This week’s newsletter for Rossall Nursery, Pre-Prep and Prep School.
Dear All,
It was certainly not a summer’s day return for our pupils on Tuesday, as they arrived at School to be buffeted by wind and rain! Fortunately the storm passed and as I write, the sun is shining over Rossall! Welcome back to the Summer Term!
The Easter break was a restful one for many but not for our intrepid skiers, who travelled to Italy to take part in the Prep Ski trip. The weather played its part once again whilst we were away. Usually, Easter skiing is full of blue sky days but on this occasion, we had only one such experience, as the rest of the trip included plenty of snow, low clouds and some blizzard conditions! This did not stop the children, who displayed incredible resilience and a staunch approach to ‘just getting on with it!’.
I was exceptionally proud of the children whilst away from home for a week – some of them for the first time. You can read a little more about our adventures in our separate newsletter piece, where the children recall some of their highlights!
Sport was back with a bang this week, as our Year 5 and 6 footballers and netballers braved the weather to take on our neighbours from AKS. Some fantastic results and games played in excellent spirit. Well done to all our children.
I was hugely impressed by our School Council on Tuesday, as members from Reception to Year 6, delivered their latest charitable initiative as part of a specially planned assembly. Again supporting a local charity, the children have chosen a pet food bank and it was fantastic to listen to them speak about the pets they own and how much they love and care for them.
The summer term is always a whirlwind that gathers pace at an incredible rate of knots. My reminder to the children this week in assembly was to simply enjoy the ride. The way to do that is to aim to be the very best in all that they do; whether it be in the classroom, on the sports pitches, at one of our new clubs, around our wonderful campus, or on a residential. There are so many opportunities afforded to the children and I am sure they will grasp every one of them!
Have a wonderful weekend.
Mr M Turner
Headmaster of Preparatory School & Nursery
Ski Trip Memories
The Prep Ski Trip to Passo Tonale, Italy, was an exhilarating adventure filled with snow-capped peaks, plenty of snow, and unforgettable memories. Nestled in the heart of the Italian Alps, Passo Tonale offered the perfect setting for both our novice and more experienced skiers alike.
The children embarked on a journey of excitement and camaraderie as they navigated the slopes, honed their skiing skills, and embraced the breathtaking scenery. With fantastic instructors guiding them along the way, the children had plenty of opportunities to improve their technique and conquer new challenges.
Off the slopes, the group immersed themselves in the apres ski, enjoying delicious Italian food (the chocolate waffles and pizza night were favourites), improving their knowledge through a quiz, enjoying happy hour at the bar, and belting out some classics at karaoke night!
From adrenaline-fueled runs down the mountainside to the exciting evening activities, the Prep Ski Trip to Passo Tonale was an unforgettable experience that brought together a wonderful group of children and some dedicated staff.
My sincere thanks to the children for their resilience, camaraderie, and humour. Also to the staff – the same thanks apply! Lifelong memories are made on trips such as these – here are some of the children’s favourite moments…
Mr Turner
Year 6:
Jude R: I remember going to quiz night and having a go at all the questions about all the teachers – I really enjoyed the quiz with all my friends. I also had loads of fun on the ski slopes.
Millie: I really enjoyed the karaoke night. After a day of skiing on the slopes, it was a really nice end to the day. I liked sharing a room with my friends. And I particularly loved the chocolate waffles and gelato.
Jasper: I enjoyed skiing and being in the top group. I loved the restaurant and the food at the hotel! Also, the karaoke night was the best night of my life! We sang Freed from Desire and Just Can’t Get Enough.
Skyla: I liked the snowball fight because it was fun. I enjoyed the karaoke night because we got to sing with our friends. I also really loved skiing!
Seb M: I enjoyed the pizzeria night, especially the salami pizza. I also loved the karaoke night.
Hollie: My favourite part was when my instructor asked me to throw Seb’s pole to him because he had dropped it. My throw was pretty bad and the pole skidded down the slope – oops! The instructor had to go back on the lift to get it!
Mia: I was skiing down a tough slope that was icy. Skyla managed to get past it but then Rocco fell and I fell over his skis – the rest of the group ended up in a big pile!
Rio: When I was getting off the chair lift, my skis and Mia’s got tangled together and we both ended up in a heap – the ski lift had to stop to wait for us!
Nicholas: I really enjoyed being chosen to be in the top group in skiing and getting to do some of the red runs.
Monty: I really enjoyed doing the red run. It was so snowy that I couldn’t see the bottom of the mountain – it was like skiing in the clouds.
Archie: I loved going on the red runs. Singing and dancing with everybody on the karaoke night was great. I enjoyed not getting the Dufus hat! Also I loved the Verona toilets – they were really fancy.
