The Chronicle

In Science this week, Junior 6 began their new topic exploring how living things have evolved over time from single celled organisms to the present day. The children were tasked with laying out a timeline of the history of life on earth beginning at the first signs of life. We were amazed to find out how recently human life has been present on our planet compared to the incredible amount of time that the earth itself has existed. We learned that the first single celled organisms arrived on earth 3,600 million years ago, the first multi-celled organisms appeared 700 million years ago, and modern humans only appeared a staggering 0.2 million years ago! Well done children, you showed real curiosity as you investigated our planet's evolutionary history.

This week, the children in Junior 5 have been busy undertaking their termly assessments. Thankfully, they have all taken it in their stride and felt that it has been rather a chilled start to the new term. It has been so lovely seeing our children again and hearing all about their Christmas breaks. We also started our RSHE this week, talking about the different pressures we can be put under. The children shared their ideas, opinions and knowledge openly and respectfully, as always.

Junior 4 have been busy raising the roof in preparation for this evening's performance of Young Voices. With words and actions to the tunes, Moana mash-up and a Pop-Medley 2024, we are all excited about our first stage performance at the Resorts World Arena. To complement Junior 4's Anglo Saxon topic in History, in Art we have been learning about weaving; starting with basic paper weave, before moving on to experimenting with different warp patterns. This will later lead to weaving with frames, wool and threads. 

Junior 3 were celebrating a wonderful start to 2024 this week, with the news that they had each achieved the highest grade of Distinction in their LAMDA exams! We usually have a very high percentage of children achieving a Distinction, but only once before has a whole year group achieved 100% Distinction! The children were very proud of themselves and there were plenty of smiles during their drama lesson on Wednesday when the children were told their results. The children then added their Mastery and Practice Junior da Vinci stickers to their mark sheets as their reward for all their hard work in Drama last term. Well done, Junior 3!

We are very glad to have Junior 2 back in school and proud of how well they have all settled back into the routine. We have been busy in Maths learning about 2D and 3D shapes this week. In English, we read The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson and the children have shown great creativity in retelling the story on a story map. Linking with this beautiful story, we have been using atlases to locate China on a map. Children have located and colour coded China on a world map before labelling the capital city and other major cities, rivers and landmarks. Great work, Junior 2!

We welcomed Junior 1 back with a breath of fresh (cold) air this week, which linked in nicely to our new science topic of Polar Places! This began with looking at what sort of activities we can do in the winter and how we can keep ourselves safe, especially around frozen water, which has potential dangers. We also looked in detail at how snowflakes are all unique and had a go at creating our own paper cutouts of them. In English we have begun to study a new book – Mrs Armitage on Wheels – with lots of hilarity especially when adding actions to the story to help us remember it. Geography has seen us start to look a little more closely at where we live in the world as we begin to study the United Kingdom, finding it on maps of the world and Europe, and seeing how small we are! Transport is our new focus in History, where we began to compare old and new types of transport, before we delve deeper into what was invented when and by whom.

This week, Reception have come back to school with such enthusiasm and gusto! They are so grown-up and are flying with their learning already in 2024. We have started our ‘Amazing Animals’ topic, finding out about animals that live under the sea. The children loved finding out facts about different animals and shared the information that they found with one another in small groups. What a super start to the New Year!

This week, in Dormcie the children have started their new topic, Transport. We have been listening to and looking out for different forms of transport all around us.

In Badgers and Hedgehogs during circle time, the children were excited to tell each other about their various festive celebrations – some of us passed a toy teddy around to ‘Tell Teddy’ and some of us shared our holiday news outside around the campfire.

Our topic over the Lent half term is, ‘People Who Help Us’ so we have been exploring the role of Fire Fighters. The children have enjoyed working collaboratively to build and roller-paint a big cardboard fire engine to sit inside during our imaginative role play. In the outdoor learning area, the children have pretended to be firefighters by saving people from the floods and putting out lots of imaginary fires. Inside, they have learned a funny firefighter action song and solved riddles to work out which fire-fighting equipment was being described, as well as doing lots of topical counting.

During RE, the children have been introduced to the special celebration of Baptism. First we acted out the ceremony using a baby doll and then with the children themselves taking turns, which was great fun. Then Miss Mary kindly brought in some very precious artefacts from her own sons’ Baptisms, as well as the photos of their real life ceremonies, which we were delighted to share.