In the Press

In the 112 year history of St Ives, we held our first Cheese Rolling competition today! Cheese rolling is believed to be at least 600 years old and is now officially an extreme sport. With much hilarity, the children took turns to roll the cheese down the driveway, using an enormous range of skills and tactics. With its steep curve, the driveway proved a treacherous course and the poor Cheddar took rather a battering, with some mid-competition patching up needed, but thankfully it proved a mighty cheese and lasted long enough for the whole school to have to have a go! An event we're sure the children will laugh about for a very long time.

Our Prep Inter-house Race Walking Competition proved very competitive. Houses thrashed it out around the sports field using all the techniques they had learnt earlier in the day, with Red House being victorious!

Well done to our swim who took part in the English Schools Swimming Association (ESSA) - Primary Schools' Relays Championships on Saturday. Having qualified after the first round against Surrey Schools, St Ives swam against schools from around the South-East region and the competition was fierce. With only the top three schools moving on to National Finals, it was a big ask. Our aim was to beat our qualifying times from the first round and keep our takeovers clean. Finishing 12th in both relays, we held our heads high, as we took 1 second off our Freestyle qualifying time and 3.5 seconds off our Medley Relay time! We could not have asked any more of our swimmers and with four out of five of them being Y5 & swimming a year out of age, this bodes well for next year. Well done team!

What a beautiful morning for Pre-Prep Fitness Club. We practiced some races for Sports Day and played some fitness games. We even got to spin Mrs Hayden’s exercise wheel to see which exercises we had to do for our warms ups. These included Spider-Man lunges and Buzz Lightyear squats along with many more. It's also the first day of our 3-day Sports Festival, so we'll be tired little bunnies at the end of the day.

Our Year 6 pupils are receiving Bikeability cycle training every morning this week, teaching them how to cycle safely. The children are learning important skills for life and are practising within our the school grounds and on the roads in Haslemere. By the end of this week they will gain their Bikeability Level 2 and will be on their way to making cycling both a fun hobby and an alternative mode of transport for life.

We've had a magical day here celebrating the Coronation. We've enjoyed a day of activities, stories and party games, culminating in a celebratory lunch and barn dance. There was a wonderful party vibe throughout the school and we're really looking forward to more celebrating over the long weekend. Happy Coronation weekend everyone!

Year 2 have had a very interesting PSHE lesson this week as Lieutenant Colonel Andrew Boardman talked to them live from Iraq, as part of their learning on the Armed Forces. Andrew told them all about life in the army, how the armed forces keep us all safe and what it's like to have tea with the Queen Consort. The children were fascinated! Thank you so much for taking time to talk to us Lieutenant Colonel Boardman.

In DT, Year 1 have been making kites, inspired by our book 'The Secret Sky Garden' by Linda Sarah. Once they had completed making them, the children had great fun testing them outside. The squeals of delight could be heard across the valley as they watched them fly!

The children spent this morning at a sweet factory learning about the ancient tradition of confectionary making. They then made their own sweets, adding flavours, shaping and eating them.

The rest of the morning was spent on the expansive sandy beach at Berck-sur-Mer playing games. The group enjoyed an interesting tour of historic Rue in the afternoon and seeing the famous belfry listed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The belfry houses a museum dedicated to the pioneers of aviation as the first flights took place in this area. The group visited the supermarket, post office and finally the café & loved placing drinks orders in French! Another fun and busy day.

The weather might be miserable here, but it certainly isn't at Berck-sur-Mer in France! So much fun playing on the beach this morning.