Prep Newsletter Lent Term Week 2 | Rossall - Independent Boarding School

This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.

Dear All,

January seems to be the time for eating healthily and getting fit. To ensure the children exercise the right muscles, I spoke with them in assembly on Monday about using their most important muscle; the brain! We played a version of the 1% Club Quiz.

For those who have not seen it on TV, the gameshow is unlike others in that the questions have absolutely nothing to do with remembering facts and figures. Instead, it is all about logic and common sense. The show begins with 100 contestants, but only those who make it to the end and answer a question that only 1% of the public can get right will be in for a share of the £100,000 prize pot. I was very impressed by the children (especially for a Monday morning!) in their answers although it was rather amusing watching the teachers and pupils try to work things out that common sense would tell you, need no workings! At the end of this piece, I have included the questions I asked in assembly, to see how you fare. One thing is for sure, it was definitely an early morning workout.

It has been a rather blustery week at Rossall, with one or two downpours that have soaked the children whilst playing sport or walking across to the Dining Hall. I love the endearing spirit of our pupils, as they smile and laugh at such occurrences. The weather did hamper Rossall Rotation for our Year 6 children who were supposed to visit the beach, however, paintbrushes were made in Forest Schools, golfers visited the driving range, astronomers were talking all things ‘Space’, Year 5 created their own French toasties in the kitchen, and the farm was a real hit with Year 1. There is nothing like an afternoon of Rossall Rotation!

The England vs Jamaica netball game was a hugely exciting event for some of our pupils on Wednesday evening. The rather vocal group were fully behind England, chanting, singing and dancing throughout the game and the half time DJ set! In a thrilling game, England came from behind and were truly dominant in the final quarter, sending home the children very happy – albeit they were rather tired the next morning after a late night.

Have a wonderful weekend.

Mr M Turner

Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery

1% Club Questions:

Logically, which of these children’s characters could be included in the following sequence? – Humpty Dumpty, Tinky Winky, Andy Pandy.

Incy Wincy
Postman Pat
Bob the Builder

Which of these is NOT a girl’s name?

If you toss a normal coin four times and it lands heads up each time, what are the chances it will land heads up next time?

‘A’ is the first capital letter in the alphabet that looks the same in the mirror. What is the second?

If you were singing ‘Happy Birthday’ to somebody named Happy, how many times would you sing the word ‘Happy’?

What number do you get if you multiply all the numbers on a telephone keypad together?

0
480
5,980
362,880

And for those who want to have a go at the 1% question: What is the first number that when spelled out has its letters in alphabetical order? There are no options for this question!

Good luck!

England v Jamaica: International Netball at the AO Arena

What a fantastic evening we had on Wednesday, travelling by coach with the senior students to watch this exciting match. This was the first of a three-match series against Jamaica, who were silver medallists at the Commonwealth games-England were fourth. The AO Arena was a brilliant venue for this event, which was the first international netball match held in the north since 2016. The Rossall children had an absolute ball… cheering, singing the national anthem, dancing and enjoying watching the outstanding netball. After Jamaica dominated the first half of the game, England managed to turn it around in the second half and finish with a resounding win! Then it was time to spend their money on England merchandise… which we also did very well! Well done to the Rossall Prep children for being such a pleasure to take on a trip, which went on late into the night, and for staying so cheerful on the very long journey back to Rossall.

Year 6

We have thoroughly enjoyed our first full week back at school and have certainly worked hard. The children have been singing, acting and dancing throughout the week in preparation for ‘Matilda’. Miss Silverton, Miss Harris and Mr Veitch are very pleased with how the production is progressing. Keep learning your lines and the songs!

Fractions has been the order of the week in Mathematics, we have had fun solving tricky problems involving addition and subtraction of mixed numbers, improper fractions and different denominators.

‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde is our new focus in English. We have made a fabulous start to exploring this beautiful text and the children have written some incredible poems using expanded noun phrases, similes, alliteration and personification to name but a few.
Our Topic, ‘Government and Politics’ has already sparked some lively debate, the future Prime Minister could certainly be in Year 6!

Year 5

In Year 5, we have started our new English unit based on Norse Mythology and have been thinking about the characteristics of some of the Norse Gods, some you may recognise from the Avengers movies. We have been learning about the different worlds on The World Tree, or Yggdrasil, and the Norse Gods family tree in preparation to start reading our class book ‘Arthur and the Golden Rope’.

In Maths we are learning about multiplication and division, spotting patterns to find multiples and factors, and finding squared, cubed and prime numbers.

In Science, we conducted an investigation to see whether different substances, such as wax, pepper, oil and sugar are soluble or insoluble and observed changes that occurred to the solution when the substances were added.

