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Welcome back after half term! We hope you’re all refreshed and ready for a very busy few weeks.

Happy Halloween to everyone at St Ives! We hope you’re having a fabulous half term and doing something spooktacular today. We can’t wait to see you all again next Monday for an action-packed second half of term.

Our ‘One World’ eco festival ended with a ‘Waste’ Fashion Show which was great fun. Look how fabulous and creative the outfits are!

A brilliant end to the first half of term with our 3-day ‘One World’ festival. The festival had an environmental theme where the children explored the impact humans have on the environment and the opportunities and challenges of moving towards carbon neutrality.

The festival started with the chance to investigate our environmental footprint on the earth through an assembly, a virtual reality workshop and songs on the theme. The children learnt how to make positive differences through upcycling discarded furniture, using renewable energy sources to make solar powered moving bugs, taking part in real scientific research to monitor the impact of climate change on penguin populations and investigated our food carbon footprint.

Pupils reflected on the beauty & complexity of the natural world through environmental art, symmetry in nature and work on David Attenborough's amazing wildlife film footage.

On Thursday, through writing speeches & producing films & posters on environmental problems, we saw how everyone, no matter how young, can speak up for environmental issues. The children presented their well-researched speeches and films with real passion.

The week culminated in a visit from 2 authors, Tim Tilley & Sara Louise, whose books (Witch Storm / Betty Honeybee) have strong environmental themes running through them.

Environmental work like this is important to us at St Ives. We want to inspire the children to want to make a difference and look after the world they live in. It is work like this which helped us gain our Eco Schools Green Flag in 2020 & why we were shortlisted in the environmental category at the Independent School of the Year Awards 2019.

So, this is how the St Ives Halloween Party, kindly organised by FOSI (the Friends of St Ives), ended this afternoon……. fantastic in its complete chaos & fun! Our head of English, Mrs Parker, & her team had the honour of winning the Mummy Competition. Thank you to our wonderful parent committee for working so hard to give the children such a fantastic afternoon.

Shout out to our fabulous chef, Fernando, on International Chefs Day! Fernando is a wonderful cook, always serving us delicious food with a huge smile on his face. Here he is earlier today carving a pumpkin for the children for our Halloween Party. Thank you for everything you do Fernando!

Amazingly creative pumpkins in our pumpkin carving competition this year!

Mr James Collinson, our new Head of Maths, has led two Maths workshops for parents this week. The objective of each session was to introduce parents to teaching for mastery & explain how the emphasis is now shifting to conceptual understanding as the foundation of children's mathematical experiences. The focus of the sessions were representation, structure & language, with an eye on how parents can support their children at home using the same concepts they are learning at school. Feedback has already been phenomenal, with many parents wishing they’d had Mr Collinson teaching them when they were at school!

What a beautiful morning! We love watching how this view changes with the seasons. Hard to believe we’re only a two minute drive from Haslemere High Street!

Tennis is getting into the Halloween spirit this week, with Julia, our resident tennis coach, setting up lots of fun Halloween games!