PARK HILL PREPARATORY SCHOOL

PARK HILL PREPARATORY SCHOOL THE DEERSTALKER ISSUE 132 - 26th february 2021

From the Headmaster:

8th March it is! Without wishing to miss out on the next week (more of which in the assembly below) we are very much looking forward to seeing you all on Monday 8th March. You will all have received my letter earlier this week about the regulations etc and our desire to ensure that our children enjoy their return. I have also included in this edition details of our after school provision which contains a number of new and interesting activities that will hopefully bring a few smiles to faces.

The information is towards the conclusion of this edition. To whet your appetite - gymnastics, cycling and nerf gun battles to name just three!

If I may draw your attention to my letter regarding our full return, particularly the collection arrangements it will mean a calm and considered end of day.

It seems that we all had the same thought this week; sun was out and cameras likewise! Enjoy the many images from the week.

We will see you all very soon...

Alistair

Book Character Day - Friday 12th March, a wonderful opportunity for us all to dress up as our favourite book character.

London to Athens

Well, we not only managed to get to Athens we actually entered a whole new continent!

What I enjoyed most was the contributions from the whole school and, I hope, how whole families enjoyed spending time outside with one another contributing to the distance. So, to all Chris Froome's or a Marianne Vos' who took part, huge and hearty congratulations.

The final distance? A mighty 3429km. Which took us on the borders of Saudi Arabia, well into Kazakhstan and not too far from the coast of Canada.

3429km!

Now. We have three weeks for Easter. How does an America road trip sound? Route 66?

Latest Information

I am once again grateful for the positive feedback we have received from across the school for both our communication leading up to the start of term and for the most complimentary comments regarding our provision so far.

I am aware that whilst many of our children are now well experienced in their use of Showbie and Zoom there may well be times when things do not necessarily work as you want them to. Therefore, please use Showbie as your route to resolving or clarifying any queries. By the far the biggest feedback we received back in April/May was the 'explosion' on WhatsApp when there was a technical issue or confusion. We want to avoid this happening as this negatively impacts on your own working day. Both I and my colleagues are able to respond quickly to any queries.

Assembly

'I can't wait!' A wonderful expression to be proclaimed. Few of us can wait for 8th March, what a sight that will be welcoming you all back, but...

Don't forget to look forward to things a little chronologically closer.

We enjoyed the dialogue from Dead Poets Society (the actual scene can be viewed at the conclusion to this edition if you would like to remind yourselves of the scene, with some viewer discretion required).

The conclusion? As was so eloquently explained by various children, make the most from each and every day. Seize it and really enjoy it.

Assembly 26th February 2021 - Click Here!

Perseverance, Resilience and Kipling Award

We were kindly joined by Isabel Cherry, who was one of our original pioneers, leading the school back up to Year and then moving on to Kingston Grammar School this year for her Year 7.

It was very kind of Isabel to present the awards, I am delighted to see just how well she is doing at KGS.

Congratulations to Athena, Lara, Sophia, John and mum and dad and also to Rachel for their considerable efforts.

The presenter for next week is rather exciting, be sure to join us next Thursday at 9am.

Perseverance -

steady persistence in a course of action, a purpose, a state, etc., especially in spite of difficulties, obstacles, or discouragement.

Resilience -

the ability of a person to adjust to or recover readily from illness, adversity, major life changes

Kipling Award -

Images of the week

Illness & Medical

We continue to abide with the DfE Regulations.

We ensure that anyone developing those symptoms during the school day is sent home.

These are essential actions to reduce the risk in schools and further drive down transmission of coronavirus (COVID-19).

We would like to remind you that if your child is absent from school due to sickness (vomiting, diarrhoea) they must be clear for at least 48 hours prior to returning to school. You must inform the school office directly on 020 8546 5496 if your child will be absent that day.

Should your child develop symptoms or receive a positive result from a PCR test for Covid-19 you must immediately inform the school office - secretary@parkhillschool.com

This email is monitored during the school day and at set intervals during the weekend. If our line is busy, we have a backup answer service where an operator can take your message and we, as a school, are alerted accordingly.

We receive daily updates to the regulations every 24hours and this information is reviewed and any alterations to the regulations immediately adopted. We abide by the PHE and DfE advice.

You must never hesitate to seek clarification direct from myself or Nicola to ensure any concern or anxiety is dealt with in the most sensible, efficient and direct manner.

Instrumental Lessons

We are still conducting instrumental lessons, please do contact Miss Menon or Nicola who can help. Now, for a clever set up and just how our piano teacher is able to teach, watch this clever video below.

Year 6

This week, Year 6 have explored their new book ‘Holes’ and some of the key characters in it, particularly Stanley. Watching the beginning of the movie and looking at the various ways the books is covered, the children discussed how this book may progress and came up with their own hypotheses.

