Newsletters

Newsletter 29th January 2021

Dear Parents,

It was wonderful to hear this week how many of the children enjoyed the snow last weekend. With so many things closed to us, it's lovely to find joy in the simple, every day things. Today's assembly followed a similar theme when we spoke about the need to appreciate the journey - not just the destination.  I know we're all looking forward to life returning to normal, but until we get there, we're finding happiness in unexpected places, starting with the Eco Council's Spring watch.           

Eco Council Spring Watch

The Eco-Council would like to invite you to find signs of Spring. You can record them in a video or photograph. Miss Skorupska has already sent me a wonderful time lapse photo and perhaps you might like to try this idea. Please send all entries to Miss Bohannon.

ParentMail purchase

Branded water bottles (£10.20) and umbrellas (£20) are now available to purchase on ParentMail. Please note that we are not able to deliver them and we want to discourage any unnecessary visits into school, so please only purchase these if you have a child in school that can bring them home.

Wellbeing

As a school we are committed to ensuring the wellbeing of all our pupils and this extends to the families of our pupils too. Next Monday Eton College are hosting a free seminar on stress management, wellbeing and resilience for teachers and parents. Do sign up if you think it could be useful. I also want to remind you that we have a Wellbeing section on the school website and Miss Mehta as Wellbeing Lead at school,  to help support you and your children.

Stress Management, Wellbeing and Resilience

Free for teachers and parents

This interactive talk will demonstrate a range of practical tools to manage pressure and stress, and enhance resilience

Monday 1 February 2021

4.00 - 5.00 pm

Click to register

Headmaster's Challenge - #GiveALittleLove

Over the last couple of weeks we have shared more acts of kindness, carried out by our children, with the rest of the school. It's a great opportunity to celebrate one of the values at the heart of our school - being kind. Well done to everyone who took part.

Satinderpal helped his Nanny by calling her and doing her food shopping, cooking meals and delivering them.

Devam donated sleeping bags and chocolates to the Windsor Homeless Project.

Aarush Helped his cousin settle into English schooling with kind advice and regular contact.

Mannat baked cupcakes and donated to the foodbank.

Ayaan raised money for charity and helped a friend.

Lara wrote down 12 positive acts and donated toys and clothes to her local church, who wrote a letter of thanks. 

Shrey donated word search books to Oxford House care home for the elderly residents.

Marley made bookmarks for a local care home and a care package for grandparent.

Akshay has been a fantastic older brother. 

 

This week's reading recommendation

As librarian, I am going to recommend books to different year groups - this week it's 5! I have chosen Beetle Boy, by M.G Leonard. I I've read this book myself and it is very adventurous and humorous. If you like it you might want to try the other books in the series: Beetle Queen and Battle of the Beetles. Hope you like it, because I enjoyed every page. That's it for now, but keep on reading lots of books!

 Bobby Philip, Chief Librarian 

Academic Excellence

The standard of our pupils' academic work continues to impress me.  We have had some incredible written work across the school; from Goldilocks in Early Years to beautiful Psalms in Year 3.  Year 5 have been studying the narrative poem The Highwayman, which describes how one highwayman’s visit to an inn ends in tragedy. The children have thoroughly enjoyed analysing this poem have created artwork to represent the purple moors and they have also produced stories to describe the Highwayman’s fateful night.

We have great cave drawings, illustrations of musical instruments and portraits of Samuel Pepys. Year 4 and Early Years have impressed us with their scientific minds, learning about changing states and floating and sinking, respectively. Our Year 2 children have been learning about The Great Fire of London and have produced some excellent poetry, while the Year 1s' number work, the Year 6s' Latin and Year 5s' Spanish continues to engage the children.

The quality of work is exceptional, and to be producing this, for many of our children, remotely, is really a testament our pupils fantastic attitude and application to learning. Well done everyone. I'm very proud to be your Headmaster. 

PE/Games
A huge congratulations to all our children for their outstanding efforts in participating in the IAPS Bunny-Hop challenge. The children across the school completed a huge number of hops in both their PE/Games lessons and independently at home too. We absolutely smashed our target of 20K Bunny-Hops just in our PE lessons alone! Well done children!
 
IAPS SPORT: Challenges and Well-Being
The IAPS are currently supporting schools in encouraging children and their families to keep exercising and stay safe during the lockdown. Just as we completed the Bunny-Hop challenge, they do also post a different activity or challenge each day. We at St Bernard’s Prep currently follow IAPS Sport on Twitter and will retweet each day’s activity when they post it. We would like to encourage all families to actively take part in this and if you are able to do so, please could you send us any photos or videos of you and your children participating. A friendly reminder that our Twitter handle is @StBernardsPrep and if you haven’t already, please could you give us a follow.

Keep your eyes peeled this weekend in the Big Garden Birdwatch. We're looking forward to seeing if any our young ornithologists spot any flamingos or peacocks!

Yours sincerely,

Mr N Cheesman