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Pennthorpe NewsLetter friday 16th October

Winners of our Christmas Card Competition 2020

We are delighted to announce Mrs Bolton's selection of winning designs for each year group, in the video above.

Thank you to staff for some lovely ideas and for bringing Christmas to the pupils a little early! Due to time constraints Year 7 and 8's participation was optional, so we'd like to recognise the extra effort that they had to make in order to meet the tight deadline.

Ms O'Shea would also like to recognise the artistic efforts of all pupils who entered. Please look out for the gorgeous designs that didn't win in our Christmas Newsletter- we can't wait!!

Competition: Can you see the maths around you?

Don't forget to get looking for the Maths around you and send your photos to Miss Annan or Ms O'Shea over the half term! The deadline for entries is the 6th November and there are pluses for entering as well as prizes for the winning entries!

Thank you to Year 1 Mums from Elise Mason

A huge thank you to Year 1 mums who helped Elise Mason raise £42 for “Mind” and “Action for Children” by buying yellow hair bows and bow ties from Lily Dragonfly Designs for our #HelloYellow day last week!

Despite having to be at home for a couple of weeks, the Honey Pot have been very busy....

Our Honey Potters have been out in their gardens finding treasures to make mobiles, collecting acorns and conkers to make paintings, jumping in muddy puddles and looking at the colours of the autumn leaves. They have all enjoyed online story time every day and meeting virtually with Jackie, Jenny, Georgia and Sophie's pets whilst sharing pictures their own animals....

Emilia looks like she's really enjoying herself doing Acorn Art!
Phee shows us her adorable pets!!
Isabella loves making the dots for her cardboard tube tree, and didn't want it to end!

The children have also been making hedgehog bread and yummy apple crumble, as well as lots of spooky Halloween crafts.

Our Year 1 children connect to nature and go pond dipping

Pond dipping allows children to experience first-hand their local ecosystems and gives them skills and knowledge that books and screens cannot.

“No one will protect what they don't care about; and no one will care about what they have never experienced” - David Attenborough.

They children cleared much of the algae and found a centipede a slug and few dragonfly nymphs
An experiment to show how germs spread and grow using glitter
Year 1 reiterated the importance of sneezing in your elbow and good hand hygiene

One child 'sneezed' (red glitter representing germs) into her hands. Within 2 minutes, the whole class had some glitter (germs) on them. Even when they washed their hands all the glitter (germs) didn't go away. The glitter even ended up on someone's blazer. The children concluded that one child's germs could even spread as far as the other children's homes.

Later another child had a little bit of blue glitter on his hands and passed on a marker which two children then respectively passed on. They looked at where they could find the blue glitter and found it on a child who did not even touch the marker and was nowhere near the original child!

The children then looked at how germs grow. They learnt new vocabulary - contaminated and moist. They had a piece of uncontaminated bread and contaminated 3 other pieces of bread by rubbing their hands on one slice, rubbing another slice all over some of the work surfaces and coughing on the last slice (this was done outside. No one touched the bread and everyone stood far away when someone coughed on the bread). The bread slices were put in clear bags with some moisture in, and left in a warm dark place, which is ideal growing conditions for our germs. Watch this space to find out what happens next....

The Super Gardeners plant flower bulbs

The Super Gardeners needed to use their maths skills to plant bulbs using rulers to measure a depth of between 10 and 15cm deep.

They found many earth worms which they learnt were very good for the plants.

We can't wait to see the fruits of the labour in the spring!
Appeal for egg shell

The Super Gardeners are starting to collect clean egg shells for the vegetable garden. They will break them up and sprinkle them around the vegetables in spring. Egg shell is a natural slug repellent. Please keep your egg shells and send them in (cleaned). There will be a tub outside Hedgehog class where will collect them.

Year 3 study the Lascaux Cave paintings

Our Year 3 children are investigating some of the elements of Pre-Historic Art. Looking at the Lascaux Cave paintings, the children explored how to make different shades of brown and discovered how to make their drawings look like cave paintings.

Such vibrant sketches
Investigations by William
Mad Hatter’s Tea Party

Our 3C children were lucky to have their D.T. lesson before an afternoon in the Woodland on Wednesday, which enabled them to finish making the armature of their card hat. They have worked with great patience to measure and check that their constructions fit their heads. They can look forward to decorating the hat in the style of one the characters from Alice in Wonderland, hopefully ready to display for the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party.

