General (112)
Lunchtime Concert May 19th 2022
Today’s concert was a real treat. It was given a brilliant start by Jacob Okwuadigbo who took us easily into the mind of his character ‘Calvin’ as he mused about his future employment. This lively, engaging performance made us laugh. Jacob’s timing was excellent, pausing and moving on just at the right time so that we believed he was making it up as he was going along. Wonderful!
James Alder made our mouths water as he did some musing of his own. ‘Hot Cross Buns’, as James pointed out, really don’t look cross. We all agreed, they are far too squishy and smiley looking to be ever thought of as cross; a happy performance too James, well done.
Alexander Briscoe and Timothy Lancaster amused us with their in depth discussion about superheroes and other important stuff, ‘So you think you’re a superhero’. We always enjoy this partnership; perhaps they are Batman and Robin in disguise!
Oluwadamilola Olajide was a busy girl today. First she played us a beautifully performed ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat’ with a lovely sense of enjoyment then later in the concert she brought us the brilliant poem by A.A. Milne; ‘Wind On The Hill’ which never fails to charm the reader and listener alike. Well done Damilola, I hope you get to fly a kite one day very soon!
Sophie Hartley-Wiley played a confident version of that famous T.V. theme ‘East Enders’ for us. We loved it.
Frederick Lancaster’s speech and drama ‘Ernie’s incredible illucinations’ took his character into a library. Being incredibly bored, waiting for his dad to finish, he imagines a man in the corner is a secret agent, there’s a dead body in the reference section and gets into trouble for mountain climbing on his chair. Freddie obviously enjoyed sharing this with us; I wonder how many children get bored in a public library these days?
Isabel John’s ‘Ferris Wheel’ piano piece was so pretty and played carefully and was in complete contrast to Arjun Sohal’s poem ‘Mrs. Mather’; his over active imagination dreaming up all sorts of terrible scenarios before plucking up the courage to ask his next door neighbour for his football back.
Clare Hubbard, another one of our four pianists today, played ‘A Toy’. This super little piece works so well with it’s descending scales that dance down the keyboard again and again, Clare performed it with just the right weight and style. Ivanna Awoyemi was a super star playing ‘Old MacDonald’ perfectly with great rhythm and concentration all the way through.
Olivia Taylor was very entertaining. Her speech and drama ‘Did you ever play tag with a tiger’ made us chuckle and Onyineomachi Iwuagwu charmed us with her quotation from ‘Winnie the Pooh’ …the bit where Pooh sings his ‘Tra-la-la’ song and comes across Rabbit’s hole. I loved this, what an incredible memory you have Onyineomachi.
Erioluwa Ojemuwiya gave us some mouth-watering recipe ideas from her Nigerian family cookery book, the meat pie sounded delicious! Our tummies were definitely rumbling after this, so thank goodness Chamber group were next to play, finishing our fabulous concert with three pieces; ‘Biscuit Club Boogie’, Shrimp Society Samba’ and ‘Hurly Burly’. They were brilliant; listening to each other, using dynamics and performing with pride.
Congratulations to all of our performers!
Keep practicing everyone!
Mrs Hodges
On Friday Rowan shared their class assembly with their parents and the children in Pre-Prep. It was a lovely assembly, here are some photos and a short video. Well done Rowan!
On Friday we enjoyed watching Cedar Class share their last ever Pre-Prep Class Assembly with their parents and the rest of the children in Pre-Prep. What a wonderful assembly, here are some photos and a video of one of their songs. Well done Cedar!
On Friday we enjoyed watching Birch Class share their last ever Pre-Prep Class Assembly with their parents and the rest of the children in Pre-Prep. It was a lovely assembly with beautiful artwork, acting, and uplifting singing. Here are some photos and a video clip of the children in Birch singing 'The World Is A Wonderful Place'. Well done Birch class.
In Science Cedar and Birch (year 2) have been looking at seed dispersal and how different plants ensure they can survive. We have been discussing how important plants and flowers are for wildlife and in particular the bees and the butterflies. We decided we wanted to turn part of our school flower beds into a wildflower garden to help our local buzzing friends. We made “Bee Bombs” packed full of seeds and then prepared the ground ready to launch our bombs to help start our garden. As the bombs hit the ground, they exploded spreading the seeds. We cannot wait to see how our flowers grow and how many visitors we will get to see. If you would like to dedicate part of your garden to wildflowers here is what we used.
Seed Bomb Recipe
You will need:
- One tub of your chosen variety of flower seed
- General purpose compost
- Cheap flour
- Water
Method:
- Empty the seed tub into a bucket
- Fill the empty seed tub with compost and add to the bucket. Do this 3 times. Stir to mix everything together
- Fill the empty seed tub with flour and empty into another container. Add water and stir. Repeat until you have a gloopy mixture, i.e., glue!
