In the Press

Year 6 pupils had great fun at Milestones Museum yesterday, stepping back in time to Victorian times. They enjoyed visiting the shops, industries & recreational areas & particularly loved attending a Victorian school & dressing up in period costume!

Wow, what a Dress to Express day it has been!  It's wonderful to see the children so confident in expressing themselves and enjoying seeing what others are wearing too.  This year's theme is 'my voice', in which we encourage children to speak up and that their voice matters.  At St Ives, we have a school council where the children's ideas and thoughts about how to improve our school are discussed.  We have worry boxes and gratitude boxes, which allow the children to express their gratitude or write about their worries and we are so lucky to have our wonderful Wellbeing Champion, Mrs Cooper, who is always here with a listening ear, running both group and one-to-one sessions for children who need them.  Today was a wonderful way to finish off Children's Mental Health Week and to start half term. Wishing all our pupils and staff a restful week!

A really busy and productive week in the Art department - Year 3 have been taking inspiration from artist Pablo Picasso, creating geometric paintings using warm and cold colours, Year 6 have been working on expressive portraits and Art Club have had fun experimenting with oil pastels. Great work everyone!

In Science, Year 4 have been learning all about sounds this half term. They have enjoyed investigating how sounds are made, how sounds travel, how sounds change over distances and, this week, how to change the pitch of sounds.  They explored boom whackers, whirly tubes, glass bottles with varying levels of water in, different sized drums and the glockenspiel.  They made really careful observations and then learnt the science behind how the speeds of the vibration change to make different pitched sounds.  Great investigating Year 4!

A select group of pupils from Years 2 to 6 were invited to Haslemere Book Shop today in recognition for their progress and enthusiasm in reading. Cathy at the bookshop welcomed the children and told them all about the bookshop’s history and its importance in the local community supporting readers, authors, organisations and running events.

The pupils enjoyed navigating the children’s book section downstairs, then talked about the favourite books they had brought with them and their preferred authors. They were very excited to venture upstairs to see the nooks, crannies and cosy area upstairs for more browsing in the second-hand books room.  The children were awarded a book token, certificate and goody bag as a farewell gift. Thanks so much to Haslemere Book Shop for having us!

What a beautiful day we had for Forest School!

Year 3 had lots of fun making some bird feeders for the birds in the forest. Using oranges, skewers, wool and bird seed, they made beautiful hanging feeders before choosing which trees they wanted to hang them on.

Reception were armed with magnifying glasses and minibeast identification cards as they set off on a bug hunt.  Lifting logs, looking in leaf piles and searching on the trees, they were super bug spotters!

A very productive week in Project Goblin for both chassis A and B!  The children made great progress on the driver's seat, electrical systems and battery boxes of the cars and work has also been done to complete the steering assembly on chassis B.  The steering arms are now attached and in the process of being adjusted. The teamwork in subgroups was really impressive and, at this pace, we are on track for getting on track!

In Science, Year 5 have been learning about light and shadows.  This week they investigated their own questions about shadows.  They came up with their own questions and carefully planned how they were going to make sure that their investigations were fair.  Mrs Butterfield was really impressed by the teamwork the children demonstrated when carrying out their investigations, since they needed to help each other even though they each had their own method they were following. Great work Year 5!

Year 6 had a fantastic Science lesson this morning. After revising the topic of forces, the children spent the morning applying their knowledge to rocket balloons! They were given a 5 minute window to make a simple rocket using a balloon. Following testing their initial creations, they were given the challenge of improving their design. They took into consideration friction between the rocket body and the string, and air resistance amongst other things. They experimented with different shaped balloons, different length and diameter of rocket bodies and they trialled different release techniques. Some were very successful and others not so much, but the children learnt so much and had great fun in the process!

Years 4 and 5 enjoyed a fabulous day of Music yesterday.  The children started their day performing their Music Assembly in front of their parents and performed beautifully, with such confidence.  They were then scooped up and taken to G Live for a concert featuring Southern Pro Musica conducted by Jonathan Willcocks and Neil Henry as the magician and compere.  The concert featured music by Rossini, Haydn and Piazzola with a story about The Theatre Ghost using the many instruments to represent the sounds.  The orchestra was introduced and we heard each section play separately then altogether which sounded amazing.  The highlight was the Offenbach Can-Can in which our very own Mr Collinson took part.  The morning finished off with the audience singing It’s an Ark in two parts accompanied by the orchestra and we all sang very loudly!