Year 3 & 4 Woodland Day

What better way to spend a Wednesday afternoon than in the Pennthorpe Woods. Year 3 and 4 had an amazing time just having FUN outdoors. Their woodland afternoon consisted of a tasty Campfire lunch, Slackline walking, Nordic Slinging, Palm Drilling Conkers, Paracord weaving, scallop shell firelighting and clay sculpting plus of course splashing in the stream and all round getting muddy! The afternoon ended with hot chocolate and S'mores and huge smiles all round!

Year 4 have been busy planning and designing Roman towns in their Maths lesson

Children used their knowledge of Roman numerals to get the prices of different buildings into numbers they can use. They added the costs together with column addition and then thought hard about setting their towns out on a map! What super problem solvers!

Announcing the Years 3-4 & 5-6 Computing Club

After half-term a new lunchtime Computing Club will be starting, split between Year 3-4 and 5-6. The year groups will alternate every week, with clubs running:

Week 1: year 3-4 @ 1:00 - 1.30pm

Week 2: year 5-6 @ 1.30 - 2:00pm

Children will be able to practise their coding in Scratch or on code.org, use Microbits, as well as stop motion animation and more. There's no need to sign up, just pop along and you can join in.

Happy coding!

Investigating heat with candle wax and drawing pins

This week our Year 5 children investigated heat conduction in four different metals using candle wax and drawing pins. The metal which was the best conductor melted the wax in the quickest time causing the pin to fall.

Oscar and Freddie have been offered places on the Sussex Cricket Pathway for 2020/21!
Huge congratulations Oscar and Freddie!
Harriet is a Good Egg!
Congratulations to Harriet on her award
Horses rear up, ballerina’s twirl and guitarists strum ... Year 7 make automated toys

On the surface these cam toys (aka automata) look very simple but to produce the correct movement the students have had to make their own cam; cutting and drilling it, before assembling the mechanism. Even then there’s a certain amount of tweaking before it all works smoothly. But when it does - the toys are guaranteed to raise a smile as horses rear up, ballerina’s twirl and guitarists strum as these little hand cranked machines come to life.

Exploding Pumpkins

For Halloween... and as part of their study of Chemical Reactions, Year 7 watched a demonstration of the ‘exploding pumpkin’. This is the first time we have used our new electric matches and it proved very successful! We also used ‘old school’ matches on the second attempt.

Saturday Art Enrichment for Year 7 & 8

Inspired by the art of Mark Spray, fourteen keen artists sketched in the school woodland on a bright October morning. They explored drawing techniques and materials to improve how they record texture, space and form. It was a very messy endeavour as they used charcoal, pastel, bark and the earth.

Returning to the studio, they were visited by a masked Wren Fawcett; a former Braby Art Scholar and now Art and Drama Scholar at Hurst College. We heard about his experience of the first half term in Year 9 and he gave a few tips about applying for an Art scholarship.

The pupils had an opportunity to work in the comfort of the studio to produce a final drawing from their outdoor sketches but they needed to work at a quick pace as the twelve o'clock pick up deadline loomed.

Year 8 have been preparing a lino block for printing a repeat pattern

In the last lesson of the half term it was a tale of halves; half the group taught the other half how to make a successful repeat print. In November they will investigate reduction printing to add a second layer of colour.

Year 8 study breathing and respiration

Year 8 have been studying ’Breathing and Respiration’ and were tasked with making a model of an aspect of the circulatory system. Some fantastic...and tasty models came in!

Wow! We were particularly impressed by the baked lungs!
Modelling the circulation of oxygenated and deoxygenated blood through the body as exercise increases
Year 8 have been testing the effect of caffeine on their reaction times
It was a very lively start to the day!
A chicken bone had it’s calcium removed using acid and became very bendy!
Tom was really surprised to see the effect of a lack of calcium on bones
House Football

This week we've had so much fun with our House Football competition!

And the all important placings.....

1st Pallinghurst

2nd Gaskyns

3rd Tismans

4th Baynards

House Hockey

We've also tested our skills with a House Hockey Competition!

The winners list is as follows....

1sts Gaskyns

2nd Tismans & Pallinghurst

4th Baynards

The Pennthorpe Food Factor!

As a treat for the end of a half term, the children voted for their favourite menu to eat on the last Friday of this half term... and today was the day they got to eat it!

After a tight competition the winning menu comprised chicken nuggets, skinny fries and choc ice! Of course there was also the usual variety of food groups to ensure all dietary needs were met.

