This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
“Roll up, roll up!” was the call from our Year 4s this week, as they enjoyed a wonderful circus skills session with Thomas Bounce (Britain’s Got Talent semi-finalist), as part of their Topic work on the ‘History of Entertainment’. The children displayed some exceptional skills but I was pleased that none of them excelled too much at playing the clown!
The School Council led our assembly on Tuesday, informing the pupils all about Anti-Bullying and ensuring that all the children were well on their way in designing their anti-bullying superhero posters. It was wonderful to hear the children deliver their message with such clarity and confidence. Well done School Council! If you would like to watch the assembly, please scroll down.
I was delighted to be able to attend the Year 6 visit to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester on Thursday. Not only was I impressed by the knowledge and behaviour of our eldest pupils, but the experiences of the museum were truly excellent. The children were wowed by the 360-degree cinematic Big Picture Show that used voices, sounds, music and imagery to ignite curiosity about challenging topics. The pupils experienced a broad range of stories that were brought into powerful focus, reflecting not only on the immediate effects of war, but also what happens when the guns stop firing. I would definitely recommend a visit and was pleased that our pupils were able to record their own commentaries on some of the exhibits, helping to ensure there was a true depth of understanding of all exhibits.
Trips and visits have a profound impact on the pupils’ holistic development. Beyond the confines of the classroom, educational outings offer invaluable opportunities for real-world learning, fostering a deeper understanding of academic concepts and cultivating essential life skills. It is great to see that the Prep School staff are continuing to plan and offer experiences that create lasting memories, stimulate curiosity and contribute to the enrichment of each child’s educational journey.
We are thoroughly looking forward to seeing many of you on Sunday at our Christmas Markets. Please come and pay a visit to the Prep School ‘Festive Pupil Fruit Machine’ as we raise some additional funds for our playground equipment. It promises to be a lot of fun!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Anti-bullying Week and World Kindness Day
This week is Anti-Bullying Week and Monday was World Kindness Day. In honour of this, our Pre-Prep and Prep School Council members delivered assemblies about bullying and kindness. These were our first assemblies delivered by pupils this year, and the children did a wonderful job, speaking clearly and confidently, delivering their message with passion.
Well done to School Council and remember their key message – always be kind!
School Council also ran a poster competition for designing an Anti-Bullying Hero! We had so many wonderful entries, well done to everyone who participated. The winners of the competition are:
- Pre-Prep – Lexi, Xander, Rupert
- Y3/4 – Arla, Darius, Henry
- Y5/6 – Lara, Dolly, Rhiannon, Annabel
Congratulations to the winners and their posters will be entered into a national competition!
Prep Student Council Assembly
U9/10 Netball Rossall Prep v Highfield Priory
The Year 4 and Year 5 netball squad travelled over to Highfield Priory in Preston on Wednesday afternoon. What a fantastic opportunity for the Rossall girls to play their first competitive matches.
#The teams made amazing progress, both on and off the ball. Well done to all the girls that took part and represented Rossall so admirably and with such enthusiasm and passion.
We are already looking forward to our next matches!
Rossall U9 Footballers Hit the Target!
It was wonderful to see so many of the children in Years 3 and 4 make their debut for the Rossall teams this week against Highfield Priory.
The enthusiasm and excitement from all the children was a joy to see, and the Rossall players put on a fine display of teamwork and camaraderie, as well as playing heroically in the strong winds.
There were plenty of goals, and plenty of smiles from all the players and proud parents. Well done to everyone for a successful start to Rossall sporting greatnes.
The Grumpy Sheep
Rossall Prep School invites you to attend The Grumpy Sheep in the Performing Arts Studio at 9.30am.
Our Nativity this year takes place across 2 days with Pre-Prep on Monday and Nursery on Tuesday.
