Dear Parents,
It has been a fantastic final week of the half term with so many wonderful activities taking place, despite the rather wet weather today! I would like to thank the PA for all their hard work throughout the term and for their efforts this week with the biscuit decorating and pumpkin carving competition.
As always, assembly was a joy, with various certificates awarded for a range of reasons, including kindness, working hard and perseverance.
As you will see below, Fairstead really does provide superb learning opportunities and lots of fun!
FHPA
FHPA Sponsored Readathon:
Letters and sponsorship forms for the Readathon have been sent home in book bags today. As well as raising funds, the main aim of the Readathon is to encourage reading, and a love of books! Children can choose how much to read – be it pages or entire books. 25% of the money raised from the readathon will go to Newmarket Library. Thank you for your support, and happy reading!
Art Projects for Schools Christmas Cards:
It is a bit early to be thinking about Christmas, but the children have already designed their Christmas artwork for this year – which again, will be sent home in book bags today. Please place any orders for cards, wrapping paper, tags, mugs etc through the website: www.apfs.org.uk (Details are on the sticker at the back of their artwork). The deadline for orders is Wednesday 8 November.
Pumpkin Carving Competition
Thank you to everyone who entered the pumpkin carving competition this week. We were blown away by the number of entries and the quality of the designs. Well done to everyone, and especially the winners, who were presented with prizes in assembly this morning.
Nursery
1st place – Maddie – Yearlings
2nd place – Lily – Ponies 2
3rd place – Jack S– Yearlings
Pre-Prep
1st place – Piper – Year 2
2nd place – William – Year 1
3rd place – Richard – Year 2
KS2
1st place – Matilda – Year 5
2nd place – Oskar – Year 4
3rd Place – Fenella – Year 6
Overall parent winner
Victoria Savoulidis
Halloween biscuit decorating
We hope your children enjoying decorating and eating their Halloween biscuits on Thursday. We look forward to seeing the children from Nursery on Monday 23 October to decorate theirs.
Food Bank
Today, a volunteer from Newmarket’s Food Bank came to collect our many donations. Thank you so much for all the kindness and generosity you have shown for this very important cause. This year’s collection has exceeded all expectations. I hope you all have a wonderful half term.
Mrs Sanders
Cross Stitch Club
At cross stitch club over the last couple of sessions, the children have been working hard to follow a pattern to create a Halloween inspired pumpkin design. They are really developing their stitching skills and becoming more creative in their designs. We hope you enjoy seeing our pumpkins. Happy holidays! Miss Hunt
Sport
Our U11 A team went to compete in a tournament at Culford School. They were competing against regional and county champions who were also larger than our school so we were expecting to be challenged. It was wonderful to see how the team rose to the challenge and improved as they progressed. They unfortunately lost two matches, but one was very close at 1-0 and the other match was lost to short corners. However, we drew against Culford and beat South Lee with a dominant performance delivering a 2 – 0 win. The team showed their quality and represented the school well showing what their four years of hockey training has achieved. They should be so proud of themselves as indeed we all are.
Reception
What amazing bucket fillers we have in Reception!
This week, the children enjoyed the story, ‘Have you filled a bucket today?’
They immediately set to work thinking about how they could fill people’s invisible buckets, both at home and at school. It has been wonderful seeing the story in action!
Helping Chef to make lunch yesterday was a wonderful example of this. The children put their super cutting skills to the test and made the most delicious vegetable soup for lunch. They then had great fun using vegetables in their artwork. What marvellous mini Arcimboldo’s we have in Reception!
In maths, the children used buckets alongside a range of other containers to explore weight and capacity too. It was great fun!
The week ended with even more bucket filling. This time for members of the public who use Newmarket Food Bank. The children worked eagerly alongside the Heads of School to help pack food, drinks and toiletries which were then collected by volunteers from the charity. They were so happy to be receiving so many items.
Well done to you all for a super first half term in Reception! Ensure to keep filling those buckets over the break too.
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Year 1
On Tuesday, we went to Queen’s Court Residential Home in Bottisham to take part in a competition to celebrate ‘National Recycling Week.’ We worked in teams with the residents to create junk models of landmarks from around the world including, The Eiffel Tower, The Tower of London and The Empire State Building. The children behaved so beautifully; they were kind, considerate and extremely polite! It was wonderful watching the relationships between the children and residents develop and all of the staff commented on the children’s wonderful behaviour. Well done, Year One!
Years 1 and 2 Gymnastics:
This half term, Years 1 and 2 have been developing their gymnastic skills. They have thoroughly enjoyed exploring: movement at different levels and speeds; balances, including paired and group balances; rolls and jumping. The children have focused on performing each element using body control and tension. This week, the finale to our topic was to work together and sequence three elements together – a jump, roll and balance. Super performances and effort by everyone!
Year 2
Year 2 have been working so hard in our run up to half term!
We have been learning how to exchange in maths. We know that there can only be up to 9 in any place value column. After that, we must gather up 10 ones and exchange it for a stick of 10. It has been a challenging week, but the children have worked so hard using the equipment to show their thinking. In English, the children have been reading information texts about wolves. The children have been using their headings and subheadings to summarise and write factual sentences about wolves. The outcome was fantastic! We have also been thinking about Harvest around the world and we have discovered that there are festivals and celebrations throughout the world to celebrate a successful growing season! We have also created our ‘Thankfulness Pumpkins’, writing things we are thankful for and creating a 3D sculpture.
Have a wonderful and very well earned holiday!
Year 3
This week we were set a very important task of creating a ‘Wanted’ poster for Mr and Mrs Twit. They were wanted by the police for many crimes! The children worked hard to write accurate and detailed character profiles to describe their appearance and personality. We hope they are identified by the public soon! In maths, we have been using our formal column calculation methods to cross boundaries this week. This has been more challenging but Year 3 have been persevering. In science, we carried out an experiment to find out how our muscles felt after different forms of exercise. We tried to beat the stopwatch and couldn’t believe how we felt before, during and after. Finding the scientific names for the muscles was a challenge but we worked together. In RE, we researched how harvest is celebrated around the world and compared these to life in Britain. The children have worked very hard in their first half term of Year 3 – well done! Wishing you all a restful half term break.
Year 5
Year 5 had a letter from a special person this week. It appears NASA have been looking to the Year 5 pupils at Fairstead to design the next generation of spacecraft.
We designed and modified our spacecraft and tested how far they would travel. We thought about air resistance and drag and how to make an aerodynamic design that would have the right balance.
Who knows, maybe NASA will come knocking!
Year 6
Every half-term, Year 6 are given the opportunity to research a topic of their choice. Over the past couple of weeks, the children have presented their findings to classmates on a wonderful range of subjects: Bearded Dragons; Pandas; Dogs; Tigers; Equine Disciplines; The History of Theatre & Drama; Jurassic World; Stitch; Vietnam and Flat Racing. Each presentation ended with a verbal or written quiz and some of the children even won prizes! It was lovely to see the confidence with which presentations were delivered and we all learned new and fascinating facts. Thank you, in particular, to Mia, Lefkianna, Annabelle and Isabella for bringing into school interesting items linked to your chosen topic. The children have already started to think about their independent research topic for the second half of the Michaelmas Term. I can’t wait to find out, Year 6!
Have a lovely half term break!
Michael Radford