In Art, we focused on the Tudor Rose and used sketching and oil pastels to create our own Tudor Roses, then during our Topic lessons we learned about the social hierarchy during the Tudor period. We compared how life would have been different for people depending on their social status.

Year 4

There is a wonderful sense of anticipation as the children settle into learning about new and exciting topics for the Lent term.

In English, we have begun studying the book ‘Escape from Pompeii’ by Christina Balit. We have made predictions about the events in the story and the effects on the inhabitants and environment.

This has linked well with our ‘Topic’ as we have been busy learning how Ancient Rome was founded and the fascinating legend of how a wolf adopted Romulus and Remus. We looked at a variety of historical sources and discussed the creditability of this enthralling account. ‘The Romans’ never fail to stimulate the children’s imaginations with a plethora of interesting facts, legends and traditions. We focused on generating a timeline to discover how the Roman’s came to invade Britain.

In Science, we looked at ‘states of matter’ and discovered that everything in the physical universe exists in one of three states; either a solid, a liquid or a gas. We also discovered how materials can change from one state of matter to another by melting or freezing. To engage the children with this concept we enlisted the help of the humble chocolate bar which the children had no difficulty in appreciating the properties of a solid and a liquid. The children conducted an experiment to see the reaction of chocolate when heat was applied. They planned the experiment and wrote a detailed method in their books. Conducting a fair experiment is complex but the children were able to discuss all the different variables and decide which ones they had to keep the same. ‘Seeing is believing’ but we found tasting was even better.

The children have also been preparing for their assembly next week on the subject of the Chinese New Year. They have thoroughly enjoyed learning about the zodiac animals and the characteristic traits associated with each animal. Apparently our Year 4’s (born in either the Year of the Snake 2013 or the Horse 2014) can be intuitive, thoughtful, high-spirited, active and energetic. One wonders how this combination of qualities and aspirations will metamorphose throughout their school years.

Year 3

Year 3 are getting off to a wonderful start to the new year with added gusto! We are loving our new English book which fits in perfectly with our Topic and Science. We started reading Stone Age Boy, met the character Om who introduced us to what Stone Age life was like. We have done some writing with adverbs to describe speech and create our own class glossary with the help of dictionaries.

In Topic we have designed adverts for Stone Age weapons and drew our own Stone Age houses. We learnt about cave drawings and in Art we created our own.

For our Science we are learning about Rocks – we learnt that there are 3 types of rocks (Sedimentary, Igneous and Metamorphic), identified different types of rocks and explored their properties. We were amazed to discover the pumice can float!

We have started our new unit in Maths, continuing multiplication and division but extending ourselves with more complicated strategies such as, use of arrays and fact families. Our first Rossall Rotation was wonderful with our first Forest School. Well done for a fabulous start to 2023!

Year 2

The first full week back has indeed been incredibly “full”. We have started new topics in all curriculum areas and the Year 2 children have been working exceedingly hard.

In English we have started “The Dragon Machine”. We are using this to aid our writing, thus far the class have written an independent fictional story concentrating on incorporating adjective phrases and have also created posters warning members of the Pre-Prep about the presence of some rather pesky dragons. In Mathematics we have been working on multiplication, the children have been using arrays to help with their understanding of the relationship between addition and multiplication. I have been incredibly impressed with the ease in which they have picked up this concept.

We are now well underway with our topic work on castles and the class have been learning all about the introduction of Motte and Bailey to England, who introduced them, their design and how they changed from timber structures to stone and the reasons why. If all the learning in the classroom was not enough, the children also had the opportunity to play some golf as part of their new Rossall Rotation activity.
The children’s attitude and work ethic has been absolutely fabulous since their return from the Christmas holidays. Well done Year 2, keep it up!

Year 1

What a week it has been, Year 1! We have started our new topic of Frozen in Time and we are already learning and reading lots about animals that are extinct as well as talking about different portrait artists. We are reading the story of ‘The Curious Case of the Missing Mammoth’ and we are having so much fun seeing what mischief the baby mammoth is getting up to in the Curious Museum. We are enjoying the story so much that we are writing our thoughts every single day; we are writing in sentences and we even challenged our ability to use words like ‘and’ and time connectives too. Well done!

In Maths we are building on our Number knowledge and starting to understand place value. It’s been fun using cubes to make tens and ones and work out what numbers we can make this way. Year 1 has also been learning some facts about the Ice Age and the Megafauna animals that lived then- it’s been so interesting! Great work this week Year 1, let’s keep it up!

