PARK HILL PREPARATORY SCHOOL THE DEERSTALKER ISSUE 162 - 4th Febuary 2022

In Year 6 the children have continued their creative writing projects which is underpinned by their studies of the Skellig text along with exploring a topic which they are passionate about to create a powerful piece of text which could be used to inform and even perhaps persuade an audience to consider their own thoughts and beliefs.

For their Design Technology lessons, the children have been exploring the characteristics behind bridge building. After researching a style of bridge which is of interest to them, they went on to use a combination of Lego and Junior Mechano to reconstruct the bridge for themselves.

In Year 5 this week the children have been forging forward with their own twist on the exciting TED Talks presentations. After being tasked with the challenge of finding a topic which perhaps pops into their mind multiple times a day, but is also unlikely to pop into other peoples thoughts at all, the children have started to research and write about the most interesting of ideas. Due to the personal nature of the topics their passion comes through in the work, from seeing the children rehearse the delivery of their words, their personalities are bursting out in their work. It is beautiful to watch.

Upon completion of our end of topic assessment in Statistics, we have moved on to our new topic of Fractions. We kicked this off with calculating fractions of different amounts, looking at questions based on money, distance and volume.

It’s been a busy week in Year 4, we have had our ‘slow writing week’ which has been anything other than slow. The idea behind a ‘slow write’ is to tackle a different part of their story each day, allowing the children time to write, reflect, edit and up-level their work. It had been a pleasure to watch the children create their long awaited ‘Creaker’ stories based on the Tom Fletcher novel we have been reading in class. Lots of fronted adverbials and subordinate clauses being used and some super inverted comma work.

We began Fractions this week and the class have been working hard on equivalent fractions and simplifying fractions. Although a tricky concept, the class have been working incredibly hard to understand the processes involved.

Disaster struck our Science experiment that failed to show any difference in the colour of our petals. Undaunted, we dissected our flowers and found to our horror that the water transportation system had failed and the water had only travelled 5mm up into the stem. Resolving to make changes we created a new experiment with diagonal cuts and cross cuts in the bases of our stem to try to encourage the water. Ralph thoughtfully created an RIP sign in honour of our failed experiment. We did have a fantastic debate on what went wrong and what conditions we could change to help our new flowers.

Year 4 would just like to say how proud we are of all our cross country runners today and we are so proud of you all for representing the school. Congratulation to Jennifer who has made it through to the National finals - a huge achievement.

Year 3 have been working on a number of projects this week, in English we have been describing Superhero’s and looking at Roald Dahl’s The Twits. We have been using our most exciting descriptive words to create a picture for the reader of what we think the Twits are really like.

In Humanties we have been studying the Anglosaxons and looking at the way they would have lived many years ago. Year 3 were labelling maps and trying to find where London was located.

In French we were describing our bedroom furniture discussing what we had (affirmative) and didn’t (negative). In RE we spoke about Islam and the 5 pillars as well as how the world was created.

This week we had a guest speaker come into the class to discuss ‘Idling’ and its affects on the planet. We made posters to try to persuade people not to.

Finally in Maths, year 3 have been working hard on their measurements from cm, mm to meters. We finished off the week learning about perimeters and how to find the perimeter of a shape.

Year 2 have had a week of rhyming, rhythm, and poetry. They have been challenged to read and perform poems from the book, ‘Please Mrs Butler’, using GarageBand to create a beat to perform them to. We then created our own poems based on personified items from our desks (pencils, sharpeners, rubbers, iPads, headphones), using the structure AABB. We then turned these in to neat versions to put up on the wall.

Maths has been all about shapes and we started the week with searching of shapes in nature, and the properties each 2D shape has. We have then travelled through regular and irregular shapes, creating our own, and going on a shape hunt around the class.

Science focused on building materials and we used a new application to design buildings and justify why we have chosen the materials (they are hard, waterproof, or transparent).

The great fire of London continues to be explored in Year 2, with discussions around Samuel Pepys and a certain careless baker.

Year 1 have been honing their phonics skills - learning how to apply the split digraphs and identify real and nonsense words. We have been creating rules for alternative sounds and spellings.

In literacy we began to learn about letters, how they are constructed and then writing our own. On Monday we received a message from Mrs Rabbit seeking her son Peter and we able to write back that he was discovered in Reception.

In maths we have been developing our skills counting in 2s and 5s identifying patterns as well as delving into tens and ones.

At Woodland School this week we went on a photo scavenger hunt with much excitement and energy.

Reception have been working very hard this week in all areas of learning. In Phonics they have become more confident in recognising words with the digraphs: ‘ai’, ‘ee’ and ‘oa’ and they were introduced to their first trigraph ‘igh’. The children have been working hard to identify pictures of things that contain this sound and match it to the matching word. They loved going on an ‘oa’ treasure hunt on Thursday and were superstars and segmenting and blending the sounds in the words to help them identify the word and help them to read and write them.

In Maths we have been looking at the numbers 6,7 and 8 and how they are composed. We played a hidden finger game where they had to show different combinations of fingers on each hand to make these numbers. The children were able to recognise when they matched their friends and who had made the number in the same way. This extended to looking at how the number 8 is composed by arranging dots either side of a large domino on their whiteboards. They then began to use Numicon to make these numbers using two Numicon tiles.

