Issue Fourteen - 24th March 2018

Welcome to the fourteenth issue of our e-newsletter Talking Trees. In these newsletters, we aim to bring you some of the special experiences from day-to-day life in the school, mainly through photos. Our longer termly newsletter, also called Talking Trees, provides a fuller picture of the curriculum being covered by the different classes and can be downloaded from our website.

We always appreciate any feedback and we’re very happy for you to pass the newsletter on and share it with friends, family and contacts.

This edition of our e-newsletter is particularly focussed on the kindergarten (ages 3¼ - 6).

Both indoor and outdoor activities in the kindergarten have an emphasis on the changing seasons and the natural world.  The most recent seasonal craft activities have been making wool diamonds and paper snowflakes.  ‘Warming’ crafts are particularly suitable for the winter months, particularly working with wool or wood.  Making snowflakes, the children practised their fine motor skills.  Below is their finished work, on display before they take it home.

Inside Kindergarten

Free play in kindergarten is undirected.  Children have their own ideas for using the natural materials around them.  There is no plastic in kindergarten and all items can have many uses – everything can be transformed by the children’s imaginations into many other things.  The children play with planks, crates, racks, shells, conkers, pinecones, muslin cloths (which become cloaks or tents or doors) and there are twizzles (plaited wool) to secure everything.

You can see many different activities below.  In one photo a tent has been created and secured safely, with cushions and blankets inside.  A child has also set up a shop behind, stocked with shells.

The children spend time outside whatever the weather.  In this way they find out directly about the rhythm of the year.  In the beautiful school garden the children often feel especially close to the seasons.  They experience snow, puddles, spring flowers.  As the weather gets warmer children notice bees, butterflies and frogspawn in the school pond.

Below are some photos of a particular February day in which the children discovered ice, where water had collected in a tyre.

The photo at the top of this issue shows the children looking at and comparing their pieces of ice.  Below the ice then becomes a platter full of delicacies (represented by grass,) a mirror on the world or just something interesting to gaze at.

2^nd February is the Candlemas Festival.   The children buried an earth candle, symbolising the aliveness of the earth at this time of year, to symbolically warm the soil and help spring bulbs to emerge.

Debora (the kindergarten teacher) spent some afternoons last half term with some of the older, upper school students, teaching art to Oak Class (age 14-16.)  They worked hard on producing some copies of paintings by Rembrandt, Van Gogh and Monet using charcoal, chalk, oil pastels, acrylic paint and watercolour paint.  They also displayed the paintings to make an exhibition for parents.  

In their paintings the students explored tonal contrast, light and dark and colour as well as the different techniques the artists had used and different approaches to landscapes.  The resulting exhibition shows how hard the students worked and the range of techniques and colour in their creations.

Throughout January, pupils, parents and grandparents have been busy walking, running, swimming, cycling, rowing and scooting in our Jump into January Challenge to raise money for a new long jump pit. All competitors received a special medal and many collected sponsorship, helping to raise £588!  Thank you very much to everyone who took part and supported this event.

Below is a photo of the medals received by participants.

UPPER SCHOOL FACT - You may not know……that although our oldest class (pupils age 16-18) has now completed the first term of the second year of studying for the NZCSE (formerly the SSC), we can still take new pupils of this age and they can choose to enrol for these final two years of the qualification. Contact us for more details.

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