Junior Department Notices and Reminders

Easter Hat Competition Monday 27 March

Half Term might be the perfect opportunity to get creative and make your Easter Hat ready for our Junior Department competition later in the term. Hats can be any size or shape but must be based around the theme of Easter or Spring.

Please do not send these in before the week commencing 20 March as we won’t have space to store them all.

Have fun creating!

Open Classrooms

After the success of the Middle Department Open Classroom event last week, Junior Department Open Classrooms will be on Thursday 16 March from 0815-0915.

World Book Day – Thursday 2 March

Thursday 2 March is World Book Day! We are celebrating this national event by transforming the Drawing Room and the Junior Hall into two huge bookshops provided by the Travelling Book Company. Pupils will have the chance to browse the books and make purchases.

As part of this national celebration of reading, each pupil will receive a £1 book token, redeemable against any book purchased on 2 March.

As in previous years, we invite all pupils and staff to dress up as their favourite character from a book, and we ask that £1 is donated to the World Book Day charity via this link   Thank you to everyone who has already donated to this wonderful cause.

Please click here before Monday 20 February to complete the Google form confirming whether your child can participate in the book sale, their maximum spend amount and that you are happy for the cost of the book/books to be added to your account.

This Week in the Junior Department

‘Spread love everywhere you go. Let no one ever come to you without leaving happier.’ 

Mother Theresa  

With the theme of Children’s Mental Health Week being ‘Let’s Connect’ and Valentine’s Day coming up in half term I thought I would share some of things that I have loved this half term: 

?I loved going to St. Albans Abbey with Reception and getting swept up in their excitement about the small things, like going on the coach and having sandwiches for lunch! 

?I loved seeing the staff fired up by our Monster Phonics training at the start of term and how this has helped them to develop and improve their teaching in this aspect of the learning;

?I loved watching 1W perform their class assembly about dinosaurs and in particular their scary faces when they performed their poem; 

?I have loved the days getting longer with each passing week and stopping to marvel at the spectacular sunsets and sunrises.;

?I loved Maths Day; seeing the children’s surprised faces as music blared from the hall as they arrived; listening to the chatter as Year 1 went on a search for the missing treasure; seeing Mr. Le Bas spinning round on a chair to make a perfect circle;

?I have loved seeing the improvement in all the children’s work especially in writing. Not only their handwriting, which is beautiful, but also in their choices of vocabulary and in their grasp of how to make their writing interesting to the reader;

?I loved celebrating Mrs. Grant being part of the Beechwood community for 35 years. What an amazing achievement!  

?I love spending time with all your children and hearing them share all about what they have been doing at home and at school. It is such a privilege. They are amazing! 

 I hope you have a wonderful half term whatever you are up to and wherever you might be going. Let’s hope that you all have the opportunity to connect with each other in a way that is not always possible during term time but also with friends and family. 

We look forward to seeing you back at school on Monday 20 February. 

Mrs McIntosh
Head of Junior Department

This Week in Reception

Spurred on by Mrs McIntosh’s assembly on Monday, which was all about children’s mental health, we have been mindful of finding opportunities to stop, reflect and experiment with different mindfulness exercises to improve our mental health.

During our Circle Time sessions we talked about feelings, looked at lots of positive language and asked each child chose a word to describe themselves. We talked about how using positive language and encouraging our brains to think positively  can be really good for our mental health.

Photos show….

1. Visualising a safe place – to feel grounded;
2. Balloon belly breathing – to soothe;
3. Warrior pose – for confidence and concentration;
4. Sound meditation – to fuel curiosity.

This Week in Year 1

TPR

Year 1 have really enjoyed learning about how different religions welcome new babies this term. The culmination of our unit of work was acting out a christening in the School Chapel. Every child was given the opportunity to dress up and we all joined together as the congregation in acting out the ceremony. The baby was lucky enough to have four godparents looking after him as well as his parents and the vicar. We were all very relieved that the baby didn’t cry during the service!

Mental Health Week

1W enjoyed learning all about different emotions using the story ‘Sometimes’ as a starting point. Then they played an emotions board game where they had to act out the emotion and say when they had felt like that.

This Week in Year 2

Celebrating Children’s Mental Health Week

From the Junior Library

Out of the Blue by Robert Tregoning

Out of the Blue is a beautifully illustrated, rhyming celebration of being different. It follows a little boy who lives in a city where only blue is permitted; the roads are blue, the houses are blue, even the gardens are painted blue. But he has a secret, he loves yellow. Unable to tell anyone, not even his  father, he hides his collection of yellow things in the cupboard. Until one day, it all comes crashing out and releases a wave of colour. 

This book is a stunning celebration of just being yourself and living in a full rainbow of colour.

The Library Team