On Tuesday we had an art afternoon and looked at the painting “Tiger in a Tropical Storm” by Henri Rousseau. We looked at this painting because it was Chinese New Year and this year it is the year of the tiger. We discussed how a painting has a background, middle ground and a foreground. The children shared their ideas of what they could see and discussed the colours, the weather and how the tiger was feeling in the painting. They were then inspired to create their own tiger paintings. They had to plan their painting by sketching it first and then they carefully painted the tiger.

We have also enjoyed the children’s favourite stories this week. Thank you for bringing in your favourite books and showing the rest of the class your favourite stories. The children remembered the events in the story in detail. We had everything from the the true story of Rosa Parks to real life super heros and everything in between.

Well done Reception, you have worked very hard this week.

This week in Second Steps we have been super busy.

Our coastguard rescue vehicle has taken off this week, we have been using our map to help locate people, using a parachute to get to the ground safe to help others.

Our letter of the week is ‘i’, the children went around the class room to find objects and items that all started with ‘i’. The children found Inky the mouse, ice, iguana, igloo and the letter ‘i’ from the magnetic letters and the puzzles.

The children all practiced writing the letter ‘i’ in precursive, understanding the formation and flow of when to start, moving the pen up, back down, flick at the end and adding a dot at the top.

During woodland school we went on a bear hunt, we all had to walk through the long swishy swashy grass, we had to splash and splosh through the river, next we had to squelch and squerch through the thick mud, following on with walking through the forest but we kept on stumbling and tripping, suddenly there was snow storm and second steps nearly got twisted up in the snowy wind, sending second steps in circles. Finally Second Steps found a cave, we’re we all had to tip toe through, but in the cave was a… BEAR! Second Steps ran back and we all agreed to not go on a bear hunt again.

We have been celebrating Chinese New Year this week, we decorated Chinese hanging lanterns and hung them in our outside area. We learnt that they are a lucky charm that fright away the Nian. The children got to pick their colour lantern, they all decorated them with bright colours and after they all cut their lanterns themselves. This is great for their fine motor skills, handling the chalk, the scissors and building their strength in their hands when opening and closing the scissors.

We have been looking at other things that are traditional in China, we looked at food and found out that noodles are a traditional food. We then looked into traditional cutlery and found out that in China they eat with kuàizi, which we know as chopsticks. We have been practicing with chopsticks and trying to get our noodles into the bowls. We found that some kuàizi are different colours and have some wonderful, vibrant patterns on them.

Following on with learning about the Chinese New Year, we have found out that each year is represented by one of the 12 animals, that all took part in the Great Race to the get to the Jade Emperor. In Second Steps we have Roosters, Dogs and Pigs.

Second Steps have been looking at the Chinese language, we have been looking at the difference in numbers. How to write our numbers and how to write a number in Chinese. We all wrote the numbers on red paper as red is seen as a lucky colour, we used paint brushes to continue on supporting the children’s fine motor skills.

This week it has been a little bit warmer compared to last week, so we took this opportunity to cloud watch, we all laid down in the playground and looked up to the sky. We saw dragons, rabbits, roosters and we watched the ‘fast clouds’ moving in the sky.

After we all closed our eyes and had to see what we could hear, there was a variety of sounds. We heard birds, an ambulance siren, year 1, Joe the drum teacher, the wind blowing the trees and the leafs on the floor. We spoke about loud sounds, quiet sounds, soft sounds and hard sounds and the difference between them.

To end our week we had a lovely music lesson with Mrs Tomaskova, she would play a tune on the recorder and Second Steps would tell her what song it was and they would all sing it together. They sang wind the bobbin up and do-re-mi, after the children all had musical instruments and would play along to the tune, the rhythm and tempo.

We would like to wish Mia a massive Happy Birthday! We hope you had an amazing day and a wonderful party, we look forward to seeing the photos and this wonderful purple unicorn dress. Lastly a massive thank you for the chocolate cake, we all loved it.

Miss Finch & Miss Wood

Happy Chinese Year everyone!!!

We have started our week discovering and learning about Chinese New Year. The twelve animals were representing each year for the Lunar calendar and the children have had chance to put them to race. And we talked which animal has won the race this year and learned about tigers. Tiger masks were one of the popular activity at art table and the children pretended to be tigers roaring in the jungles.

On Tuesday, a special dragon came into our class and we are sure that he regret it. Shaking hand made red shakers and wearing red cloths made the dragon to stay a very short time in the class and he ran away! Well done First Steps for being so brave!

We also looked at Chinese letters and numbers and used thin brushes to practise writing them, while at Maths, in small groups we practiced counting from one to five singing “There were five in the bed” and then each of us rolled over the carpet.

We would like to thank Anna who put her special Chinese dress on to show her friends on Tuesday.

In Science session, the children observed how the noodles turn into soft from hard when they soaked in hot water. The children were very excited when we added the food colour and they observed how noodles changed colour into the orange. The children had fun touching and exploring the ingredients with their hands as well as trying to use tweezers and chopsticks to lift them up.

Trying to make circles and lines with tea bags was fun in Woodland School, and the children started to think what else could we use from kitchen cabinets to make painting with. If your child comes up with a different idea to do art, please share it with us via Tapestry.

Have a nice weekend!

Mrs Guniz

Mrs Mousi