Year 6
Imagine all those faces from the history books, the news; imagine for one moment that you’re standing in their shoes. Imagine having hopes and dreams, then everything goes wrong; and everything you want to be – reduced to dust – be strong
Tony Walsh
This is a small extract from a poem the children listened to during their visit to the Imperial War Museum in Manchester this week. We were thoroughly captivated by the incredible exhibits and it was a pleasure to watch the children as they explored the timeline from the First World War to the present day. They thoroughly immersed themselves in the ‘Big Picture Shows’ and discovered the forgotten histories of service personnel and civilians. They also enjoyed the opportunity to see conflict through the eyes of artists.
While we were in the museum the children were recruited as documentary makers and commissioned to record mini documentaries telling the stories that they felt were too important to be kept inside the museum. Year 6 were briefed on their task by a roving producer and sent into the museum to complete their task. It was fabulous to see them operating their recording devises, using clipper boards and microphones- we definitely have some budding journalists!
The IWM is a unique purpose-built exhibition space that gives a powerful voice to the extraordinary stories of ordinary people, forced to live their lives in a world torn apart by conflict.
This is a place where every object on display, every contemporary work of art and every exhibition is designed to live long in the memory.
A fabulous trip, enjoyed by all.
Year 5
As much as Year 5 relish the quality time they have with their class teacher (I hope!), the opportunity to explore the Rossall campus with the Senior School specialists is a real treat each week. Hearing the joyful songs of ‘Mary Poppins’ as they return to the classroom from Music and Drama has been a highlight, and preparations for our musical next term are going ‘supercalifragilisticexpialidocious-ly’!
The children have been fine tuning their artistic talents with Mrs Cox in the Art Department, and perfecting their Spanish accents with Miss Hoban, roll on ‘Feliz Navidad’! It really is a pleasure to hear the positive comments from each of the teachers, and these wonderful opportunities help the children build a connection with all aspects of Rossall School life.
In class we have enjoyed a range of experiments on Forces delivered by our Science enthusiasts using ‘slinkies’ and homemade air cannons, while our group investigations have amazed us with the power of levers. It really has been a wonderful week of learning- Look forward to seeing lots of you at the Christmas Fair to help on our ‘Festive Fruit Machine’!
Year 4
We’ve had another fantastic week in Year 4!
At the start of our week, we had a very exciting visit from a talented Old Rossallian! Thomas Bounce performed circus skills and tricks to inspire and entertain us during our ‘Entertainment’ themed topic this term. We watched lots of juggling performances with a few acts from the trusty volunteers in our class. We learnt how to use ribbon pois, diabolos, spinning plates, flower sticks and juggling scarves to name a few. We were all so enthusiastic and enjoyed the challenge of trying to persevere with each circus skill – throwing a full/double spin of the flower stick and throwing the diabolo in the air and catching it. We all progressed in many different ways.
In Science, we have enjoyed turning our lesson into a musical one- playing many different percussion, woodwind, brass and string instruments to explore how the pitch and volume can be changed on each of them. We welcomed Sophie up to demonstrate how to change the pitch and volume on the trumpet- we were very impressed!
In Maths, we have come to the end of our topic of Addition and Subtraction. We focused on how we can thoroughly estimate answers through rounding numbers as well as how to check our answers by using the inverse. We are now moving onto Area which is completely new learning for us all and have started off this topic by finding out the question ‘What is Area?’.
In English, we have continued to study our magical story while paying particular attention to plural and singular nouns. We have also looked at possession for both types of nouns which has been rather tricky to say the least! Learning the exception to the rule of plural nouns proved to be the trickiest.
Year 3
The stormy winds must have propelled Year 3 this week because we have all had so much energy and enthusiasm for our learning!
We have enjoyed our English this week reading further into our book Winter’s Child, meeting the mysterious icy character for the first time. We wrote a ‘Role on the Wall’ piece to describe the Winter’s Child using detail, with interesting verbs and adjectives. We also used the book to apply to our learning about conjunctions. In comprehension this week we also enjoyed some poetry.
This week in Maths was the final week in our addition and subtraction unit. We applied our calculation skills to tricky word problems and learnt about how to use inverse operations, fact families and bar models to help us with these. Next, on the challenging realm of multiplication!
