This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All
After spending a wonderful week in South Africa promoting and marketing Rossall School, I returned in time to watch some incredible performances. The children who took part in the music assembly on Thursday have made so much progress and performed with great confidence.
I was immensely proud of them all. Year 5S also delivered a wonderful Chapel assembly on Friday, letting the School and parents know all about Advent, as well as performing a beautiful class song. It never ceases to amaze me just how confident our children are at standing up in front of an audience. I am very much looking forward to our Christmas Around the World concert later today, where I am sure there will be more of the same!
On Wednesday, our footballers were out in force, travelling over to Highfield Priory in Preston. An 8-6 victory and a 5-0 win meant that the boys returned home very happy!
My sincere thanks to all families who helped to support our Children in Need appeal, by sending in money for the non-uniform day, as well as filling Smarties tubes with coins. I am delighted to announce that we raised over £600 for this very worthy charity. Continuing with our efforts to raise money for worthwhile causes, the sale of baubles for the Prep Christmas Tree, the Elf (Reindeer) Run, and the Christmas Jumper Day, will all form a total that will be released next week and will go to Brian House. Furthermore, I was contacted by one of our parents who was attending an Elvis charity event organised by Bulldog Promotions. Each year they decide on a charity to support and this year, I was invited to put forward our suggestion. The School Council chose Brian House and we are delighted that a further £800 will be added to our donation next week. My sincere thanks to Mr Simmons and Mr Blundell for your support.
This week, we have enjoyed our book week and the children have participated in some fabulous activities, the most enjoyable being the visit of Teach Rex and Thomas the Gorilla. The children were captivated by the life-sized gorilla and the story of his life and the habitat he had lost.
As I said at the start of my newsletter piece, I have spent the past week in Johannesburg, South Africa. Visiting schools, taking part in interviews (including national morning television!), meeting prospective parents, and visiting the Department for International Trade, were just some of the array of activities set up for us, as I proudly flew the Rossall flag and promoted our wonderful School.
Whilst away, England lost out to South Africa in the rugby – I can only hope that the football team fare better on Sunday against Senegal. If they need any help in getting up for the game, they need only watch Rossall Prep School’s World Cup video below…
Have a great weekend.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
World Cup at Prep School
Rossall Footballers Hit the Net at Highfield Priory
Inspired by the success of the England Football Team, our Rossall U11 and U10 footballers were in fine form when we travelled to Highfield Priory this week for two 7-a-side matches.
Both teams played superbly to record two excellent victories, scoring plenty of goals to win 8-6 and 5-0.
Well done, Rossall!
Year 6
Year 6 embarked on a journey of historical discovery this week as we travelled to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester. This was the perfect trip to reflect on our ‘Peace and Conflict’ topic which we were totally immersed in before half term. The class relished the opportunity to explore the vast collection of artefacts, completing a trail quiz to deepen their understanding of the devastating impact of both world wars. We also visited the ceramic poppy memorial that marked the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1 and commemorates those that lost their lives in battle.
To finish our informative tour, we hit the gift shop, where Year 6 left their own trail of destruction! But we’re delighted to bring away souvenirs of our thought provoking visit.
Year 5
We have had such a busy week this week! From learning our Christmas Concert songs to 5S rehearsing their Christmas Chapel assembly! It has been non-stop.
To start the week, we had a very exciting visitor for Book Week. Thomas the gorilla from Teach Rex introduced himself to Prep School and Year 5 were first taken on an immersive journey to learn about Thomas’s life. The story described the importance of sustainability and to raise awareness of the human footprint. They explored the positive and negative impacts of human behaviours on our world. Archie from 5S was able to meet Thomas!
Year 5 have finished off their book ‘The Lost Happy Endings’ this week. They had discussed the moral of the ‘Golden Pen Story’, in relation to the witch, that if you do bad things to people, it will come back to haunt you! Planning and plotting their own traditional tale, their focus was to describe the forest setting, characters and an alternative ending.
In Maths, we have continued to explore addition and subtraction. Using our knowledge of rounding to estimate and approximate answers for calculations and problems. Year 5 has been encouraged to consider the most appropriate number to round to the nearest 10, 100, 1,000 and 100,000.
Year 4
This has been a turbocharged week of events as we go hurtling into the final week of term.
