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Ullesthorpe CE Primary School Newsletter Thursday February 16th 2023

Message from Mrs Tithecott

Spring is on its way - thank goodness- and the school gardens are emerging from their winter's sleep. Undeterred by any weather or seasonal change, the children have continued to spring into action at every opportunity; we have much to share with you this month.

A huge thank you to everyone for their incredible support of our 'Shine Your Light for Theo' day. The book sale was extremely successful and money is still coming in - further updates to follow.

Have a very restful half term and we look forward to seeing eveyone again on Monday 27th February.

Dates for the Diary

Thursday March 2nd - World Book Day: come to school in your pyjamas and snuggle up with a good book!

Tuesday 7th March - Parents’ evenings

Thursday 9th March - Parents’ evenings

Friday 10th March - Spring Fling

Monday 13th - Friday 17th March - Year 6 Residential Trip to Mount Cook, Derbyshire

Friday 17th March - Red Nose Day

Thursday 23rd March - Birch Class to lead Collective Worship 9.10 am

Friday 24th March - Sister Liz and the team from St Peter's to lead an 'Easter Experience Day' for all classes.

Monday 27th March - Year 1 Phonics Screening information meeting for parents - 2.30 pm

Thursday 30th March - Willow Class to lead Collective Worship 9.10 am

Friday 31 March - School closes for Easter Holidays 3.15 pm

Monday 17th April - School re-opens for the Summer Term

Quick Message from the Office

Please would you ensure that any information regarding any change in after school arrangements e.g. different person picking up; going to Kidspace, or not going on the bus if they usually do, is written in the home school book or rung in to the office. Please DO NOT send this information by email.

Well done to the Charity Champions , Sam, Michael, Harry, & Lewis for their fantastic effort in selling items for the Poppy Appeal.

They have been patiently awaiting news of the total amount collected.

Earlier this week, we had an email letting us know that the school had raised just over £190. The children's commitment to the job has more than doubled the usual amount collected.

Great work boys!

Young Voices 2023

We took a choir of 16 Year 4,5 & 6 children to a Young Voices Concert at the Resort World Arena at the NEC. They learned thousands of word, lots of melodies and dance moves off by heart and performed them brilliantly. The choir totalled 6,359 singers in all - a completely amazing experience for the singers and the audience alike. Well done parents for strutting your stuff too!!

Also, the choir was interviewed by the crew who would be making the video of our concert.

Another 15 seconds of fame!

Basketball Tournament at Lutterworth College

The children were so keen to take part in the basketball tournament that we were able to field two teams. Both teams played well and were, as ever, great ambassadors for our school.

Our Wellbeing Ambassadors delivered a whole school assembly introducing Children’s Mental Health week. They did a fantastic job and we hope that the children have enjoyed taking part in activities that ‘connect’ them this week.

Safer Internet Day takes place in February each year and has been running for almost 20 years. It is now celebrated in approximately 170 countries worldwide.

This year the theme is: “Want to talk about it? Making space for conversations about life online.”

The children were set the challenge of talking to their friends and trusted adults about their favourite online videos, games, apps, things that made them laugh as well as frustrate them. They were encouraged to share the good and the bad about being online and most importantly to tell someone if something is worrying them. It is never too late to share an online problem and get help and support to make things better.

This year’s theme worked well with the theme for Children’s Mental Health week - Let’s Connect.

The link below is a set of top tips for parents and carers to help support your child to stay safe and happy online.

Collective Worship

Since our last newsletter we have been delighted to welcome into school the Open the Book Team twice, Anna from the Congregational Church and Sr Liz. The main theme has been on the powerful effect of Forgiveness - one of our key Christian values.

Oak Class led a Collective Worship exploring the meaning of our school mission statement 'Learn together, grow together, shine forever'. They illustrated how we can shine and help others to shine too. They also introduced a new school prayer to compliment this.

The Eco-Committee delivered a strong message to the whole school about the need to 'Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.' They are putting many things in place to help our school to recycle more efficiently and to be aware of our energy use. Thank you Eco-Warriors!

Dear Lord, our almighty and everlasting light.

Thank you for our school and the blessing of learning.

Thank you for the friends we make here; friends to learn with and friends to grow with.

Help us to shine our light every day so that we can help others to shine too.

Guide us through our learning journey so that we continue to shine together in your name.

Amen

February Birthdays

We wish the following children a very happy birthday this February:

Umme, Reuben S, Evie, Jonathan, Lewis and Skye

Hot Chocolate Fridays

Well done to our Stars over the past few weeks!