Reception

Outdoor play not only promotes healthy physical development but is also beneficial to a child’s mental and emotional wellbeing. So when the sun shines, it’s important to have some outdoor activities lined up and ready to get young children moving around outside. Done right, outdoor activities provide a great opportunity for learning, as well as improving fitness and social skills. This week we have been very lucky and amongst the rain showers, we have had some sunshine so we wrapped up warm, put on our wellies and had some fantastic outdoor adventures. Our favourite is always splashing in puddles!

This term we have begun by looking at ‘Winter’. One of the best ways of helping children get an idea of the changing seasons is to get outdoors and explore. The children are looking at the weather, trees and plants, animals, keeping warm and Winter celebrations. The children have helped penguins escape from ice and enjoyed a mug of hot chocolate to warm up. We have ventured into our woodland area to look for evergreens to learn that not all trees lose their leaves. Each of the seasons is different, but being outside and finding out what makes it unique is a great way of helping children learn about the seasons. We are all hoping in these winter months, we will be able to experience snow and build snowmen too!

Nursery

The Sanderlings have been practising lots of new skills this week. The babies have enjoyed water play with jugs and boats, they have had so much fun pouring the water, splashing and using the words associated with water play such as splash, splosh, tip and pour. In addition to water play the babies have used the jugs and measuring equipment to practise the skills of filling and emptying objects using oats and flour. Mrs Beddis has made some lovely play dough where the babies were able to strengthen their fine and gross motor skills by stretching, pinching and rolling the play dough. In the home corner there has been an addition of ‘real life’ resources such as tins, utensils and pans to encourage role play based on their home life, the babies have really enjoyed this. This week the Duplo has been a popular activity, everyone has tried really hard to fix the pieces together to build small towers. Finally, a week in The Sanderlings room would not be complete without a walk to watch the tractors on the field and plenty of fresh air in our garden under the shelter listening to the rain.

The Sandpipers are learning about animals and took the opportunity to visit our on site petting farm. The children saw rabbits, goats and guinea pigs. On their walks this week the children have been splashing in puddles, there was plenty of rain around to ensure this was a possibility for the children. The Sandpipers have also been learning about movement and how we can speed up our toy cars as well as slow them down based on the level of force that we place upon them. As The Sandpipers have had new children join from The Sanderlings room, Miss Southern and Mx Preston have spent time with the children looking at their own photos of themselves and their families, the children have been encouraged to ask questions to get to know each other better. Linking to the book of the month ‘The Three Little Pigs’, Mrs Mayer has spent time with the children looking at different cultures and how houses can be different depending on where in the world you live – it was very interesting. The week was rounded off with a trip to the beach for the weekly Beach School trip, Miss Emslie and some of the children from Preschool tagged along, the children listened out for the sounds they can hear at the beach and the different textures of the ground as they walked on the sand and stones.

The Preschool has been participating in activities based on their book of the month ‘Jack Frost’ by Kazuno Kohara. This has involved transient art using snowflakes, picture frames, coloured materials and pom-poms as well as cold colour pictures using white, blue and silver. The book has also introduced Preschool to a new word – hibernation – the children discovered this means some animals spend the colder months asleep before waking up again in the Spring. The children found out that animals such as hedgehogs, the hazel dormouse and our native bats hibernate in the winter and they are the only three groups in the United Kingdom that truly hibernate over the winter period; although other animals are less active during the cold snaps. Linking back to the story the children discussed how individual characters in the book may feel during winter.

The Preschool have been making their own obstacle courses in the playground, learning how to balance and navigate the course with their friends. In the library the children have been refreshing their knowledge on the numbers one to five, how to subtilise to five and the quantity associated with the numerals. The Preschool children have been strengthening their fine motor skills using tweezers and pom-poms. This activity led nicely into practising name writing and making ‘zig zag shark teeth’ using whiteboards as this ensures children can freely mark make without worrying about mistakes. At the end of the week the children have been practising using scissors to learn all about parallel and zig zag lines as well as refreshing their understanding of using scissors safely.

Awards

Year 6

Rueben for showing perseverance and independence in Mathematics

Ava for excellent work and curiosity in English

Kieran for taking responsibility in a leadership role

Hugo for outstanding perseverance and progress with reading skills

Year 5

5R:

This week’s award winners in 5R are Grace and Nilanth, for excellent collaboration in Science

5S:

Arabella, for creating excellent complex sentences in English .

Anabelle, for going above and beyond with Home Learning to create an amazing model of a Tudor House.

Year 4

In Year 4 our award winners this week are Henry and Rocco for settling into Rossall superbly.

Year 3

The certificate winner in Year 3 this week is Annaiya for excellent effort with her reading and writing, as well as others for a fantastic start to the term.