Interestingly gender stereotyping was the hot topic of conversation in our discussion about toys through the ages. The children learnt how toys in Victorian times were gender-typical with tea sets and dolls for girls, and trains and soldiers for boys. They also examined evidence from archaeological finds which unearthed rocking horses, chariots, dolls and baby’s rattles from 4000 years ago.
A surprise visit from Thomas the Gorilla allowed the children a chance to showcase their knowledge from our previous topic when we learnt all about gorillas and the difficulties they face in the wild. The children listened attentively as Thomas told his life story.
During the event the children got to unleash their inner film-star as they learnt all about SFX and greenscreens. A number of children put their imagination to the test and took to the stage in front of a giant piece of green material. They then were faced with the task of acting out a sequence of events which ended in a gorilla chase!
The children have also been busy practising for next week’s circus performance and their ideas are amazing. This is totally child led and testimony to the skills, talents, imagination and huge potential of the Year 4 children. I can’t wait to see them present their acts next week and I’m sure they will all do amazingly well
Year 3
We are fast approaching the end of term and as expected it’s as busy as it can be! We have been really enjoying getting in the Christmas spirit. In English we have started preparing for our final write of the term, by describing scenes using our senses and by creating our own fantasy characters inspired by Winter’s Child. For Maths we are continuing our learning of multiplication and division by learning about the 4 times tables. In Science we are ending our Forces and Magnets unit with a final project, designing and making our own magnet games! We hope to have some visitors next week to our class to present our games to and explain how they work. A highlight of the week was definitely meeting Thomas the Gorilla and having our workshop all about wildlife, habitats and protection of animals. Ending the week with our wonderful Christmas market was extra special!
Year 2
I can’t believe it is the end of the penultimate week of Michaelmas. Year 2 has had such a busy week, yet still managed to complete some very pleasing work. The visit from Thomas the Gorilla was most exciting and really enthused the children. Not only was it a catalyst for book week, but it also fitted nicely with our Science work on habitats. Our preparation for the Nativity is now complete, the children have been incredibly patient and we are confident that it will all come together for the big performance next week.
On Monday the final few board games were brought in, the variety of which was quite remarkable, the children enjoyed the opportunity to showcase their creations and were especially proud when teaching Reception how to play these games.
In class, we have reached the end of our book “The Owl Who Was Afraid of the Dark”. The children have thoroughly enjoyed the story and are now ready to complete their final piece of writing related to this. In Mathematics the children have demonstrated a fabulous understanding of money. They are able to count both notes and coins to numbers that far exceed Mr Rund’s account balance! Have a very restful weekend and prepare yourselves for a very busy festive full final week of term!
Year 1
This week has been Book Week and Year 1 have been talking about ways to help the rainforests and jungles around the world. What inspired us to start talking about it? Well, we had a special visit from Thomas the Gorilla and Teach Rex and they told us all about his story. It made us so sad to hear what he went through, and he really inspired us to discuss ways and changes we can make to help the environment. Thomas’ friends at Teach Rex also showed us how we could use apps and computing to have some fun and make videos of ourselves in a real rainforest! Thomas was a great speaking and writing inspiration for us; we discussed lots about him and our vocabulary flourished as we did so. We wrote an information sheet, helping others to realise the small changes we could make to help the environment. Well done Year 1! We also visited our Book Fair and enjoyed looking at all the different books available; we are building our passion for reading! Alongside Book Week we have also been practising our fantastic Christmas Show and we are starting to get excited with how close our performances are now!
Reception
The lure of all things cute and fluffy is irresistible to most children and many adults – but you don’t need to have your own pets to get your little ones used to animals. Learning to care for animals and treat them with kindness is an experience that children can easily transfer to their relationships with other humans too – it helps to build empathy, understanding and respect for both their peers and adults.
This term we have been looking at lots of types of minibeast, including spiders, ants, worms, caterpillars and flies! We have collected minibeasts from our woodland area and even our playground. The children enjoyed looking closely at them through magnifying glasses. We carefully let the animals go at the end of the lesson.
This term’s book ‘I don’t want to eat this ant’ has inspired the children to ask lots of questions about anteaters. Through discussions and videos the children have found out more about anteaters and learnt that as well as ants, they love to eat termites too. We have carefully labelled some pictures and used our floor book to record facts we could remember about anteaters as a class.
