Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.

• Year 1 Visit from the Company of Critters.

  Thu 14 Mar 2024

  "It's been wild in Year 1 this week! We had an amazing visit from Mango, the Bearded Dragon, Mrs Toad the British Toad, Clive the Royal Python and ----- the Giant African Snail! We found out about how scientists group and classify animals in different ways. Do you think our visitors were herbivores, carnivores or omnivores?"

   

  

• Circus Day for Year 3

  Thu 14 Mar 2024

  Year 3 had a fabulous day on Thursday learning a range of new circus skills.  It was wonderful to see everyone try something new. Their perseverance, determination and encouragement was incredible.  The children all had opportunities to juggle scarves, balance peacock feathers and spin plates.  They have walked along the tightrope, used the stilts and wheely balance boards and have experimented with diablos and the flower sticks - they had a fabulous day!!!

   

  Having practised different skills, the children then worked in groups to prepare small performances to their parents. 

   

  Thank you so much to our fabulous FSM and parent community as this extra-curricular day was funded by cake sales!

  

• Visit from Children's Author Alex Brooks to Year 2

  Thu 14 Mar 2024

  All of Key Stage 1 were very lucky on Thursday morning when the author Alex Brooks came in and shared one of her stories.   Year 2 listened to - 'Why, oh why, am I a crocodile?' They loved listening to the story and asking her questions.

  

• Year 6 Periscopes

  Fri 08 Mar 2024

  Year 6 made periscopes for their 'light ' topic in science.

  

• Year 2's World Book Day activities.

  Fri 08 Mar 2024

  Year 2 had a fantastic Book Day!

   

  They loved reading the book 'Here we are' and discussed how amazing planet Earth is. After that. we listened to 'What a wonderful world' by Louis Armstrong. The children then worked in pairs to generate new lines for the song.

   

  We also welcomed guest readers in the afternoon.

  

• Year 3 Poetry Skills

  Fri 08 Mar 2024

  Year 3 have had a creative time developing their poetry skills. 

   

  Over the last two weeks, they have tried really hard to create calligrams, list poems, descriptive poems and silly poems.  They had to think carefully about rhyming words, alliteration, similes, repetition and word choices.   They also had to think about layout and word order in order to make their poems rhythmic. 

   

  Well done Year 3 for trying so hard, it was great to listen to some of your favourite poems too!

   

  

• Selection of World Book Day photos

  Fri 08 Mar 2024

  St Mary's celebrated world book day on Thursday 7th March. 

  The theme for this year was to invite the children to wear pyjamas to school to recognise how important it is to curl up with a book before bed. 

   

  Some children also dressed in costumes of a character from their favourite book.

  Reception class took their books outside to their new outdoor pop up library.

  Children from Key Stage 2 visited the Key Stage 1 classrooms to read stories to them in the afternoon.

   

  

• Year 5 Forest School

  Thu 07 Mar 2024

  Year 5 had their first week of Forest school this week, they had a great time taking part in lots of activities including digging, building an obstacle course and planting daffodil bulbs.

  

• John Kirk Storyteller visit on Wednesday

  Wed 06 Mar 2024

  We were really excited to welcome the entertaining storyteller, John Kirk, to St. Mary's on Wednesday as part of our World Book Day celebrations. John worked with each of our classes to inspire the children to enjoy the art of storytelling.

  With Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children, John retold some well-known fairy tales. The children were happy to help John to act out some of the stories and demonstrated great acting skills! 

  Year 3, 4, 5 and 6 worked with John to compare the characters, setting and plot of different stories with some favourite and familiar Roald Dahl Classics.  The Twits is similar to Mr. Gum because of the main grumpy and mischievous character, and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was compared to The Nowhere Emporium where anything can be invented with a special golden pen. 

   

  The children were introduced to new texts through some acting, props, discussions and games.  If they've enjoyed reading James and the Giant Peach then they will probably also enjoy Beetle Boys, and if they're a Matilda fan, then they're likely to enjoy The Unfortunate Events of Lemony Snicket.  If Fantastic Mr. Fox is one of your child's favourite reads then they might like to read The Grimwood series.

   

  John Kirk is running another session at Crowborough Library during the holidays - Tuesday 2nd April at 2pm which you might like to attend.

  

• Thank you to T C Woodgate for our woodchips.

  Fri 01 Mar 2024

   A huge thank you to TC Woodgate for donating trailer load of woodchips for our Forest School area.