Head chef James told us he had really enjoyed cooking up this childhood favourite. Having cooked for the stars, including the Queen, Mary Berry and Rick Stein, our children are really lucky to have such a talented team in the kitchen.

If you're looking for something brilliant to do over half-term, why not practise your coding?

At Pennthorpe the pupils made a brilliant start to the term and are beginning to develop their computer scientist skills.

Scratch is a websites you can go to that will help you with your coding skills (sequencing, repetition, nested loops!) and a few more for good measure. There are tutorials to help you learn, just click on the tutorials button in the top left of the 'Create' screen.

If you really want to test yourself why not try Python. This is definitely more advanced but these tutorials are a good introduction and will guide you through the basics.

Happy coding!

Lunchtime in the Library!
Harrius Potter et Philosophi Lapis - What language is this?

Pupils in Latin Club have been learning a little about the history of the classical world looking at the destruction of Pompeii and the eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

The children have been translating Aesop’s fables that were originally translated into Latin by Phaedrus. They have been introduced to Aristophanes' chorus of singing frogs ‘Brekekekex koax koax, brekekekex koax koax!’ and reading the Slaying of the Minotaur retold by Anthony Horowitz.

Amo, Amas, Amat, Amamus, Amatis, Amant

Pupils are learning how to identify the nominative, accusative and how to conjugate the verb Amare - to love, in the present tense.

Finally pupils have been having fun looking at Harrius Potter and working out the etymology of some Harry Potter spells.

Toby wants to know if you can solve the riddle of the sphinx?

"Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?"

Find Toby to see if you are correct!
Congratulations to our new Year 8 Seniors and Wellbeing Ambassadors!

Congratulations to Lottie, Phoebe, Flo, Fin and Adam ; our 5 new Year 8 Seniors who are all looking forward to being allowed to use the Octopod at breaktimes and for hot chocolate on a Friday. They have been given their job descriptions to peruse and all 12 Seniors will be joining Mrs Bolton for lunch during the first week of next half term to discuss their ideas for Pennthorpe. They are busy deciding on the menu as I write!

Congratulations also to our newly appointed School Wellbeing Ambassadors; Franci, Lewis, Rory, Oli, Greg, Fin, Zac, Adam, Bella, Flo, Lottie, Amelie, Phoebe and Emma!

All of Year 8 pupils spent a day in September undertaking Student Wellbeing Ambassador Training with 'Teach Well Alliance'. Following this training day, which included various role play scenarios, the pupils had to complete their pupil logs and hand them in. A few weeks later Mrs Vernon, Mrs Waller and Mrs Tusler met to discuss their observations from the day and look at the pupil logs. Some individual meetings with pupils then took place and we are now delighted to announce we have 15 Wellbeing Ambassadors. They will commence their role after half term with a training meeting with Mrs Vernon, Mrs Waller and Mrs Tusler to agree a job description and outline their role under the current COVID-19 conditions. Following this they will have their first training session with Mrs Vernon our School Councillor. Good luck WBA's!

Making friends activity

Your child will love these activities inspired by the Tiny and Teeny books by Chris Judge.

Help the friends make their way home through the maze, spot the differences as the friends read together and draw what your home would look like if you lived in Glengadget.

When I grow up activities

Have a go at these fun activities with your child to encourage them to think more about the kind of career they'd like in the future.

Fantastically Great Women Who Worked Wonders activity pack.

This activity pack is filled with quizzes, crafts and drawing activities based on the book by Kate Pankhurst – a descendant of Emmeline Pankhurst. It is perfect for introducing your children to history’s heroines.

How books could help mental health and ease anxiety in children

Ruby's Worry is a sensitive and charming new picture book all about a young girl dealing with anxiety. Author Tom Percival tells us why it's so important for children to be able to talk about their fears... Click here to read more.

How books help children discuss difficult feelings – and feel less alone

Fergal is Fuming is a brilliant new picture book about a dragon with a short temper – and how he learns to calm down.

Now, author Robert Starling tells us how stories are invaluable when it comes to discussing emotions and feelings with young children. Click here.

Apply for a Green Blue Peter badge

Green badges are awarded for sending in letters, pictures and makes that are about or inspired by the environment, conservation or nature. Click here for a step-by-step guide for how you can get your hands on one.

There are over 200 attractions in the UK that give you free entry as a Blue Peter badge holder. You can browse the attractions here.

The My Twist on a Tale: Everyday Heroes competition is officially open!