Seluleko: I enjoyed the pizzeria night and karaoke night – it was crazy!
Caitlin: My favourite part of the ski trip was karaoke night. I sang Dancing Queen and loved it!
Year 5:
Spencer: The Italian pizza was bellissima! We had so much fun on the ski slopes – I love skiing.
Olivia: I really enjoyed exploring Tonale and buying souvenirs for my family.
Seb H: Skiing was amazing! I was so excited to go on a chair lift for the first time. I was scared but really excited too!
Rocco: Breakfast was amazing; not just because the croissants were delicious, but because Mr Turner awarded the Dufus hat. I couldn’t believe it when I was nominated and then won! I felt embarrassed all day!
Aaron: I loved spending time away from home with my friends and teachers. We had so much fun in the room, especially when Spencer fell in his suitcase and couldn’t escape!
Dolly: The ski trip was fantastic! I really enjoyed learning to ski but my favourite part was having a snowball fight, especially when I hit Hollie!
Ralph: The best part about skiing was travelling up the mountain in the gondola and on the chairlifts. The views were breathtaking!
Year 4:
Isla: My highlight of the trip was when I forgot to put on my leggings the right way round and everyone laughed! Also when we got waffles; they were so good!
Sophia: My highlights are the karaoke, the waffles, and Isla going up the draglift in a very special way!
Felix: My highlights were the red run, the blue run and the ski lifts. In the afternoon we had the best pasta ever. The karaoke was very cool.
Sarah-Anne: My highlight was when Emma, Sophia and I sang Mamma Mia and Money Money Money for karaoke! Also the ice-cream, the skiing, and the pasta was super tasty! All the activities were so fun to do and the snowball fight was also so fun. The ski lifts were also so much fun and so were the runs. It was amazing! Thank you Mr Turner.
Emma: My highlight was skiing on the blue runs with all my friends, singing Mamma Mia with Sarah-Ann and Sophia, and also the last day when we had chocolate waffles! They were so tasty!
Wyatt: My highlight was when we did karaoke and we went down a red run and a blue run. It was the best time ever. We ate ice cream; it was SO FUN. Thank you to all the teachers.
Zach: My highlight was eating the pizza and the fantastic breakfasts! Also when we were skiing, I kept falling over! IT WAS THE BEST!
Henry: My highlight was eating the delicious pizza and being on the slopes with my friends! I loved learning how to ski better – don’t tell anyone but I learned the most from Sophia! It was so much FUN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Marcel: My highlight of the holiday was skiing and the night club. Doing a red and blue run was my favourite.
Manchester Thunder v Loughborough Lightening
On the first Saturday of the Easter holidays, we took a group of Prep children to watch a Netball Super League match between Manchester Thunder and Loughborough Lightening at Belle Vue Sports Village in Manchester. What a fabulous experience to witness netball at the highest level. The children were fantastic ambassadors for Rossall School, and will hopefully be able to transfer some of these skills into their own game. We can’t wait to go back again!
School Council – Pet Day Donations
This week on the 11th April was National Pet Day! To celebrate this day, the Prep School Council chose to deliver an assembly to the whole Prep School all about pets and animals in our lives. The School Council representatives wrote, prepared and practiced the assembly which they presented on Tuesday. The children spoke about their pets and also the importance of looking after pets. As such, School Council are appealing for donations of pet supplies which we will be donating to a local charity Happy Pets Food Bank in Fleetwood. This charity aims to help people feed their pets in times of need. They collect donations of pet supplies in order to give them to families who need help to look after their pets. Donations of all kinds of pet supplies are welcome! The charity specifically asked for dry cat food, tinned dog food, doggy poop bags and cat litter. But anything will be helpful! Open bags of food are also accepted. The deadline for donations is Friday 19th April.
Thank you and Happy Pet Day!
Rossall Prep vs AKS Netball
Rossall Prep hit the ground running with our first fixture of the summer term on Wednesday. We played host to our friends and neighbours from AKS. With both schools fielding 2 netball teams, it was a fantastic opportunity to have some match experience for our U11 squad. Rossall Reds put on an impeccable performance, with many of the girls playing a variety of positions. Rossall Blues then followed up with another super display of netball skills. Well done to all the girls for representing Rossall so impressively.
Rossall Footballers Shine in the Wind and Rain!
The wet and windy forecast did not deter the Rossall U11 and U10 footballers from hosting AKS in an afternoon of free flowing football. It was rewarding to see so many children representing the School in two competitive matches.
It was end to end football on the AstroTurf as the ball skidded on the wet surface, and both schools displayed impressive skills. There were plenty of goals with Rossall victorious 3-2 in one match, and AKS winning the other 5-4.