Maths involved fractions...lots of fractions. We explored how to multiply and divide them, how this process works through diagrams, and solve various problems to create beautiful coloured pictures.

Science began again with a new topic of Light. Our first lesson went though the 3 key things we should already know. How do we see? What are light sources? What are shadows and why are they created?

Year 5

The excitement among the staff and children in Year 5 about the return to full attendance at school is there for all to see at the moment.

In English this week we have been exploring what makes a useful piece of information text. The children have been sharing their passion for ballet, electronics, drawing along with many other topics in the process of creating their own examples of information texts. Maths lessons have allowed us to move from our work on fractions and on to studying percentages.

The children have been continuing with the theme of ‘expressing themselves’ by taking on delivering a lesson to their friends in a topic that sparks their passion. This week we have had fantastic lessons on The Sea Shanty, Fitness and a fantastic lesson on how to speak Turkish.

Year 4

The first week back for Year Four, who have been learning about embedded clauses, has been a busy week filled with great progress across all areas in the curriculum.

In English we have built on our grammar skills to embed relative clauses in our sentences to improve our descriptive writing skills. Year Four’s recent developments in using adverbials and direct speech were then all incorporated in to a short story write for Eleven Plus practise.

Multiplying and dividing numbers by 10 100 and 1000 is an essential skill to master in Year Four and we made great progress consolidating our skills whilst applying them to a range of problems.

Teaching Humanities was a disaster this week. Natural Disaster, of course. After researching the conditions and effects of the high speed winds, water displacement and other storm related conditions, we set about creating cartoons to depict experiencing a Hurricane with impressive results.

Pupils were wired in Science as they perfected the art creating circuits using online apps. A few sparks were flying as Mr Stevenson lesson was brightened by all the flashing bulbs.

Finally, our Art lessons brought bright bold colour and patterns to our school week with some beautiful pictures inspired by the art of Romero Britto and Yayoi Kusama.

A wonderful week back and I look forward to finishing our final week learning remotely before reuniting. Excellent perseverance Year Four. Keep it going!

Year 3

Year 3 have been busy working with mass this week in maths, converting KG to g and reading and balancing scales. In English we finished off our week with a Lockdown list poem, thinking about all the things we didn’t realised we had missed, turns out even greeting teachers first thing in the morning at school was even missed, let alone all the fun we have on a daily basis in school. We have enjoyed a school wide art session on Romero Britto this week as a way to spread some sunshine and happiness with a particular focus on flowers and patterns looking at form and colour. Some very sunny masterpieces have certainly been produced!

STEAM this week had an engineering focus making a boat out of tin foil and working out the best designs to hold as many 1p coins as possible! These sessions are a real highlight of the week for the children and encourage great critical thinking skills and creativity, which will serve the children well in the future.

Year 2

Year 2 have been working incredibly hard this week especially with their English and Maths.

In English we have been writing newspaper reports on the great fire of London and we also created a news report using iMovie and some green screen effects.

In Maths the children have been working on their subtraction skills using the column method to help work out answers quickly.

Science has lead us to the human body this half term, and it was great to see the children already has some much knowledge on the bones of the body.

Year 1

Our focus in literacy this week is an innovative tale written by Min Grey called ‘The last wolf’. We have been studying the first few pages in detail looking closely at the illustrations and the vocabulary used.

Next week proves to be very interesting when we finally discover what is behind the door in the woods.

In maths we revisited equal groups and learnt how to add equal groups, how to problem solve with repeated addition and explored arrays. I was very impressed with how well Year 1 have grasped what can be a difficult concept.

In humanities we began a new topic looking at significant people in history. Our first lesson focused on Ruby Bridges whose bravery changed the world.

Reception

In Reception this week we have been exploring vegetables and talking about how to keep plants healthy. We have used our skills in instruction writing to create a mini book to explain to Billy Bee how to grow a healthy plant.

We also used instruction writing to create our kindness potions in PSHCE, we spoke about how we be kind, smile, laugh and add hearts to be a good friend. We had great ideas and wrote some very inventive potion recipes.

In maths this week we learnt a brand new concept. The class have learnt to recognise the coins 1p, 2p, 5p and 10p. We used 1 penny coins to make the values of 10p and 5p. We then challenged ourselves to work out the total amount of a group of coins by adding up. We began to use them to buy pretend flowers in our flower shop role play which they all enjoyed doing.

In woodland school this week we have been exploring signs of Spring and we used our Ipads to take photos of the flowers and blossom. The children described the crocus: it is like a heart shape”. One child even described the lavender as smelling “like honey”.

In art we used vegetables to print with and create patterns and pictures, we made everything from a night sky with stars in to flowers. Great ideas everyone.

