trying to clear the mountains of unlabelled lost property each week. Our House Captains are going on a mammoth lost property hunt as I write!
Second-Hand Uniform Sale …. But this time with a twist!
FOSS have had so many fabulous donations from our wonderful parents for our fashion boutique, we have decided to combine a pre-loved uniform sale with a fashion sale!
We’ve also had a donation of brand-new, out-of-the-box, Clark’s shoes/boots, for children and adults.
So come on down and grab yourself a bargain!
Not only will you be supporting our fantastic school, you’ll also be helping us keep to our sustainable ethos.
Date/time: Thursday 26th January, at 3.30pm and at 5pm Come early as some items go fast!
Location: The playground outside the main entrance reception area
Donations: If you have any uniform, or pre loved fashion items to donate please bring them into the school by Monday 23rd, so we can resell them.
We are always looking for more volunteers to join our pre-loved uniform and fashion team. If you would like to help please contact Gehaan, (07931) 306237.
And lastly, next Friday we will be learning all about Lunar New Year with fun activities, parent workshops and an amazingly scrumptious lunch complete with chopsticks – can’t wait!
Have a great weekend.
Mr Schumm