The biggest and friendliest animal we have met this term, was of course, Thomas, a Gorilla from the rainforest. The children learnt a special ‘gorilla way’ to say ‘hello’ and even played a game with Thomas. Who knew you could sing ‘Twinkle,Twinkle’ to send a gorilla to sleep too? If your child would like to learn more about mini beasts you could watch Minibeast Adventure with Jess on CBeebies together, and use a minibeast spotter to record the creatures you could find when you’re out and about.
Nursery
The Sanderlings have had a festive week starting with a visit to see all the Christmas lights and Christmas trees in the various outdoor areas on the school grounds, the babies have loved observing the different colours. Continuing with the outdoor fun there has been lots of outdoor play complete with warm hats as the weather begins to get colder. The Sanderlings have been making Christmas decorations for their trees at home using
salt dough. They have helped to roll the dough and have started the process (with the help of Miss Schofield and Mrs Beddis) of drying the ornaments ready for painting. The stories in The Sandpiper room have been given an extra exciting twist with the use of Christmas puppets, the children have thoroughly enjoyed immersing themselves in stories with every bodies festive favourite; Santa. Finally, the babies have been learning turn taking and sharing this week. Each baby took their turn on the slide waiting for their friend to
safely exit the bottom of the slide before climbing to the top of the steps themselves – they were very patient.
The Sandpipers have been creative this week making both a fireplace for their home corner and a postbox for all the letters they have been writing to Santa. All of the children have taken it in turns to paint and stick in their own crafts to form their personalised postbox. Of course, now The Sandpipers have a magical postbox, the opportunity to write our own letters and wish lists arose ahead of Santa’s visit in a few weeks; with support from Miss Southern and Mx Preston the children used their fine motor skills to write their own interpretations of their wishes before posting them. Mrs Mayer has helped the children to make their own decorations for their trees at home, lolly sticks were glued together into the shape of a tree and sequins were added for the baubles – the children are really excited to take them home. The Tuff tray has been set up with ‘snow’ and glitter and the children were encouraged to use their fingers to make marks such as shapes, letters and
numbers. In circle time, in addition to subitising, The Sandpipers have been learning Christmas songs ahead of their festive stay and play. Finally, the children have collectively made a Christmas wreath for the door using paints and glitter.
The Preschool children are still busy this week preparing for their Nativity next week. Whilst walking to and from the drama studio the children have been looking at all of the lovely Christmas decorations that have now adorned every building in the school. As a reward for all their hard work rehearsing, Heather, our front of house supervisor, invited the children to the dining hall to see the decorations and to enjoy a hot chocolate; thank you Heather! The secret reader chair has been occupied this week with two secret readers; Miss Schofield and Mrs Williams. Miss Schofield brought in books from when she was a little girl to share with us. It was lovely to hear the memories that Miss Schofield had from her childhood. Next up was a member of the senior readership team – Mrs Williams – who read ‘Stick man’ by Julia Donaldson which is a firm favourite in preschool and led us nicely into ‘Stickman’ being the book of the month. Thank you to both Miss Schofield and Mrs Williams for coming to read to preschool! As we prepare for Christmas, the children have been dancing along to all of the much loved Christmas songs and making lots of crafts ready to take home. Finally, the Preschool room has been made magical with a snowy lodge, beautiful trees and lots of twinkling lights
around the room.
Awards
Year 6
In 6S our certificate winners were:
Amelie for outstanding effort and progress in sport and Hugo for outstanding effort and perseverance in English!
In 6R our certificate winners were:
Molly for perseverance and Independence and Reuben for respect of others!
Year 5
In 5S our certificate winners were Annabel for being a fantastic role model to all and Eleanor for showing excellence in English.
This week’s certificate winners for 5R are Ahill, for his World Cup worthy hat trick in the Football match, and Rhiannon for wonderful creative writing in English
Year 4
In Year 4 our certificate winners this week are Ben and Ethan for fabulous organisation and teamwork in preparation for our class circus performance.
Year 3
Our certificates this week in Year 3 go to Sarah and Wyatt for their kindness.
Year 2
This week’s certificates of achievement award go to Arla and Alicia, for their excellent effort in our Nativity Rehearsals
Year 1
Theo for speaking confidently and for singing so beautifully when practising for our Nativity!
Bow for participating in our Nativity with immense enthusiasm and motivation!
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement award go to Clark and Rupert.
Clark has independently written his name and is trying hard to form his letters correctly.
Rupert has settled quickly into his new school and learnt new routines.
