Welcome back and a Happy New Year to you all!
It is wonderful to have all the children back this week, looking refreshed and happy.
We have lots of new children joining us this term and I would like to take this opportunity to welcome Huw, Shahmeer and Eddie in Nursery, Romeo who will be joining us in Form 1 on Monday, and Sonny and another Sonny who have joined in Forms 3 and 7. We also welcome Mrs Audrey Derrick who has joined us as Head of Modern Foreign Languages. We are delighted that you have all joined Sunninghill and we hope you will all be very happy with us.
Today the sunshine eventually came out and the children had a great time playing together outside. What was wonderful to see was just how many of the Senior Prep children were playing with the Junior Prep! That is what our school community it all about!
In our assemblies this week we talked about New Year’s resolutions. We talked about being more organised, perhaps keeping our rooms tidy and beds made, but also how we can be more thoughtful to others. One resolution I have asked all the children to make is to work hard at getting house points for the 4 Cs – our school values of Courage, Commitment, Creativity and Compassion. We have a number of new posters around the school to remind them of our values, and we also have introduced Junior Prep to our 4 C’s mascots – Tiger (Courage) Dog (Commitment), Dragon (Creativity) and Elephant (Compassion). Each week the member of Junior Prep with the most house points for each of our values will take the mascot home for the weekend. At the end of each term, the child with the most house points over the term will get to keep a mascot of their own!
We also welcomed our new Head Boy and Head Girl in assembly today – Will and Iris. We know they will be excellent role models and provide myself, and all the staff at Sunninghill with fantastic support throughout the term.
Finally we were delighted to celebrate some ABRSM music examination results from Daisy B, Heidi, Rosa, Scarlett A, Daisy H, Lottie, Kitty and Katy. The children received excellent results, and it is only the 3rd time in Sunninghill’s history that a child at our school has achieved Grade 6 – an incredible achievement for Katy. Well done to everyone and thank you to all the music staff who help our children perform so well in their music exams.
The start of our renovations have begun! This term we will have moved our music department into the old staff room whilst we begin to renovate the old music room into a brand new nursery room for 2-3 year olds. The outside area for nursery will also be having a makeover very soon. Over the course of the term, we will be building some brand new music practice rooms, and we will be employing a full time painter and decorator for the next year, who will be taking one room at a time to freshen up the whole school. You will start to see lots of improvements around the school and we are so excited about the next chapter.
The children have been back to lessons and working hard right away! Form 5 were investigating air resistance by timing how long paper helicopters took to fall with different length wings. They are looking at how surface area affects the speed of a falling object. They were using their scientific skills to record reliable and accurate results.
During our staff Christmas party, Mrs Nolan-Stone challenged colleagues to join her for the Weymouth Half Marathon on Saturday 17th March. If you, and any of your friends and family would like to join us, please sign up and let myself or Mrs Nolan-Stone know. It would be great to have a lovely Sunninghill team supporting each other!
https://justracinguk.com/event/weymouth-half-marathon-2023/
We have a busy diary for the term, so please see the latest newsletter for the key dates for this half term, but there are a couple of other dates I would like to highlight:
Open Morning – Saturday 3rd February – after the success of our last Open Morning, we would like as many children as possible to attend please.
Sunninghill’s Got Talent – Friday 15th March at 7pm (auditions to take place w/c/ 5th February)
Easter Service – Friday 22nd March 2.30pm
Have a wonderful weekend!
David