In our topic this week, on our journey through kings and queens, we moved on to one of the most notorious of British monarchs – Henry VIII! Of course, thanks to the famous new musical, many of us were already familiar with the rhyme to help us remember what happened to his six wives. We used fact files to research each wife and find out more information about them. It was great to use iPads to practice our research skills.
Related to our topic this week in Art we created our own Bayeux Tapestry depicting scenes from the Battle of Hastings in 1066! For this we honed our drawing skills and it is wonderful to see our version of the tapestry up on display.
For Science this week we were lucky enough to make a visit to the Science department to extend our learning about forces and magnets. Mr Hutichson led us through a session about magnetism and magnetic fields which was fascinating, and great to have a change of scene for Science!
So all in all a jam-packed week! Well done Year 3, fantastic work and attitudes all round!
Year 2
We may have been a little windswept in Year 2 this week, and though the lockdown prevented us from going swimming on Monday, it did not dampen our spirits. In fact Mrs Harris was really impressed with the children’s attitude and application during their Dance lesson, even though it had to take place in the Year 2 classroom.
Our Maths is going from strength to strength, this week we have been adding and subtracting across 10. Children have managed really well with this concept and their ability to exchange, as well as the development in mathematical vocabulary have been most pleasing.
On Tuesday the children shared lots of information with members of the Pre-Prep community, in Year 2 members of the class shared their home learning. This included dinosaur poetry, habitats, information sheets on owls and even some pictures of the eagle owl. Members of student council also carried out this weeks’ Pre-Prep Assembly, “Making a Noise” and teaching their peers all about Anti-Bullying Week.
We cannot have a Year 2 newsletter article without mentioning the visit of the wonderful Mrs Payne, this week the children loved making their own dinosaurs in Art. All of this and we have not even mentioned our nativity practices, Topic, Science or English lessons. To say busy is quite an understatement!
Year 1
Nibbles has been causing more mischief in Year 1 this week. He has managed to nibble his way through lots of books and ended up in the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. He has caused lots of damage in the house of the Three Bears and we have had to help Daddy Bear to write a list of things he will need to replace. We have also written about how the characters have felt when Nibbles has destroyed their things. We have tried really hard to remember our capital letters and full stops, and have even been using joining words.
In Topic we have thought about how stories are used to entertain people and have been using our puppets and theatre to retell stories and make up our own adventures. Later this term, we will be making our own puppets, and in preparation for this we have been practising how to use a needle and wool to make spider webs. In Science we have searched the classroom to identify and group different materials, and think about the difference between an object and the material it is made from.
Reception
This week we read ‘This is Our House’ by Michael Rosen.
George wanted to keep the cardboard play house all to himself. He doesn’t want to share it and makes up lots of instant rules to justify why others can’t enter e.g. no glasses, no girls, no twins allowed…
A resolution is found when George finds out for himself what it’s like to be excluded. It’s a valuable lesson for George and a good opportunity to empathise with this common childhood (and human) experience.
So, you can guess where this led the children … Yes, they wanted to make their own cardboard play house, which in fact didn’t stay as a house for long! The story also allowed the children to demonstrate how they thought George should have played with his friends in the cardboard play house. The children have even made a fireplace from boxes so that Father Christmas can visit our class.
A big empty box is a great starting point for creative and imaginative play. Children can decide how to change the box into something they can use for pretend play, like a castle, shop, cave and so on. Then they can use their imagination and problem-solving skills to turn ideas into reality. The children have even made a fireplace from boxes so that Father Christmas can visit our class.
Cardboard boxes can also encourage physical play. Often the first thing children want to do with a cardboard box is to climb into it – and perhaps jump out to surprise you!
Boxes of any size are fun to play with and will get your child’s imagination working. This weekend see if you can find a really big cardboard box that your child can fit inside and create something amazing. You might be able to get cardboard boxes from local supermarkets and other shops.
There’s no ‘right’ way to play with a cardboard box, so why not let your child decide what they want to do and follow their lead. You could start by just talking about the box together and as always have fun!