We have also practised writing simple sentences this week to recap our sentence structure and remembering what we want to write by writing one word at a time and going back and checking. E.g: She is in the box.

Well done this week Reception lots of hard work this week.

Second Steps

Second steps have had a busy week. The children have been discovering more fairy tales and have been asking for The Princess and the Pea, recreating the story by piling up the cushions, dressing up as princesses and pretending to go to bed.

In woodland school the children ran their own little Tough Mudder course in the bark area. They were very good at balancing along the logs, crawling under the bar and doing star jumps before running to the end.

The children have enjoyed playing with the magnets, discovering opposite poles and pushing the magnets round the table without touching. We then went round the class and garden to find other items that the magnets will stick to. In the class we found that the magnets stuck to our door handles, and table legs but in the garden magnets don’t stick to leaves.

We have also been doing a lot of puzzles from insert to slot together puzzles. The children have been working in pairs, talking to each other and sharing the pieces to successfully complete them.

We have set up a mud kitchen in the playground. The children have enjoyed finding, cutting and smelling the rosemary and lavender that we have been using. The children have been busy cooking paella, ice cream and spicy sauce for their friends.

Over the next few weeks we will be reading more fairy stories and looking for signs of Spring.

First Steps

This week in First Steps we have been looking at the book ‘We’re going on a bear hunt’. From this the children got creative and made their own painting of their perception of the book for example they used blue for the river, brown for the mud and real long grass. As the children really enjoyed this story we created sensory bags to represent some aspects of the book. The sensory bags included a corn flour mixture to represent the snow, one bag with soil and mud and one bag had blue coloured water. During both of these activities we all spoke about the story and want happened and repeated familiar phrases.

As spring is approaching we have started opening up our mud kitchen where we have planted fresh sunflowers to make it look pretty again. We also did some mud painting and enjoyed getting messy with some soil, buckets and spades. We also did some leaf, sticks and flower picking which we used for a sticking activity where we put it along the line of the first letter of our name.

During circle time we have been reading books with many rhyming words and telling the story with objects to match. We have also started looking at phonics and the sounds of letters. During P.E this week we played a marshmallow game which helped to improve jumping, listening and exploring different ways of movement

After School Activities!

As promised, I am pleased to advertise the clubs list for the remainder of this term and into the summer term.

As. you can see, we have applied a little thought into the activities and included some rather innovative clubs with the intention being that the full return to school is was enjoyable as possible. Children coming home with smiles on their faces.

Clubs, initially, will run from the week beginning 8th March through to the Summer Half Term. We are alert to the potential of residential and inter-school competitions so felt it prudent to run clubs through to half term and then assess at that point.

We have the offer of an additional dance club on a Monday evening (4pm-5pm) starting next term with the members working towards performing a hip-hop dance to their parents and whole school at the conclusion. Whilst I will confess to being closer to a hip-op rather than hip-hop dancing, this will be led by someone who has performed and choreographed hip-hop dance. If you are interested we would be grateful if you could sign up for this club on the link below.

Please click on this link - After School Clubs to book a place. This form will be active from 4pm Monday 1st March.

I would like to thank all of my colleagues for providing such a wonderful range of activities for our children to enjoy. I would hope that your children will make the very most out of the activities.

Monday

7.30am-8.15am - HIIT (all year groups) Mr Bond (PE Kit required)

4pm-5pm - Water Play (all) Miss Menon; Construction Club (all) Mrs Kilb

Tuesday

7.30am-8.15am - Rowing (Year 4-6) Mr Bond (PE Kit required)

4pm-5pm - Multi/mini sports (Rec-Y2) (Premier Sports Coach) (PE Kit required); Sports Squad (invite only) Mr Bond; Story Writing (all) Miss Blevin

Wednesday

4pm-5pm - Construction Club (Rec-Y2) Mrs Bond; Performing Arts (invite only) Miss Georgina; Nerf Gun Battles (all equipment provided) (Rec - Y6) Mr Sims (PE Kit required)

Thursday

4pm-5pm - Art (Rec-Y2) Mrs Leech; Art (Y3-Y6) Mrs Bond; Construction (Rec-Y2) Mr Papps; Cycling Club (children to bring their own bikes to school. Children must be confident in using gears, brakes and be able to comfortably cycle 3km+ without stopping, it will take place at Richmond Park) Mr Bond and Mr Sims (PE Kit required); Gymnastics (Premier Sports Coach) Rec-Y6 (PE Kit required).

Friday

7.30am-8.15am - HIIT (all) Mr Bond (PE Kit required)

4pm-5pm - Eco-Club (all) Miss Gardner; Park Run (able to run 3km+ without break) Mr Stevenson and Mr Sims (PE Kit required).