From Mrs Hall

It has been a wonderful week of storytelling as the boys enthusiastically shared their favourite books, stories and participated in story-themed quizzes too. Their enthusiasm for storytelling and discussion has been wonderful to see!

After much excitement around the idea of dressing up, we have decided to hold a Dress-Up Day on the last day of term, Friday 28 March. Each class will dress in costumes linked to their current theme, allowing for a fun and creative way to bring their learning to life.

• Reception – Spring 🌸
• Year 1 – Knights and Castles 🏰
• Year 2 – Africa 🦁

This fun day will culminate in our Celebration Assembly, where we will reflect on the term’s achievements. Parents are warmly invited to attend. If you need costume ideas or inspiration, please don’t hesitate to speak with your son’s class teacher. We are happy to help.

Over the next two weeks, we will be exploring the theme of respect—what it means, why it matters, and how we can show it in our daily lives. This week, we started by discussing the question: what is respect? To bring this concept to life, we shared the story of Elijah, who received kindness from a woman willing to share her food and water despite having very little. This act of generosity and mutual respect highlighted an important lesson: when we treat others with respect, they are far more likely to treat us with respect in return. We encourage you to continue this conversation at home, reinforcing the importance of respect in everyday interactions.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!

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Shell awards:

Reception: to Joshua for a super learning week, especially after the great excitement of his new baby brother arriving!
Year 1: to Skerdi for his motivation towards making great behaviour choices in the classroom. Well done, Skerdi!
Year 2: to Ben H, for his diligence, dedication and determination to complete each task to the best of his ability.

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Save the Dates !

Music Groups for Toddlers and Babies
Don't forget our toddler music group, Musical Shells and our Little Shells play sessions for pre-schoolers. We encourage you to spread the word to friends and family - all are welcome! (see flyers at the bottom of this newsletter).

Monday 10 March	tba	Year 2 Parents' Evening meetings (information and booking process will follow)
Tuesday11 March	tba	Reception and Year 1 Parents' Evening meetings (information and booking process will follow)
Friday 21 March	tba	PPA Book Sale in the Yard
Wednesday 26 March	All day	Reception trip to Manor Farm
Thursday 27 March	tba	Pre-Prep Mother's Day in the Woods
Friday 28 March	15:30/16:30	Term ends for Easter holidays, returning: Thursday 24 April

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Notices

Menus are available here on My School Portal. 
^{Reminder: no food is to be brought into the school and/or given to boys at any time, especially at sign-out.}

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Reception

What a fabulous all-round learning week we have had in Reception Class! From the life cycle of a duck to the birth of Joshua's new baby brother to checking on our incubating eggs to pancake making to weighing objects and exploring capacity, the boys have immersed themselves wholeheartedly in all!

In our Maths sessions this week we have been learning more about weight and capacity. The boys enjoyed experimenting with objects to make the scales balance and moved on to finding out how many scoopfuls of coloured rice fill the different sized containers. The language of weight/mass and capacity has progressed throughout the week.  

Learning about weight and capacity was perfect to link in with Shrove Tuesday, where the boys were able to actually weigh out and measure flour and milk (also adding two eggs) to make batter mix for their own pancakes. Miss Whitmore demonstrated how to make pancakes from the batter mix the boys had made on the kitchen hob. She chatted through what she was doing alongside cooking ten delicious pancakes for the boys to eat for their afternoon snack. What a yummy treat!

Cooking together is a great way of learning about weight and capacity as well as tasting the final product. Many boys said they enjoy doing this at home. Maybe set some time aside to have a go at doing this together during the term, if you have not tried it already. It is great fun too!

Please may the boys bring in a small Teddy Bear for their Forest School session NEXT Thursday, 13 March.

I hope you all have an enjoyable weekend.

Mrs Sarah Huntley
Reception Teacher

Year 1

The arrival of spring
The sunshine this week has helped the boys to really feel the end of winter and the arrival of the next season. The end of George’s hibernation and his return to the Pre-Prep was the first event that sparked discussion about what happens during the season of spring. Over the course of the next few weeks, the boys will explore some artists that have been inspired by the new growth in plants and nature that is typically seen during the spring months.

To start, the impressionist work of Vincent Van Gogh has been investigated. The boys were interested to learn that he liked to paint quickly in fast brushstrokes, and he particularly enjoyed painting outside, which is much easier when the weather is clement. As well as some of his more famous works which have been investigated through Thinking Skills sessions, the boys were encouraged to look more closely at his work on blossom trees to recreate their own work in a similar way. Instead of painting “en plein air” as Van Gogh did, we took our own pictures on iPads of a tree by the river that is just starting to blossom. We were then able to refer back to these in the classroom. The boys were encouraged to create the “impression” of clouds in the sky and blossom on the tree branches, just like Van Gogh did. They experimented with mixing colours on the paper as well as in the palate.

Spring has been a catalyst for Challenge Tasks in the classroom this week too. Making transient artworks out of shapes, buttons and pebbles has been one of the boys' favourite activities. Jack and the Beanstalk has sparked creativity in construction activities.

Mrs Victoria Ford
Year 1 Teacher
 

Year 2

On Monday, Year 2 joined 100,000 children across England at the start of Book Week in a very special Live event organised by the British Library: Global Tales of Nature-How Things Came to Be.

Children's authors and storytellers, including Michael Rosen, Sandra A Agard and Emily Hanna Grazebrook, told engaging tales and offered prompts for children to start penning their own stories of nature. Illustrator Allen Fatimaharan led a live draw-along and gave participants tips on how to illustrate their stories. 

Michael and Allen answered questions from students and talked about different ways to start reading and writing creatively. Allen shared ‘I wasn’t very good at reading when I was little, so I think pictures really helped me get into stories, and made me want to read them.’ 

One of the boy's favourite tales was an African tale about a partying tortoise. Why does the tortoise have a Criss-Crossed Shell? 

On Thursday, World Book Day, the boys shared their favourite book, explaining their favourite characters. 

We are looking forward to seeing the boy's creations of a "Story in a Jar" on Monday morning. 

In Maths, the boys enjoyed revisiting and furthering their knowledge of measurement, both standard and non-standard units. 

Mrs Sarah Hall
Year 2 Teacher
 

Forest School

There is definitely a feeling of spring in the air this week, so the boys in Year R decided to give spring a helping hand with their spring wands. Using willow, fir cones, colourful feathers and bits of wool, they created their own wands and then wandered around the Pilgrims’ garden chanting their own magical spells to help spring on its way. We even managed to make some bubble wands!

Year 1 this week learned to use nature to help them identify basic parts of the human body and learn about the senses. After having fun creating a stick outline of someone, the boys paid attention to detail and added in appropriate labels in order to identify key features and the various senses.

Patterns are everywhere in nature and many of these are repeated. With this in mind, we decided to take a bit of a mathematical approach with Year 2 and see if we could create our own repeated patterns using natural items. We started simply and then, as confidence grew, the patterns got more and more complicated. Can you guess what the patterns were?

Mrs Fiona Walker
Forest School and LAMDA Teacher

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Pre-Prep for pre-schoolers