Our value of the month is: Resourcefulness

Stondon Lower Newsletter

Thursday 29th March

Last week we held open mornings in all classes for parents to come along and join in with a computing

lesson. This was in response to requests from parents as many felt they were ill prepared to understand

the content that their children were learning. We were overwhelmed by the numbers of parents attending

in all year groups. It was by far the best attended open mornings since the first ones a few years ago.

Thank you very much to everyone who came along. I hope you found them useful and interesting! We

have had some fantastic feedback, listed below are a few examples that we received:

“we really enjoyed having the opportunity to see the children working. It was a good mix of being able to

watch them and join in with their learning”

“Thank you for putting the session on, it’s good to see them in class and the children seemed to enjoy it

too—something different for them”

Writers Hall of Fame

In school, we are celebrating the amazing writing

talents of our children on our ‘Writing Hall of Fame’.

Each class will have a frame to showcase their

children’s work.

Well done to this weeks star writers:

Robins: Isabelle Peck

Puffins: Molly Dyer

Kestrels: Summer Welch

Toucans: Alex Boughton

Hummingbirds: Esme Hebblethwaite

KS2 Musical Tea Party Hummingbirds and Toucans classes entertained more than 50 parents and friends on Wednesday this week at our Musical Tea Party. The grown ups were treated to a variety of songs, a whole class clarineo performance from the year 4 children, a recorder tune from all the year 3 children and some amazing performances on the violin, guitar, piano and harp from children who are learning to play both in and outside of school. Just to make it a perfect afternoon, cakes and biscuits had been made and decorated for everyone to share. We never knew there was so much talent at Stondon!

Zoolab Animal Encounter

On Wednesday 21st March, Year 1 and 2 had an exciting animal

visit. Gary from Zoolab came in and brought some animals in for

the children to learn about. They met a corn snake called Tigger

and they got to hold him and see what he felt like. They also met

Sheldon and Shelly, the African land snails, Monty the tree frog,

Matilda the tarantula and two gerbils called Luna and Empy. The

children learnt lots of information about all the animals and Year 2 found out about their habitats too.

Goodbye Mr Taylor

Today we say ‘goodbye’ to Mr Taylor as he leaves us to pursue other things, mainly golf and putting his feet up (and Mrs Taylor’s list)! He is going to help us out for a few weeks collecting the dinners after the holiday as we have no interest in the vacancy so far despite 3 attempts at advertising. I would like to say on behalf of everyone at Stondon Lower what an amazing addition he has been to the school in the last 4 years. He will be long remembered, much missed and forever adored by our children here. He does know every single one of them and their parents! The walking bus was his initiative, a service which many of you have grown to rely on. We are working on a plan but for now, it’s his legacy and it stays even though he’s not. Good luck Rob and thank you so very much for all you have given to the school.

Page 2 Stondon Lower Newsletter

The Robins have been busy working on our “ten pieces”

music project. We are listening to music from The

Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky . We have begun learning a

dance to the music and have also listened to the story of

“The Nutcracker”.

In art we have been focusing on “still life” painting. We all

observed the same vase of flowers. The children have all

drawn and painted the flowers and tried to use the correct

colours to represent the flowers in the vase.

In Puffin class we have had a very busy two weeks in

computing, we have begun to learn about algorithms as a

set of instructions for a computer. We have started to

explore a new program, Code.org, hopefully the children

will be keen to show you what they have learnt over the

Easter holidays. In English we have begun to use

adjectives to make our sentences more exciting, we used

ideas from our recent class book George’s Marvellous

Medicine.

Robins’ News

Kestrels’ News

Over the last half term Kestrels

have been learning how to play

hockey in PE. We have been

learning how to do push passes

and slap passes. We have been

working hard to hold the hockey

sticks in the correct position and

control the ball carefully as well

as learning some of the rules of

the game.

Puffins’ News

Values

Kindness

Nicole, Kaine, Linnet, Ella I, Bethany

Helpfulness

Mr Taylor

We have been preparing for the Key Stage 2’s Musical Tea

Party refining our recorder playing and practicing our songs.