Well done to all the players for representing Rossall splendidly on and off the field.
Year 6
Welcome back to the glorious (or wind and rain swept) Summer Term. As Chaucer said, “All good things must come to an end” and indeed for our Year 6 children, this is their final term in the Preparatory School before they head through the Archway and into Senior School, but what an exciting term it is going to be!
We are looking forward to the Year 6 Assembly, Sports Day, our residential to the Lake District, cricket and rounders fixtures and so much more.
Relish each and every moment of this Term Year 6!
We have certainly returned to School re-energised and ready to learn. The children have worked conscientiously in Mathematics, tackling translations with great enthusiasm.
We continue to enjoy our book, ‘The Island’ by Jason Chin. The children have worked hard to write their final piece of work, a journalistic report about Charles Darwin’s exploration of the Galapagos Islands.
Inheritance has been the focus in Science. We have had enormous fun designing our own Mr and Little Miss People. The children considered the characteristics the new offspring would inherit, both genetically and environmentally from their parents. As you can imagine, we had some fabulous new creations!
Year 5
Year 5 literally flew into School this week, partly due to the remnants of Storm Kathleen still blowing hard, but primarily because they could not wait to get back into class for the Summer term!
We have certainly hit the ground running, diving into our Geography topic focusing on ‘Climate Change’, discussing our new novel ‘The Paperbag Prince’, and dissecting daffodils as we investigate reproduction in plants. The cross-curricular connection between our subject themes will certainly deepen our learning in all areas, and with an enjoyable range of practical home learning tasks I know the class will relish all the tasks that await. One thing for certain is that we are going to make the most of every day in Year 5 in our final term.
Year 4
Upon our return to Rossall, we have had an exciting four days discovering all the new and wonderful topics we will be covering this half term.
Our new English text, ‘Where the Forest Meets the Sea’ has inspired us to write some fabulous descriptive paragraphs using various settings and landscapes including; the Arctic, the rainforest, the seaside and the desert. We are now looking forward to finding out how the story unfolds.
In Topic, we were busy developing our understanding of life in the rainforest environment by writing questions we would like to find out answers about over the course of the half term. In our short week, we have demonstrated higher level thinking skills and are set to delve more deeply into a subject we clearly find stimulating.
The rainforest theme has followed through into our Art lessons where we have created symmetrical sketches based on the animals that might be found there. We have developed our shading skills and looked carefully at all the details and patterns required to complete each individual animal.
During our Games lesson this week, some of us took part in a Dance session. We enjoyed working in groups to put together a routine with certain movements. Afterwards, we performed our dance to the class and loved sharing our creative moves.
We have a very busy term ahead of us and we are looking forward to our next discoveries as our new topics commence.
Year 3
It has been wonderful to be back together in Year 3 after the Easter holidays! Now into our final term of the year… crazy!
Despite the shorter week, we have squeezed five days worth of learning into four, and hit the ground running.
As usual we have started our new book for English this half term: Journey. This is a wordless book with beautiful illustrations and a magical story. We started the week by making predictions about the story. Then after reading the first pages we wrote diary entries about how the main character, a young girl, must be feeling when her family ignore her.
In Maths we have finished off our unit on mass, and made a start on capacity! We looked at how to measure liquid with measuring jugs using litres and millilitres.
We started our new topic for this term, another ‘journey’! This one into our beautiful continent of Europe. We started this topic by planning an (unfortunately imaginary) trip to Europe, picking three countries to research things to see and do! In Art, we also made tissue paper collages of European flags. We’ve certainly got itchy feet to explore, and will continue to do so from the comfort of the classroom!
In Science this week some flowers were at our mercy! We completed a flower dissection to learn about the different parts of the flower and discover their role in pollination.
It’s been a great first week back, well done Year 3!
Year 2
Firstly, I would like to introduce myself. I am Miss Farmer, the new Year 2 teacher. I always get first day jitters when starting with a new class, but Year 2 have been incredibly welcoming and I feel like I have been here much longer than 4 days. We have had so much fun together this week and managed to pack in lots of learning.
In English, we have started our new unit on ‘The Last Wolf’. The children showed off their amazing research skills by using the iPads to find out information on extinct animals. They then used this information to present it in a poster or a ‘Top Trump’ card. I was very impressed with their knowledge.
In Maths, we have been exploring how to measure mass in grams and kilograms. The children have blown me away with their focus and commitment to their Maths learning journey.
Despite the windy weather at the start of the week we dived right into our new topic ‘On The Seaside’. It helped us all to stay positive for the better weather to come. We discussed different seaside resorts we have visited and their features. I was impressed and very jealous with the variety of places the children have travelled to. I was also proud of how well they used their listening and speaking skills during these discussions.