This free competition, is now open to 4-19 year olds across the UK. It encourages young people to let their imaginations run wild as they write a story based on the new theme for 2020: Everyday Heroes.

Following an extraordinary year of disruption, Pearson has updated their competition theme, to provide children with a positive outlet to highlight the extraordinary stories that have emerged throughout the year. They want children to have the opportunity to write their own tales of people who have made a difference to them.

Whether it’s a story about someone in their local community, a key worker making a difference, a family member or friend that inspires them or even a superhero from their imagination, they want children and young people to get creative and reflect their own personality, location and experiences in their tales. And who says the hero needs to be a human? It could be a story about a guide dog or even a cat that comes to save the day! Click here.

Toyota Dream Car Art Contest 2021

Flying cars, zero emission hoverboards, space buggies for moons and planets? Who knows what the future of mobility will look like, so Toyota is inviting children across the UK to share their wildest and most imaginative car design, as entries open for the 2021 Dream Car Art Contest.

The contest has attracted more than 6.2 million entries from children in more than 100 countries worldwide since 2004, so you don’t want to miss out on the 14th annual competition. Previous winners’ designs have featured a pod that takes lonely pensioners for an adventure, nanoscopic ‘bumper cars’ with healing properties and a car that lowers the temperature of the ocean, preventing the bleaching of coral reefs and the melting of icecaps.

So, if you have a vision of what the future of mobility could look like, continue reading to find out how you can share this with the UK and maybe even the world!

The last date for submission of entries is 4th December. The UK awards ceremony will then be held on the Friday 5th February. Click here to enter.

Fun Clean Up and Create a Bright New Future Eco Art
Deadline for the competition is 30th October

This competitions gives you an opportunity to win 1 of 16 £150 prizes and enjoy free art therapy. The competition hopes to harness the power of using stories and art to communicate change. Find our how to enter the competition here for half term fun.

The competition is run in partnership with the South Downs National Park and The Botini Trust. Full details here.

National Christmas card design competition
Entries must be in by 13 November 2020, so don’t delay!

The National Literacy Trust have launched their first national Christmas card design competition, and they want YOU to get creative and enter!

12 winning designs will be chosen by a very special guest judge and will be available to purchase as printed or digital cards from 1 December, with all proceeds supporting the Trust's vital work to improve the literacy, learning and wellbeing of children whose literacy has been most seriously affected by COVID-19.

If you've bene inspired by the school Christmas card competition, why not enter this too?

Entries will be judged by award-winning illustrator and designer Dapo Adeola, co-creator of bestselling children’s books Look Up! and Clean Up! (Puffin) and supporter of the National Literacy Trust. Click here to find out how to enter.

Two women share chemistry Nobel in historic win for 'genetic scissors'
Emmanuelle Charpentier (L) and Jennifer Doudna began a formidable partnership in 2011

Two scientists have been awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for developing the tools to edit DNA.

Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer Doudna are the first two women to share the prize, which honours their work on the technology of genome editing.

Their discovery, known as Crispr-Cas9 "genetic scissors", is a way of making specific and precise changes to the DNA contained in living cells. Click here for more information.

A Clock of Stars: The Shadow Moth

It's time for a magical new world...

Follow the moth through the door in the tree, and embark on an unforgettable adventure…

A Clock of Stars: The Shadow Moth takes us to a magical new world full of warmth and wit. Meet Zuby, who has bulbous eyes, hooked claws and unusually large front teeth… Zuby might not be handsome by human standards, but he has many skills.

“That’s the problem with you humans: you don’t know much"
Learn how to make a cake fit for a prince and those who happen to fall into magical lands...

The popular Czech / Slovakian cake, called Bublanina, varies with the season and the fruit that is available. It’s sometimes served as a breakfast pastry. The name “Bublanina” comes from the Czech word for bubble and might refer to the fact that the cake batter bubbles up around the fruit. Click here for the Czech bublanina cake (‘bubble cake’) recipe.

Shakespeare First Folio fetches a record $10m at auction
The book had been owned by a private US college since the 1960s

A copy of William Shakespeare's First Folio has been sold for a record $9.98m (£7.6m) at auction in New York.

The 1623 book, published seven years after the Bard's death, was the first collected edition of his plays. Click here for more information.

We'd love to hear your news at news@pennthorpe.com

Collecting acorns is a treasured autumn pastime, when high winds and rain hasten their descent to the ground.

It’s said that placing an acorn at the window keeps the lightning out.

Have a relaxing and restful Half Term break.