At last the sun is out, in what seems to have been the longest and wettest January that I can remember! It is interesting to see how much brighter everyone is to see the sun, and the number of people who walked out at break today commenting on the lovely day we have had!
As I walk through the corridors of school I am sure to hear the humming of various songs from Aladdin! With just 8 weeks to go, rehearsals are coming along well and from what I have seen and heard in our assemblies, music lessons and enrichment, it is going to be an incredible show!
This morning, Mr Butcher led our assembly explaining about Number Day which will be held in schools across the UK next Thursday to raise money and awareness for the NSPCC. He talked about why the work the NSPCC do is so important and what fun we will be having with numbers on 6th February. Mr Butcher then wowed us with some mathematics magic as he attempted to read the minds of the pupils and guess their secret numbers! The children will be coming to school wearing number clothing next Thursday, and we ask them to bring in donations for the NSPCC on that day too.
Our Well Done winners this week were all of Reception, William, George R, Felix D, Grace, Lilia, Sukey, Mila and Aria. Our Academic Excellence winners were Gabriel, AJ, Alice, Heidi, Anna and Scarlett. Mrs Noyce was very pleased to hand out some more literacy gold certificates to Scarlett, Guy, Lottie, Oliver, Nora, Coco, Amelka and Daisy. Nikolas, Sophia, Daisy, Amelka and Vira also received the Gold Level Sparx Reader certificates.
Finally Violet and Anna received the Commitment award, Olivia and Finlay the Compassion award, Millie and Phin the Courage award and Remi and Natty the Creativity award.
Our PTFA Burns Night on Saturday was a huge success! A delicious traditional dinner cooked by Kerry and her team, followed by a Ceilidh with the fabulous band, The Stomping Boondocks! All the profits will go towards re-vamping the low ropes area. My thanks to our fabulous PTFA for all their hard work organising this event. On the back of this, Mrs Hornby has agreed to run a one off Ceilidh dance class for our pupils and their parents on Friday 14th February at 4.15pm. We will be sending a ping out to parents next week and it would be fabulous if we can get a group together for a bit of end of half term fun for an hour or so!
Reception class had a lovely trip to Dorchester Museum on Tuesday! They had a lovely walk through town, noticing shops and places they know well, like the library. They were welcomed into the museum and had lots of fun interacting with all the displays and artefacts. We enjoyed finding out about the dinosaurs who lived on our Jurassic coast millions of years ago and looking at fossils.
The children enjoyed dressing up in all the costumes and thinking about people who lived in Dorset a long time ago, like Thomas Hardy and the Gladiators! We looked at the work of Dorset artists and saw paintings and sculptures. Kerry had packed us a delicious lunch which we were all ready for and we enjoyed searching for fossils after lunch. After we said thank you to the people at the museum we walked through town and popped into a shop to buy bubble wrap for our dinosaur art activity this afternoon. Well done everyone for behaving so well.
In science this week, Form 8 who have been trying to find out which metal is the best conductor. They used Vaseline to attach drawing pins to different metal bars and timed how long it took each of them to fall off. They discovered that copper was the best thermal conductor and iron the worst.
School Council held their second tuck shop of the year, to raise money for Wessex Cancer Support. The children were very excited to buy their treats and stationary at break time! We look forward to hearing how much was raised…
This week we have been absolutely delighted to hear the news that Leo has been awarded a Sports Scholarship to Leweston, Scarlett an Academic Scholarship to Leweston and Vira an Academic Scholarship and a Music Scholarship to Milton Abbey. Such amazing news! We are still awaiting some more results from other senior schools for some more of our fabulous Form 8’s, but all of our Form 8’s have made us incredibly proud.
Today we say goodbye to the lovely Sukey! Sukey has been visiting us from her home in Zambia for a couple of short stays a year since she was in Form 1. Today is her last stay with us, as she moves to her senior school in September. We have absolutely loved having her at Sunninghill Prep, and it was good to celebrate her bronze, silver, gold and headmasters house point badges that she has achieved over the 6 years she has been visiting us! Sukey has made us a stunning piece of artwork for us to display in school to remind us of her and her home in Zambia. Thank you – it is just beautiful!
Next week is National Storytelling Week and Mrs Noyce will be organising a creative writing competition. It would be lovely to have as many entrants as possible across the school. It is also NSPCC Number Day on Thursday, where all the children can come to school in number themed home clothes. Our Whole School Open Morning is on Friday, where we hope to show off our lovely school to lots of new families!
Have a wonderful weekend everyone!
David