- Add the flour and water mixture to the compost and seed and mix it all together
- Now the bombs can be formed. The mix just needs to be gently rolled in the hand to form a golf-ball sized ball
- Place the balls in a tray or box and allow them to dry for 24 hours
- Everyone outside now to throw, toss, roll or simply scatter their bombs.
- Wait for your garden to become a bee and butterfly haven.
Walnut class shared a lovely class assembly with Pre-Prep and their parents on Friday. We heard some wonderful singing and enjoyed seeing the children's artwork. Here are some photos and a video of their song for mothers day this Sunday. Well done Walnut.
Maple room shared their first ever class assembly with Pre-Prep and their parents on Friday. They shared some wonderful artwork and lovely singing. Well done Maple you were amazing! Here are some photos and a video of the song the children sang during their assembly.
On Friday Beech shared their class assembly with Pre-Prep and their parents. It was a brilliant assembly with wonderful singing and acting. The children also shared their vibrant artwork with us including their lovely daffodil hats. Here are some photos and a video clip from their assembly song. Well done Beech Class.
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Another wonderful class assembly, it was a joy to hear you all singing in front of Pre-Prep and your parents. Amazing robots too, well done to all of the children in Holly. Here is a selection of photos from the assembly and a video of one of the songs.
We thoroughly enjoyed Larch class assembly on Friday. The children shared what they have been learning about Victorians and showed us some wonderful artwork and performed their assembly songs for Pre-Prep and their parents. Well done Larch Class.
Pre-Prep had a fantastic day and it was wonderful to see the children in their lovely costumes. Throughout the day the children were transported to Venice for carnival, Wales, France and Great Britain. They created beautiful Venetian masks ready to become incognito during the carnival. In Wales they celebrated their national flower and created lovely daffodils. In France they became engineers to rescue The Eiffel Tower and help build it strong and tall. In Great Britain they created something special to celebrate The Queen's Platinum Jubilee which will soon be available for you to view in our exciting project. We were so proud of the children, and it was a wonderful way to celebrate all of our cultural heritage which comes together in our Grove Family.
Mrs Collins
Pupils in each house in Prep rotated around 4 activities run by the staff from each house. The Arden staff ran an activity celebrating the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. After learning about the Queen and her life in the Royal Family, pupils created their own images to celebrate her reign. The results will be available for parents to see in the near future.
Mr Wakley
We had a great time on House Day celebrating some traditions from English culture. We started off by looking at recipe for a traditional scone and mixing up the base, we then cut them out and sent them to the school kitchen where Hayley kindly cooked them for us. We followed this up with learning about a traditional English tea and by choosing to eat our scone with either clotted cream, jam, or both! They were delicious! We then made some cups of traditional English tea in a tea pot and sampled it with milk and sugar. After all this eating and drinking we went outside to practise the traditional English game of ‘cats cradle’. This is a game played using a piece of string, the object is to pass it between yourself and your partner, it is quite tricky and requires lots of patience! It has been lovely to see in the following weeks some children practising this game during their break times!
Mrs Carlin
Our achievement assemblies take place once a month, for the whole school, at the end of each month during term time.We start the assembly with our Foundation and Pre-prep class awards where two children from each class are awarded a Class Award either for exceptional effort with something or an outstanding piece of work. We then award any children in Pre-prep with their Star Awards for anyone who has achieved 25, 60 or 100 stars this term. Well done to all the children for this months awards.Next we handed out the MK Festival certificates and and medals for the Drama festival the previous week with a total of 43 certificates and 11 medals awarded!These were followed by some Swimming medals for Frederick Lancaster and Alice Alder who took part in the Oxon and North Bucks County Championships in January.We then awarded the Acacia and Pine (Year 6) science prizes which went to Lily Gibbin, Aaryan-Krsh Sagar, Emily Foster and Tabitha Simpkins, we will tell you more about their projects next week.The U11 boys hockey team then received their medals and trophy for their 1st place in the shield tournament in the ISA national hockey tournament earlier in the month. Each month Credit certificates are awarded to anyone in Prep who has achieved 25, 60 or 100 credits. Congratulations to Aron Sonander who received his 25 credits in February the first Prep pupil to reach 25 this term. For pieces of work above a credit level we award a Commendation which are for exceptional pieces of work. Well done to Sophie Hartley-Wiley for your Commendation for your Spanish work, a fantastic achievement. We finish the assembly by awarding the credit badges for each house which go to the pupils in Junior, Mid and Senior prep with the most credits for that month, they keep the badge for the whole month. Well done to George Payton, Aron Sonander, Sophie Hartley-Wiley, Ipsa Rachaik, Alexander Pearce, Oyin Omotosho, Kacie Padhiar, Patrick Kingsman Shreyan Kothari and Anirudh Balaji for winning the badges this month.We finish our assembly with our own birthday song for all the pupils and staff with birthdays in February.Well done to all the children who received something this month and we look forward to seeing what you can achieve in March!