The Comic Strip continued...

Willow Class

This week the children have been comparing the polar regions, with a much hotter place in the world, Kenya.

They enjoyed the story of Handa’s Surprise which is set there and role-played it brilliantly.

The children have been writing a new version of the Handa story, based on what the cheeky animals did. Super sentence building Willow Class!

They have been describing what it would be like to live in a Kenyan village and can name some animals that live there and fruits that grow there.

We of course had to have a taste of the fruits. The pineapple was certainly the favourite!

We have also been learning about staying safe and practising the Green Cross Code - Stop, Look and Listen.

Mrs Hartley, Mrs Neale, Miss Harris and Miss Stevens

Maple Class

Maple Class have been taking on the role of Scientists this half-term by exploring materials and their properties. They led an investigation looking at how waterproof various materials were by seeing if they could protect a teddy from getting wet. They covered their teddies with objects made from different materials and then poured water on them- there were some very wet bears!

Maple Class have been creating sculptures in Art this Half-Term. They began by bending, cutting and folding paper in various ways to create their sculptures.

They then added patterns and colour to their designs and thought about the layout of their sculptures to create maximum effect.

In History, the children have been exploring the significant role that Frank Whittle played in making airplanes go faster, further and higher than they ever had been before.

They learnt that Frank Whittle worked close by in Lutterworth and helped to win the Second World War by designing and testing the first ever jet engine!

In P.E., Maple Class have been developing their various gymnastics skills. First they focused on floor work before building up to using the low and high apparatus to extend their skills further.

They then thought about how they could travel using the various different apparatus.

Mr Gray and Miss Stevens

Birch Class

On Thursday 9th February, Birch class came in their best historic fancy dress to take part in an Evacuation day. We have been learning about World War II in our history lessons and the experiences of British evacuees have really captured the children’s imaginations.

To start the day, they prepared for evacuation by making sure they had the essential equipment; a gas mask box, a name tag and of course…a teddy bear!

Once they were prepared, they acted out what it was like to be evacuated and learned about some of the real experiences evacuees had-good and bad!

There was a surprise delivery when the children received a letter from home! Thankyou to all parents who made this part of the day so realistic for children and wrote beautiful letters for them to open. They will be returned to you next week.

The children proved themselves to be experts at passing secret messages in semaphore before we ended our day with a WWII singalong in the hall.

Thankyou to all our families for their support of our World War II topic and for all the wonderful family treasures (photographs, ration books, helmets and beyond….) that have been brought in to show and tell.

As part of our Science we have been investigating how water is transported through plants. We put two different flowering plants and some celery in water with blue food colouring and observed what happened during the day. The petals of one of the flowers turned blue and we could see that the water had been transported up the stem to the leaves and flower. We could not see this so clearly with the celery, but when we cut it open we could see narrow blue capillaries showing that the water had also been transported up the stalk.

We talked in PHSE about Children’s Mental health week and played a game of bingo- we wrote down some facts about ourselves that we thought others might not know then went round trying to find other children who matched our grid. We learnt things about each other that we hadn’t known before and really enjoyed talking to everyone in the class.

Mrs McMurran, Mrs Leese, Mrs Sharpe, Mrs Heritage and Miss Stevens

Oak Class

We have been learning about the Ancient Greek civilization. To showcase our learning about the Greek Gods we have presented our information as a double page spread.

We loved carrying out an experiment with static electricity but our results were inconclusive and required us to go back and evaluate our methodology.

We had some really thoughtful conversations about what could have caused the differences in results and what we might do differently if we had the chance to investigate again. Then we had a go at trying out some of our theories!

We have been challenging ourselves in gymnastics individually and with partners to balance in different ways.

In tag rugby we have been testing our balance again when attacking and defending. It can be a challenge to stay upright and make sure we are not passing the ball forwards.

Mrs Bostock, Mrs Tithecott, Ms Priest and Miss Stevens

Vacancies

Notices

Ullesthorpe Pre-School

Message from the School Office

Please would you inform the office if you have any changes to contact numbers, email address or home address.

We now have new email addresses!

If you need to contact school please email: ullesthorpe@ipat.uk

Willow Class: willowclass.u@ipat.uk

Maple Class: mapleclass.u@ipat.uk

Birch Class: birchclass.u@ipat.uk

Oak Class: oakclass.u@ipat.uk

Thank you!