In the Press

Last week in STEM, the Year 3s were tasked with a challenge to build a tower using spaghetti and marshmallows. The children were divided into teams and were given two minutes to discuss ideas before starting on the build. They were then given 10 minutes to construct their towers. They then had time to review and adjust where necessary. We were unanimous in deciding which team had made the tallest tower and learnt it was due to their tower's solid, square base and the sturdy horizontal and vertical supports. Excellent teamwork Year 3!

We are thrilled to announce we're a finalist for the 'My Best School Trip' Awards at the School Travel Awards 2023 for our trip to Powys in Wales last year. We are so proud of the superb extracurricular opportunities we offer here & it is wonderful to have them recognised! All of our trips, whether they are residential trips, day trips or short off-site experiences are extremely well researched & organised for the benefits of our children from Nursery to Year 6 who gain so much from learning outside the classroom.

As part of our Sports Festival this week, during Swimming lessons, pupils were given the option of taking part in a brilliant Mermaid workshop where the children learnt to swim using fins, with huge success. Thank you so much to Abbie at Splash Active - the children loved it!

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.