Nursery
“A child who sings is a happy child”
Elder Enrique Faiabella
This week in the Nursery we have focused on Nursery Rhyme Week.
The Sanderlings
In The Sanderlings’ room there has been lots of singing taking place. The babies started the week with ‘Jack and Jill’ where they practised filling and emptying various jugs and jars with water. Next was the very active ‘head, shoulders, knees and toes’, the babies were encouraged to look into mirrors to practise finding features on their faces such as eyes, ears, mouth and nose. The Sanderlings development focus for this week has also been Understanding The World, which was easily incorporated into the Nursery Rhyme ‘hickory dickory dock’, the babies went out into the school grounds to explore, whilst out and about they spent their time looking for clocks and numbers whilst Miss Schofield, Mrs Beddis and Miss Heatley supported the children to become aware of numbers in everyday life and during songs they love singing.
The Sandpipers
This week in Sandpipers we have been learning about our world and building upon their understanding of Earth. The children have still been looking at the planets in our Solar System and the towns where we live. The children identified “we live on earth”, “we live on the green bit” and “the blue is water” on a map. As it is Nursery Rhyme week the children have been learning a different rhyme for each day of the week and they have participated in lots of activities to link in with them. Towards the end of the week Miss Chapman, Miss Southern, Miss Sumner and Mrs Mayer introduced Christmas to the children. The children really enjoyed decorating their Christmas tree, wrapping presents in their “Santa’s Workshop” whilst pretending to be elves. The Sandpiper team have explained to the children that Santa goes around all the world and to link this the children have been looking at the maps with magnifying glasses and looking at the different roads, land and water. Finally, the children looked in mirrors to understand similarities and differences. The children were looking and talking about their hair colour, eye colour, if they are a boy or a girl and if they have the same hair and eye colour of their friends.
Pre-School
Pre-School started their week with the Nursery Rhyme ‘Jack and Jill’, the children have enjoyed creating wells for Jack and Jill and have discussed mathematical language of more than and less than to describe the water in each well. The children have made their own clocks for ‘hickory dickory dock’ looking at the numbers that make up a clock and counting in jumps of one to get to the next number. The children have voted for their favourite Nursery rhyme; ‘5 currant buns’ was very popular amongst the Pre-School children. Finally, as Christmas is fast approaching, Pre-School have begun talking about all of the lovely things we have to look forward to at Nursery and with our families, the children are so excited. The children have helped the Pre-School teachers to put the Christmas tree up. The children have enjoyed making decorations for the room and they especially enjoyed making candy canes. Nativity practice is also going really well!
Awards
Year 6
Amelia for her collaboration and teamwork whilst completing the documtary challenge at the Imperial War Museum.
Caitlin for her excellent communication and critical thinking skills in all her learning this week, including at the Imperial War Museum.
Huxley and Hollie for excellent perseverance and care creating their Peace and Conflict artwork.
Congratulations to our Year 6 pupils who took part in the Primary Maths Challenge.
Year 5
Oleg for Outstanding progress and ability in creative writing.
Aaron for Excellent progress with the standard of work in all subjects.
Year 4
Our certificate winners in Year 4 this week go to Stanley and Mykhailo for showing excellent enthusiasm for learning during our circus skills workshop.
Year 3
Our certificates this week go to Aidan for having a brilliant attitude and great effort in his learning, and to Fox for taking on feedback to extend his learning!
Year 2
Olivia and Jessica were presented with awards for their Hard Work and Presentation Skills when Conducting the Pre-Prep Assembly.
Year 1
This week’s certificates are awarded to Tabitha, for showing commitment to her role as a School Council member and leading the Pre-Prep Anti Bullying Assembly, and to Clark, for developing his independence and interacting with adults and peers.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement are awarded to Stefan and Milly.
Milly is trying so hard to learn our Nativity songs and even has a super grumpy facial expression when singing ‘Baa, baa, grump!’
During a Maths activity, Stefan was using his phonic skills to independently read the positional vocabulary being introduced.
Well done to both children!
