Dear Parents,
This week has been one day shorter, however, it has still been packed with some incredible activities and memories have been made. I do not need to say much more as you will see below that the celebrations for the coronation and a charity fund raiser, led by the School Council, have been very successful. This morning in assembly I presented a variety of certificates for kindness, hard work, determination, perseverance and progress.
Whole School Art
This week, as King Charles’ coronation has approached, the whole school from Reception to Year 6, have been printing their wonderful designs onto fabric to be added to a collaborative wall hanging to commemorate this special event. The children have used a range of printing techniques such as block printing, monoprinting, silk screen printing and linocut and it has been such a pleasure to see how the skill progresses throughout the school. Reception produced block prints from 2D shapes, Years 1 and 2 made monoprints of ‘royal’ designs using cotton buds, Years 3 and 4 made stencils to screen print and Years 5 and 6 carefully used lino cutting tools and even had to consider making reversed numbers and letters! A lot of hard work has gone into this collaborative artwork and it will look stunning when it is assembled. Well done everyone!
Class Drama
Work in our class drama lessons has continued to focus on exploring aspects of The Lion King musical.
Years 3&4 have been exploring and developing their understanding of the theatrical ritual of warming up and learnt various physical and vocal routines. Working in groups pupils created their own Opening Ritual.
Years 5&6 have continued to read through the script and listen to the songs.
Informal Tea Time Concert
On Tuesday 2nd May, we had our first Informal Tea Time Concert of the Summer Term 2023. The concert was organised into two halves, the first being solo pianists performing individual pieces and the second half was a recital with three pupils performing their ABRSM program of songs in preparation for their exams this term. Congratulations to everyone that participated and I am looking forward to our next concert on Tuesday 9th May.
Coronation
The children looked simply fabulous in their crowns and we thank everyone for their efforts. A superb lunch was prepared by Chef and her team and with the inclement weather, the decision was made to hold the feast indoors.
School Council chose the winners of the crown competition.
The winners were:
Reception
Winner – Halden
Runner up – Ophelia
Years 1 & 2
Winner – Mortimer
Runner up – Martha
Years 3 & 4
Winner – Sonya
Runner up – Sophia
Years 5 & 6
Winner – Grace
Runner up – Mina
School Council fundraising event for Cancer Research.
Children from Ponies 2 to Year 6 had an absolute riot today, tackling the fun obstacle course. We had horseracing, we had egg and spoon races, we had commando tunnel crawling and of course, the most popular event: sponge the teacher.
So far, we have raised an incredible £766 towards our £1000 target. Thank you so much to everyone who has donated so far.
Whilst the event is over, the opportunity to donate is still open. If you can give anything, please visit our Just Giving page below – it will be gratefully received.
https://www.justgiving.com/page/fhs-1681903255278?utm_campaign=lc_frp_share_transaction_fundraiser_page_donation_received_-_nth_donation&utm_content=c8f2d0c9-ab38-42ca-bc85-0f2a7fbc0a2d&utm_medium=email&utm_source=postoffice&utm_term=1683285708853
School Council would like to thank, Mr Salt, Mrs. Cooke, Ms. Freeman and Mr. Cater for volunteering to get an absolute soaking. The children were very pleased to oblige them!
Reception
Today, we were joined by Reception Royalty!
The classroom was a sea of red, white and blue, and it was wonderful to see so many beautiful crowns too. Thank you for all the hard work and creativity which has been put into these!
A real highlight in Reception this week, was writing to The King!
The children wrote their own individual messages to King Charles and were thrilled to visit the post box to send them to Buckingham Palace. It was a very exciting time!
It has been wonderful to have so many people popping into the classroom this week too, as they have walked by and heard the children enthusiastically singing the National Anthem. There were some very impressed visitors! The children were also keen to learn some fun facts about the new King and enjoyed writing them for all to see. Please do ask the children to share their singing and facts with you!
Making woodland crowns in the forest, painting portraits of King Charles, and creating unique royal prints for our whole school art project was a wonderful way to begin celebrating the King’s special weekend! Have a great time celebrating too!
Year 1
Despite the poor weather, we have had a great day celebrating the coronation of King Charles III.
