This weeks winners are the ‘Green and Yellow’ teams

Nursery person of the week - Poppy Cliffe

STAR BADGE WINNERS:

LI - Jessica Greenwood (15)

FI - Lucas Halstead (10)

FII - Van Knapton (16)

FIII - Rory Evans (17)

LIV - Edward Chippendale, Freya Atkinson (11)

MIV - Jade Nothers (11)

UIV - Chloe Gravenor (12)

Children banking this week

MIV - Ellie Hayward

We knew you could do it

Ted Grogan

Kindness cup

Millie Wadsworth

School Council Award

Peter Standfast

The Year of the Tiger is welcomed with a glittering array of festivities. Form I children listened to our visitor, Mrs Loh, talk about the traditions of Chinese New Year. 

Look at our Lion Dance. We dressed up as a Chinese lion to dance and parade around with loud music. This little boy drove the lion crazy with his fan. Traditionally he is known as ‘The Fan Man’ and it is his job to annoy the lion.

This little boy did a very good job!

As part of the celebration we tasted prawn crackers and made our own hats.

 Yummy!

Chinese New Year is also known as Spring Festival (Chūnjíe / 春节). The festival begins on the first day of the first lunar month and ends on the fifteenth day. This year is the year of the Tiger.

Upper IV children have been busy writing good luck messages (húichūn / 挥春) for our Chinese New Year display. Two of the friendly and experienced tutors from the Confucius Institute at The University of Manchester paid us a special visit to show us how to make Chinese lanterns and traditional Chinese paper cutting. As the pictures show, the children really had a wonderful experience.

These two Chinese characters are pronounced as dàjí, which mean ‘Good Luck’.

This single Chinese character is pronounced as fú, which means ‘fortune’.

 Our lanterns are gradually taking shape.

Do you like our colourful lanterns?

 Traditional paper cutting is a form of popular craftwork from China.

 These children are totally focused and hard at work.

• Chinese New Year is also known as Spring Festival. This character is pronounced as chūn, which means ‘spring’.

A tiger mask for the year of the Tiger.

The pattern on the forehead of the tiger mask represents the king of the forest. 王, which means king, is pronounced as wáng.

This weeks winners are the ‘Red’ team.

Nursery person of the week - Zoe Greenwood

STAR BADGE WINNERS:

LI - Jake Van Gestel (9)

FI - Imogen Bond (14)

FII - Isobel Hought (12)

FIII - Jonny Seagrave, Oliver Kenyon (9)

LIV - Ruby O’Hare, Angus Wood (10) BANKING

MIV - Ellie Hayward (7)

UIV - Ted O’Hare, Olivia O’Toole (9)

We knew you could do it

Roman Kastelijn

Kindness cup

Rajdeep Palit

Sports person

Max Slater

This weeks winners are the ‘Blue’ team.

Nursery children of the week - Grace Chippendale, Liberty Highley-Hammond

STAR BADGE WINNERS:

LI - Gabriella Potts (14)

FI - Jemima Evans (16)

FII - Max Slater, Sophie Bingham (8)

FIII - Georgianna Smith (10)

LIV - Georgia Atkinson (14)

MIV - Peter Standfast (15)

UIV - Georgina Wade (14)

School Council Award

Chloe Gravenor

We knew you could do it

Angus and Millie Wood

Kindness cup

Ben Cooper

Sports person

Max Slater

We decided to feed the birds in our school gardens.

Everyone helped to make bird feeders to hang on the trees outside.  We each made a bird feeder to take home as well, so that we can help the birds in our gardens at home. 

Here, you can see us helping to hang the bird feeders on our school trees.

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Mr Hussain, the dentist, came into Nursery to talk to  us about taking care of our teeth.  He told us lots of interesting things.  We now know which foods are good or bad for our teeth.

All of us agreed that we will try even harder to brush our teeth very carefully.

In science, Lower 4 are currently working on the ‘Keeping Warm’ topic. The children learn all about conductors, insulators and measuring temperature. They recently undertook an investigation to test how good different materials are at slowing down the melting process. They were given a variety of materials such as tin foil, felt, bubble wrap and foam and challenged to keep their frozen hand intact for as long as possible. As the pictures show, some of the groups were more successful than others!

Measuring the temperature of the frozen hand.

Ouch! Broken fingers!

How can I stop this from melting?

Mmmmmm maybe these will help?

Trying out different materials.

 Maybe the bubble wrap will do the trick?

The big melt begins!

Maybe you could try this?

Our first cookery club of spring term - a little delayed due to the snow and ice!  This leek and potato soup cheered us up as the temperature plummeted outside.

 The leeks and potatoes were peeled and chopped.

They were simmered with milk, stock and herbs to produce the soup.

We enjoyed ours with some freshly baked rolls.

“Wow!”, “Fantastic!” and “I didn’t think I’d like it!” are a few quotes from the children this week.

 This week we made fishcakes.  “Yuk!”,  “Ergh!”, “Oh no!”

The fish, a mixture of cod, salmon and smoked haddock, was gently poached in a little milk whilst lemon and seasoning was added to the mashed potato.  We shaped the fishcakes and dipped them in flour, egg and finally breadcrumbs.

The fishcakes were fried to colour them and then finished off in the oven.

They look proud of them, but will they try them?

 Where did they all go?
They did like them after all!

3/2/2010

This week the children worked in pairs making chocolate chip cookies.

 These are waiting to go into the oven.

The finished result!

10/2/2010

With Shrove Tuesday being next week we honed our pancake tossing skills today in cookery.  We made a simple strawberry ice cream to accompany them and garnished them with sliced strawberries.

Making the pancake batter.

Blending strawberries, lemon juice and icing sugar before stirring in cream and churning in an ice cream machine.

Tossing the pancakes.

No-one seemed to have any trouble demolishing either the pancakes, the ice cream or the strawberries!

Middle IV had great fun performing a scene from Johnny Ball’s humorous play, ‘The Phantom Sausage Stealer.’   They rehearsed in teams, and did a fantastic job learning their lines and providing their own props.

They have now each written two playscripts, one based on a poem, and a sequel drawn from their imagination.

This weeks winners are the ‘Red’ team.

Nursery person of the week - Jessica Fleming

STAR BADGE WINNERS:

LI - Evelyn Mills (13)

FI - Max Duffy (16)

FII - Ursula Depledge-Miller, Oliver Jackson-Bolton (13)

FIII - Kristian Hutchinson (13)

LIV - Emily Hought (15)

MIV - Hamaad Mahmood (9)

UIV - Martha Kitson, Hester Watson (12)

Children banking colours this week:

MIV - Morgan Cockroft

School Council Award

Ellie Reed , Jonny Seagrave

We knew you could do it

Ben Hutchings

Sports person

Oliver Williams