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27th September 2018

Dear Parents, Pupils & Guest Readers,

Our last bulletin featured news from the classes and this one is mainly about clubs. Our lunchtime and

afterschool provision offers the opportunity for pupils and teachers to work together ‘off timetable’

engaged in a wide range of activities aimed to develop skills, to provide fun and forge friendships across

different year groups. Read on to find out more…and there are some school event reminders too….

Happy Cross Stitch Club

A happy group of Year One and Year Two children have already cross-stitched their way through two club

sessions! During the first week they chose a rectangular piece of colourful binca to use and got to grips

with threading a plastic needle. All this takes time! They then began creating their very own bookmark

by decorating the edge of their binca with a simple running stitch. The second session involved learning a

‘step by step’ approach to the cross-stitch. Needless to say, there have been a few tangles along the way,

but Mrs Haynes and her crafty group are looking forward to more fun with thread in their next session!

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Read All About It! Year Three and Year Four

members of our new Current

Affairs Club had the starring role

last week, as members of Upper

Key Stage Two were away on

their Residential Trip. Our

younger pupils showed great

curiosity and a keenness to

voice opinion, exploring recent

editions of 'First News' and

discussing articles that grabbed

their attention. They created a

collage of the articles that drew

our young newsreaders in. This time it was topics about animals or football which made the headlines.

Will Year Five and Year Six news-gatherers respond in the same way? We shall find out at our next session!

Coding Club In their first session, club

members investigated how a Bee

Bot works. They had great fun

figuring out what the different

buttons do and sending the Bee

Bots around the classroom. The

children learnt what it means to

program a Bee Bot and were able

to write an algorithm (a set of

instructions) for their partner to

program into their Bee Bot. Pupils

were excited to follow each

other’s rules. For a grand finale, and to see how well the children had got to grips with understanding how

to program a Bee Bot, the children programmed their Bee Bot to try to move the closest to a target in one

set of instructions. This was good fun and an excellent start to Coding Club.

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Mad About Music! Music participation at St Peter’s School could not be healthier. With peripatetic lesson take-up at an all-

time high, it was decided that we should start a school orchestra called ‘Music Explorers’ for selected

children in Key Stage Two. The group currently features violins, flutes, clarinets, a cello and a euphonium.

We meet every Wednesday and have started to learn a piece called Walk on Mars. It has some brilliant

sound effects at the start; some tremolo, glissando and the funkiest bass line ever for the cello and

euphonium!

Meanwhile, St Peter’s School Choir rehearsals started in earnest over two weeks ago, when the group set

to learning a lovely song called ‘The Seeds of Friendship’, featuring many of our singers in solos and small

groups. Our dedicated choir members have been working hard at introducing harmonies into this song,

something they are really relishing. St Peter’s School Choir 18/19 looks forward to making its debut at the

PTA Harvest Supper.

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STEAM Day in Key Stage Two STEAM is the acronym for a fabulous fusion of

subjects: science, technology, engineering, arts and

maths. Mashing up these areas is the way forward for

creative, critical thinking and technological advances

of the future, so STEAM in education is something

that we are very interested in building up at St P’s.

Whilst pupils in Year Five and Year Six were on their

Residential last week, the remaining pupils in Key

Stage Two went full STEAM ahead with a day devoted

to thinking outside the box. Using a BBC Live

Education resource based around Maths and

symmetry, they were able to make some human

symmetry together and then use their knowledge to

create symmetrical pictures using a range of

complex 2D shapes. This slant on symmetry

continued into the Computer Suite, with children

creating a range of symmetrical patterns using a

reflective program.

As part of the Eco-Committee’s theme of ‘Trees’, the

children used one of their favourite resources–

Purple Mash- to design a 3D tree which had to be

carefully cut out, folded and stuck together. Some

pupils showed some great thoughtfulness to their

designs by representing different seasons on a single

tree. Small groups were then formed to work with a

range of painting media to create different tree

effects on large group pictures. Eliana, Theone and

Maria created a beautiful autumnal representation.

Such was the excitement around STEAM that the fun

continued on the following day too with the

‘Spaghetti Challenge’. This year, pupils had to create the tallest free-standing tower made of only dry

spaghetti and jelly babies. Our winners were Maria, Rupert and Akbar, who worked brilliantly together,

testing a variety of designs before finally reaching the dizzy heights of 68cm!

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Puzzles & Games Club

There are lots of games to play and to try-out in this well-attended club and there has been a buzz of

excitement along the way. The children are looking forward to trying out new and traditional games

and puzzles throughout the term.

Arty Crafty Club

Last week, to celebrate International Day of Peace on Friday 21st September, our

Key Stage One pupils took part in a calm, creative session at Mini Arty Crafty Club,

using masking tape and a paper plate to paint a peace symbol and showing great

‘mindfulness’ as they coloured in a poster of a dove.

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St Peter’s School Harvest Festival Next week’s school assembly on Thursday 4th October will be led by pupils in Year Six and their parents

are invited to join us too. The Assembly starts at 10.30am so please come to the School Office for

10.20am. This year we will again be asking for food donations to support Kettering Home Start, an

organisation of volunteers who support parents in situations as diverse as isolation, illness, bereavement,

disability or who are just finding parenting a struggle. Please send in tinned or packeted food with a sell

by date that goes past Dec 2018, because the food we gather for Home Start will be used by them to make

food parcels for families in need at Christmas. Please send your food donations to school from Monday

next week. We will also be collecting funds for the Goodwill Children’s Homes organisation in India. A

letter with further details will follow.

PTA Harvest Supper: Thursday 4th October

Tickets are moving fast for this popular event.

As there is tabled-seating to factor in for

parents attending the Harvest Supper, there

are only a certain number of tickets available,

so please get your orders in before we have a

sell-out. Once tickets have sold out, pupils

will still be able to come along to join in with

the poetry and song - and we want them to!

Parents would need to drop off pupils at school and collect them afterwards. Further information will

follow next week.

Fluenz Nasal Vaccination Programme Parents are reminded that yesterday pupils took home a form for you to complete and return to School

ideally by tomorrow in order for your child to be part of the Fluenz vaccination programme being brought

to St P’s by the School Nursing Team, who will be collecting completed forms from School on Monday.

Reception Class Assembly – change of date

Due to external assessment dates now conveyed to School, the Reception Class Assembly date has been

changed to Thursday 6th June 2019.

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NSPCC Safeguarding Presentation to Pupils Kathryn Brown from NSPCC visited pupils on Monday to present a ‘Speak out.

Stay safe.’ assembly aimed to share information about how pupils can keep

themselves safe from harm and get help if they have any worries. At school

we provide safeguarding education yet it is important that from time to time

that such advice is given from an outside source too, and who better than

the NSPCC! As a charity, NSPCC can only provide these vital resources thanks

to the financial support and generosity that comes from fundraising. Pupils and families have been invited

to take part in a fundraising event: Children will be doing ‘Buddy’s Word Play’ or ‘Seaside Shapes’ during

the week commencing 1st October. If you would like to support the NSPCC’s work, it would be fantastic if

you could give your child permission to take part by signing the sponsor form and return the sponsored

event form and money raised to school by 9th October. If you have more than one child in school simply

put all your children’s names at the top of one form.

The next bulletin will feature pictures and news of the Upper Key Stage Two Residential Trip to Govilon in

Wales, a sports update as well as news of our Harvest Festival.

Yours sincerely

Maria Chapman MA(Ed) Headmistress