Many thanks to Mr Salt and Mr Cater for creating the excellent obstacle course and to Miss Freeman for being a great sport and getting sponged by all of KS1!
Our English work has been linked to our history learning this week. We compared pictures of Fairstead House from the past to how it looks today. We used phrases such as, ‘in the past,’ ‘before I was born’ and ‘nowadays,’ in our writing.
It was great fun exploring old school photographs, photo albums and registers when we were trying to find out more about Fairstead House in the past. Richard was thrilled to find his mum’s name on an old register!
Year 2
Year 2 have had another fantastic week! We have been learning about the upcoming Coronation of King Charles III, making King Charles III collages that we will turn into stamps, created individual monoprints for our whole school art collaborative project and imagined what we would do if we were King or Queen for a day. We have also looked at the national plants for the countries in the UK, have explored the UK on a map, have identified flags and capital cities, and have named the seas and oceans surrounding the UK. We rounded off our celebrations with a street party and a themed obstacle course – all red, white and blue!
We have also been to the Cambridge Zoological Museum – a wonderful day out to help us learn more about UK habitats and how we can support our habitats to keep nature thriving. The children were amazing and soaked up an amazing amount of information. We listened to a talk, helped create forest food chains and explored the displays looking for clues about what type of animal it was (herbivore, carnivore or omnivore). Can you guess what the most important clue was? Teeth! Ask your learner how teeth can show us the difference between meat eaters and plant eaters. Year 2 were a credit to Fairstead House!
Years 3 and 4
In history, Years 3 and 4 explored the significance of Alexander the Great this week. We started by studying a range of sources from around the world. Everyone was surprised to discover that his legacy had spread to so many countries and had influenced so many people. This led us to explore his early life. We couldn’t believe that he became king at 19 years old and had taken control of Greece by the age of 21. Using maps, we identified each stage of the expansion of his empire. We were fascinated to find out that during his 13-year reign, he had created the largest empire in human history. Although his empire broke down into different kingdoms after his sudden death, we discussed the influence of Greek culture around the world. Years 3 and 4 thoroughly enjoyed studying the significance of Alexander the Great and how he plays an integral role in our Greek topic. We have also been busy creating our prints to celebrate the King’s Coronation this weekend. Below, you can see us printing in action and see how we celebrated the coronation in our red, white and blue outfits. Wishing you all a wonderful weekend of celebration with friends and family.
Year 5
The short week seems to have flown. With another four day week, we are rapidly approaching our residential trip and everyone is looking forward to it. Our DT projects are starting to come together and we have been looking at how to create our titles. I have been really impressed with the approach the children have adopted. They are self assessing their work and practising the skills they have been taught. You can see the improvement with each iteration. I have also heard the children discussing the design of their key fob with references to size, ease of use and other considerations.
This week, the main event has to have been on Friday. The whole school was decked out in red, white and blue bringing a dramatic change to the usual colour palette. In addition to this, they were all topped off with some amazing crowns, carefully crafted at home. I was extremely impressed with the effort that had clearly gone into their designs. After having had a street party for lunch (unfortunately indoors due to the weather), the afternoon involved the children participating in an obstacle course designed by Mr. Salt & Mr. Cater. While the weather was not as good as it could have been, this did not dampen the enthusiasm of the class.
Year 6
In geography lessons, Year 6 have been finding out about natural and man-made features of North America. Our class discussions focussed on the Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Death valley, the Hubbard Glacier, the Hoover Dam and the Panama Canal. Over the next few weeks, Year 6 will research famous landmarks of their choice and present their findings to the rest of the class at the end of term.
On Thursday afternoon, we were delighted to welcome Ayva’s Dad and grandparents to Fairstead House School. April and Tom live in Illinois and are currently visiting family in the UK – fantastic timing for Year 6! They kindly brought into school a large map of the USA, a wonderful PowerPoint presentation of interesting facts and a selection of sweets for the children. It was a truly memorable afternoon which the children and adults thoroughly enjoyed!
This week’s fun also included the arrival of Year 6’s brightly-coloured leavers’ hoodies, making impressive crowns for homework, a tasty Coronation lunch and charity obstacle course. What a week!
Enjoy the Coronation weekend!
Michael Radford