In addition we have been learning about the story of Easter

and creating Easter wreaths to sequence the events of this

story.

Toucans’ News

Hummingbirds’ News

In art, we have been appreciating

William Morris who was an English

textile designer, poet and novelist. He is

famous today as the designer of patterns

such as 'Willow Bough' and 'Strawberry Thief’ with his

designs still being printed on wallpapers and textiles

today.

In class we have recreated our own

symmetrical sketches, watercolours

and canvas prints to create some truly

outstanding pieces.

Great British Spring Clean 10am - 7th April 2018 Do you want to be involved? Feel that there is to much rubbish lying around?

We need people willing to help clear Bedford Road and Station Road on Saturday 7 April 2018.

Please meet 10am at The Bird in Hand, there will be equipment available to assist with the work.

Please drop Cllr Jon Wallace: jon.wallace@stondon-pc.gov.uk a line with your contact details if you plan to attend.

If you can offer other forms of support please contact Cllr Wallace with your input.

Have a look at http://www.stondon-pc.gov.uk/noticeboard

Stondon Parish Council, with support from Central Bedfordshire Council, is promoting the Great British Spring Clean for

2018.

PETALS Sleepover

PETALS annual sponsored sleepover for year 3 and 4 will be held on Friday 27th April. Letters relating to the event were put into book bags last week, please complete the reply slip and return to the school office by 17th April if your child wishes to participate. Thank you.

Page 3

Good to be Green Monday 26th

March - Thursday 29th March 2018

Attendance Monday 19th

February - Thursday 29th March

Robins - 29 children stayed Green

Puffins - 27 children stayed Green

Kestrels - 27 children stayed Green

Toucans - 29 children stayed Green

Hummingbirds - 26 children stayed Green

Reception - 93.1%

Year 1 - 97.8%

Year 2 - 95.9%

Year 3 - 98.4%

Year 4 - 96.1%

Diary Dates

Monday 16th April Inset Day

Tuesday 17th April Children return to school

Friday 27th April Bikeability - For Year 4 students who have previously registered

PETALS Clubbercise Disco for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 (3.30—4.45pm) - more

information will be sent out after Easter

PETALS Year 3 and Year 4 Sleepover (Year 3 arrive 6.15pm and Year 4 arrive 6.35pm)

Tuesday 1st May May pole dancing—school playground 8:30am

Monday 21st—Friday 25th May Walk to School Week

Tuesday 5th June Sports Day - Reception 9.30 am

KS1 (years 1 & 2) - 10.45am

KS2 (years 3 & 4) - 1.30pm

Overall presentation results to be held on the school playing field - 3.05pm

Tuesday 19th June Reserve Sports Day

Stondon Lower Newsletter

Swimming Sport Festival

Report by Thomas G

Recently we went to a swimming festival at

Redborne School. I had to do swimming races and

when we weren’t swimming we cheered other

team mates on. I did a race where there was a

person on a float and two people had to push the

float to the other end of the pool. We won coming

from 3rd to 1st in the race. I also did a race where

we could do any stroke we wanted for one length

and I picked front crawl for my stroke. There were

two teams swimming from our school and lots of

other teams from different schools. There was a

race where people had to go as fast as they could

underwater and some of our team were really

good. It was an enjoyable trip.

May Day Celebrations This year we will once again be celebrating May Day. Some of the

children in Years 3 and 4 will be putting on a display of May Pole

dancing in the school playground at 8:30am. We are hoping that

Hemlock Morris will once again be able to join us to put on a display

of Morris dancing for both children and parents after the May Pole

dancing, this is still to be confirmed. We invite all children and parents

to come along to watch this display. We will also be selling bacon

butties with a cup of tea for £1.50 from 8:00am. These sell out fast!!

Konflux Road Safety

Last Thursday Year 3 learnt about the importance of road safety through drama. Andrew from Konflux Drama Through Education, worked with us to produce a play which highlighted important information in regards to road safety. We presented this play at the end of the day to the school and Year 3 parents.