In Art, the children carried on the theme of the seaside and have started to create their seaside inspired art. They used different techniques of painting and had the best time getting creative.
It has been an extremely positive first week and I am excited to see what the rest of the term has in store for us in Year 2.
Year 1
Welcome back to the Summer term! The dreary days did not stop us from using the outdoors to help us in our Maths learning this week. We have been measuring length using non-standard units as well as comparing objects that are longer or shorter, and the children were fantastic at using cubes and rulers to measure objects both in the playground and around the classroom.
In English, we have been writing our own versions of ‘The Lion Inside’, changing the characters and settings. What creative writers we have in Year 1! They have been using their imaginations and lots of descriptions to enhance their work.
In Topic, we have started to compare and contrast the town and the countryside, using the story of ‘The Town Mouse and The Country Mouse’ as our starting point. We discussed what you might see and hear in the different environments, and how different the landscapes are.
Reception
One day, Mrs Roberts thought she saw something jumping out of the window of her classroom. It was big, brown, and hairy. It had four legs, a tail, and a big, wet nose, and it had been rummaging through our bins…
Straightaway the children started to guess what it may be? Was it a bear? Was it a dog? Was it a racoon? Was it a wolf? The children were very excited and quickly wanted to know more! We later received some CCTV footage of the creature wandering around School… it was a bear! The children decided to make some traps to catch the bear, they used the binoculars to keep a look out for the bear and made a picnic with some bear friends, in case the bear came back to School.
We were surprised when we came into school on Thursday morning and found a big bear wearing a scarf and a hair bow. Was this the bear that had been rummaging in our bins? We looked around the classroom for other clues and found a new storybook. The children quickly noticed the bear we found in the classroom was very familiar to the illustration on the front cover of the book. After reading the first couple of pages, I had to stop as the children screamed ‘we know who was rummaging in the bin’.
I think I now have a class of budding detectives. What mysteries will they solve next?
Nursery
This week in Nursery we have focused on Literacy.
The babies in the Sanderling room have enjoyed developing their early mark making skills through the use of edible paint. Mark making using ‘messy’ resources provides the babies with a great sensory, physical and cognitive experience that allows them to see the connection between the actions they make and the resulting marks that they create. As always the babies in the Sanderling room have also enjoyed song and story time, and this week’s favourite is ‘Dear Zoo’ by Rod Campbell, the children have enjoyed lifting the flaps of the book and guessing what animals are hidden underneath.
We have continued doing lots of activities relating to the book of the month ‘We’re Going On A Bear Hunt’. The children have been experimenting with a range of resources and they have been on different bear hunts around the Rossall grounds, but they still haven’t found any bears!
In Sandpipers, we have also been learning about books including what the ‘blurb’ is, what authors and illustrators do and how books can be an important source of information. The children have also been to the library a few times to look at all the different types of books. Sandpipers have introduced a lending library for the children to borrow books to share with their families at home. In addition, the children have also been using their fine motor skills to write, draw, and paint and distinguish the marks they make using their imagination.
The children in Pre-School have been building on their knowledge of the sound ‘s’. They have played a variety of games to promote their understanding of the sound including playing the ‘Silly Soup’ game that is accompanied by a rhyme using objects that all begin with the sound ‘s’. During ‘Teacher Time’ the children have been introduced to oral bending of words beginning with the letter ‘s’ using their ‘robot arms’.
We have taken part in lots of mark making activities including free drawing, painting and colouring. The children in Pre-School are always encouraged to show an interest in books through group story time and independent reading and we have been discussing and sharing our favourite stories with each other.
Certificates of Achievement
Year 6
Huxley for excellent work and contributions during English lessons and Kyell for excellent contribution and thoughtful discussion during Science.
Jasper for an excellent start to Summer Term, challenging himself in his learning and Cara for applying herself fully in her learning this week.
Year 5
Lara for outstanding achievement and progress in Maths. Florence for outstanding enthusiasm and dedication in Art.
Year 4
Our Year 4 certificate winners this week go to Joel for making a fantastic start to Rossall and Henry for returning to School with a brilliant focus and attitude to learning.
Year 3
The certificates in Year 3 this week go to Fox for great efforts in English and to Aidan for wonderful progress in reading.
Year 2
Max for being very helpful to the teacher and other children in the class. Dylan for being enthusiastic in Maths and contributing during class discussions.
Year 1
This week’s certificates are awarded to Tabitha and Rupert, for fantastic creativity and imagination in their writing.
Reception
This week’s certificates of achievement go to Celia and Dotty. Celia for her excellent attitude and eagerness to complete all activities. Dotty for excellent use of props to act out different characters from stories.
Sports Awards
Well done to everyone who shared their personal sporting achievements.
