You can follow us ...….. Newsletter No: 12

Friday, 8th December, 2017

CoMPasS

Registered Charity No: 1141329

DIARY FOR WEEK COMMENCING 4th

December 2017:

Mon Y3 Ukueles Club (lunchtime)

Y1 Netball Skills

Y2/3 Tennis

Y2/3 Chess

Y3 Tag Rugby

Y3 Netball

Y2 Speech & Drama

Tues

Y2/3 Choir (lunchtime)

Y1 Speech & Drama

Y1/2/3 Ballet

Y1/2 Creative Crafts

Y2/3 Chess

Y2 Netball

Y2/3 Karate

Y3 Swim Club

7.00pm Science Department Christmas Lecture

Wed

Rec/Y1 Yoga Bunnies (lunchtime)

Rec Speech & Drama

Y1/2 Sign Language

Y2/3 Yoga

Y3 Sewing Club (2nd group)

Y2 Art Club

Y3 Recorders

Thurs

2.45pm Seasonal refreshments for parents in the Memorial Hall Foyer at St Peter’s

3.45pm Christingle Service, Chapel, St Peter’s School

No ASC, no Co-curricular Activities

Fri 12.00 End of Term

No ASC, no Co-curricular Activities

Wow! What a week. The Christmas Performances were outstanding

this week. I had the pleasure of watching all eight performances from

Nursery to Year 3. I thought the acting, singing, costumes, set, scripts,

dancing and confidence were absolutely sensational. The children clearly

had so much fun and enjoyment performing to their audiences. Many

thanks to you as parents for coming to watch, supporting learning lines

and creating costumes—your help is invaluable. A huge thank you and

congratulations to the staff for preparing the children for these

performances in addition to their ‘normal’ teaching duties. A particular

thank you to Mrs Hayden for the Christmas Performances and all the

work she is doing preparing the children for next week’s Christingle

Service and the Young Voices concert in Sheffield next term. The staff

are truly a special team and I can’t thank them enough. Thank you also to

the Estate Team for turning the Memorial Hall into a space that we could

perform in, which involved working long hours over the weekend to

dismantle the St Peter’s production set ‘As You Like It’ which finished last

Friday. Finally huge thanks and congratulations to the children—they are

quite simply amazing! They performed with huge smiles on their faces

and were obviously enjoying performing their plays.

Today was our Christmas Elf Academy. On

Monday the children all received a parcel from

the elves with a hat and a poem, asking them to

decorate their hats. An invitation in a little bag

appeared on Wednesday and on Thursday the

elves emailed a picture of themselves in our

school. The children were organised into

vertical groups and rotated around four

activities, finally graduating from the Elf Academy.

They created a bookmark using printing

techniques, made a sock snowman, reindeer

food and a light up Santa They also found time

to play Christmas party games. Once again a huge thank you to the staff

team, parent helpers and to Mrs Clarke for organising the whole day.

Thanks to Mr Deri-Clark and Mrs Todd for organising activities and all

parents who brought in cakes and ran the pop up café after school. Thank

you, it has been a wonderful day.

Throughout next week the children will be making their Christingles in

preparation for our Christingle Service on Thursday. They will also be

busy practising songs and carols for this very special occasion. We do

hope that as many of you as possible will be able to attend. Please note

all the children need to be collected after this service and that there is no

after school care on this day.

Less musical, but lots of fun, is our annual House Singing Competition.

This takes place during our final assembly on Friday and is a chance for all

the school to get together and sing some Christmas favourites. It’s a

lovely way to round off a fantastic term!

Best wishes for a lovely weekend.

Thursday 14th December

Our annual Christingle Service will be held on Thursday 14th December. This is a wonderful opportunity for your family to enjoy a Festive Celebration together in the Chapel.

Nursery parents can collect their children from Nursery at 3.20 pm and sit with them in Chapel, please encourage them to be silent whilst pupils are reading and singing during the Service.

All other pupils in Reception, Years 1, 2 and 3 will be taken across to the Chapel by staff. They will be seated in the front rows in their classes and supervised by staff and members of St Peter’s 6th Form.

Parents are very welcome to join us for seasonal refreshments at 2.45 p.m. in the Memorial Hall Foyer at St Peter’s School. You will then be invited to take your seats in the Chapel from 3.30 pm. Please sit in the rows provided behind the children. The service will end at approximately 4.15 pm and children will be taken to the Memorial Hall where they can be collected.

If you are unable to attend yourself, please arrange for your child(ren) to be collected by another adult. As this is a whole school event, there will be no After School Care or Co-curricular Activities following our Christingle Service. The children will be having a snack and drink in the classroom before the Service and we would be grateful if you could kindly refrain from taking food/sweets into the Chapel. St Olave’s pupils should be collected early from Prep Club at St Olave’s following the Service, at approximately 4.30 pm.

We have hardly stopped in 2M this week! We kick-started the week with two performances of our Christmas play,

Tinsel and Tea Towels. The children put on a fantastic display, demonstrating their clear speaking, expression and wonderful singing! Now we are finally in full Christmas mode, we have

enjoyed designing and making Christmas decorations and painting intricate Robin Christmas cards. Then, to top it off, today we celebrated our traditional Christmas activity day - a great day to end a great

week! Well done to all the children for their hard work!

The Year 1 staff are bursting with pride this week after two fantastic performances of our

Christmas play by the Year 1 children. They have worked so hard to remember all of the

songs and made us so proud… but most importantly we all had great fun doing it!

The two newest members of Year 1 have arrived just in time to celebrate Christmas with

us – come and meet them!

For Forest School this week we had a walk to Museum Gardens to see

the beautiful lights; we even had a little treat of hot chocolate and a

biscuit when we arrived.

We have been as busy as Christmas Elves this week making Christmas crafts for our

families and friends in the run up to Christmas. We have been making Christmas cards,

calendars in preparation for the New Year and decorating our Santa hats ready for our

activity day on Friday.

We have been so proud of Year 3 this week with their superb performances of ‘Aladdin Trouble’. They put there all into their acting and singing which was lovely to see. All the children looked fabulous so thank you Mummy’s and Daddy’s for all your help with the costumes.

Amongst the performances we have been celebrating our Fabulous Finish to our Harry Potter topic. On Wednesday morning we held our graduation ceremony from Clifton School of Witchcraft and Wizardry! The red carpet was out for our wonderful witches and wizards! We presented our work from this term and

had a private viewing of our fantastic green screens and finally were all presented with certificates for outstanding wizardry this term! Well done Year 3, you’ve been magical this term!

As well as enjoying

performing our

Christmas plays

this week, we have

got stuck into

Christmas art! On Wednesday we learnt about robins

and listened to their bird call. Mrs Hall had painted a

robin and, using her outline, we used watercolour to

paint the feathers carefully. We tried really hard to

leave a white bit on the robin’s eye so that there

would be a highlight and to draw in detail with a black

pen. These robins should be winging their way to you

as a Christmas card soon!

Book Club had a lovely last ‘meeting’ this

Thursday. Charlie read his hand written

Christmas poem to us, Amara read her

Christmas story, Bryn read Santa Comes To

York and Jacob read us some of The Lion, the

Witch and the Wardrobe and then Mrs Hall

read us one of her favourite Christmas stories,

Lucy and Tom’s Christmas. All this with hot

chocolate and marshmallows, made by Mrs

Headlam-Morley! We had a lovely cosy time

and we are looking forward to seeing Book

Club members again next term!

What a lovely Christmas Party we had this week, the LED Santa's looked magical and we loved all the glitter. Pass the parcel was fun and thank you to the little helping angel who picked all the wrapping from the parcels!

We hope you have a FABULOUS Christmas and see you all in the New Year.

Thank You. Mrs Deri-Clark

The Nursery children have

had a busy week completing

their Christmas crafts with

their parents and the staff

in the nursery. They have

enjoyed making Reindeer

Food, Santas, Snowmen and

On Wednesday the children shone in our Christmas concert. We were so proud of all them all!

The Thematic Curriculum at Clifton - Learning for the Future

Thursday 11th January 2018 at 7.30 pm in the Rayson Room

On Thursday 11th January 2018 Mr Hardy and Mrs Clarke will be giving a

presentation about our curriculum for Years 1-3.

All parents from Nursery upwards are invited to attend this event.

We will be discussing the ethos and aims of the school, including some of the

research that informs our curriculum and learning.

In addition we will explain our curriculum, the processes of assessment which

inform learning and the ways in which we teach your children.

We hope that this will be an informative and useful evening.

The link to register your attendance will be available on our website from the

beginning of next week and will be included in Tuesday’s Clifton Reminders.

News from the Friends

The Friends of Clifton enhances the experience for all of our children through events and

resources for school, as well as serving to involve parents in the school community. Additionally, it

helps to raise money for the school charity. We invite everyone to get involved and help the

Friends to support our school.

Meetings

Our next meeting is on Thursday 18th January, 08:30am, Clifton Dining Room and all

parents are invited to attend. We are always looking for volunteers to help with events

and we would be most grateful if you could help in any way.

Below is a list of events which we are planning to run throughout the year. If you would

like to get involved with any of these please speak to the person organising the event from

the list below:

Events

Easter Term

* Valentine Disco for the children – Mrs Evans and

Mrs Ingham

Summer Term

* Ball – Mrs Wright

* Summer Fair ‘Clif-Fest’ – Mrs Stubbs

* Teddy Bear’s Picnic (Homestead Park) – (volunteer

needed)

Science Society Christmas Lecture

Tuesday 12 December 7pm

The St Peter’s Science staff return for their

hugely popular annual lecture, featuring

fascinating insights, interactive challenges and

dynamic demonstrations, this year focusing on

the periodic table. Book your free tickets here.

If you have any access requirements, are hard of hearing or have any other special requests, please book your tickets using Eventbrite, then

email events@stpetersyork.org.uk or call 01904 527 315, stating which event(s) you are attending and how many tickets you have booked.

Please note that many of our events sell out, and you must bring your ticket with you to guarantee entry. Please either print off your ticket

or display it to us on your smartphone or tablet on the evening. With all best wishes, Ben Fuller, Head of Public Lectures, St Peter’s School,

York, YO30 6AB

Tickets are now available for the St Peter’s School

Christmas Term Public Lectures.