Round-up of the Year

Since our blog began in November, lots of great things have taken place at school. The image below was created using Wordle; it shows the most common words used on our blog by size, with the largest being the most widely used. I think it says a lot about our school!

Click on the image to see it full size.

Talent Show

This year's annual talent show was a lot of fun, with acts including a puppet theatre, magic show, dancing, singing, plays, gymnastics and a surprisingly large number of ninja warriors!
Here are some of the highlights:

The Twelve Days of Christmas

Mr Pearce led the school in a rousing chorus of The Twelve Days of Christmas today, complete with actions! Here are some of the highlights!

Christmas Dinner

Children, staff and governors enjoyed a traditional Christmas dinner today. Thanks to the Year 6 pupils for serving, and particularly to Rachel, our cook for all her hard work. She is leaving us on Friday for pastures new, and we wish her all the best for the future.

Christmas Rappin'

Yo, Yo! Pearcey in da house, innit!

Blinging!

Christmas Carol Service

This year's Christmas carol service was a great success. There was a huge turnout of children and parents and it was great to see the church full to bursting.

The evening began with the recorder group playing We Three Kings, in parts.

The children read and sang beautifully and even the staff had a part to play, with their debut performance of Silent Night.

Earl Soham Achieves Activemark Status

We are delighted to announce that Earl Soham Community Primary School has gained the 'Activemark' award.

This award is given annually to reward the delivery of the national PE, School Sport and Club Links strategy.

More than 90% of our pupils take part in at least 2 hours high quality PE and School Sport a week. Well done to all children and staff involved in achieving this award - it is thoroughly deserved for everyone's hard work, but more importantly the enjoyment shown by the children when taking part in a wide range of activities both in and out of curriculum time.

A New Fairy Tale

A group of children from Yellow Class have been making up their own brand-new Fairy Tales this week in Literacy. They wrote a script and dramatised their story in Friday's sharing assembly. 

Here is the result:

Christingle

In this morning's assembly, we looked at 'Christingles'. Mr Pearce made one and then everyone learnt about what they actually are and what they mean (they originate from Germany about 250 years ago and stand for 'Christ's light'. Originally, they would have been made using nuts and dried fruit, more modern ones generally use sweets.




Back in Yellow Class, 27 children had a great time putting their Christingles together, whilst not being tempted to have a sample of jelly tots or dolly mixtures!

Every part of the Christingle symbolises something different:

· The orange represents the world

· The red ribbon represents the blood of Christ

· The candle represents Jesus, the light of the world

· The four sticks represent the four seasons

· The sweets represent the food and goodness provided

We briefly lit the candles - the effect was lovely.

At time of leaving school, all sweets were still intact on the sticks!

Children in Need

This is part of the 'Trail of coins' which went at least twice around the corridor and the library for Children in Need.

'Wake 'n' Shake' Festival

Y2 children enjoying an aerobic 'Wake and Shake'.

This is Mr Cuddles and the Debenham HS Sports Leaders leading lots of Year 2 children from the pyramid schools in a conga finale to the 'Wake and Shake ' festival held on Wednesday 19th November.

Unihoc tournament

On Tuesday 25th November 9 children from Yr 5/6 took part in the Small Schools Unihoc tournament at Debenham Leisure Centre. They played extremely well during the morning, and finished in a very creditable joint 3rd place, only losing to the eventual winners - Helmingham. Our results were: Won -1 Drew - 3 Lost -1 Black eyes - 1 !

Well done to all who took part!

Year 5 & 6 at TMHS

18 children from Earl Soham visited TMHS for a fantastic day of ICT, Science, Design Technology and Literacy. The children had great fun designing and making a rocket to send out a signal to ensure that their coach arrived to pick them up! They also looked at how to measure the altitude that their inventions reached.
The TMHS staff were excellent and this was matched by the interest shown by the children and their results - the bus arrived on time!

Li Chi Slays the Serpent

While Year 5 and 6 pupils were at Thomas Mills High School today, Mr Mansell worked with a group of Year 4 pupils to produce this short film about the Chinese folk-tale, Li Chi Slays the Serpent.

The children began by recording themselves reading the story. They then produced some artwork depicting different scenes in the story.

In the afternoon, we used plasticine to make models of the characters in the story and animated them using stop-frame animation techniques.

The children then put everything together using Windows Movie Maker to produce this short film.

One Christmas

The One Christmas concerts are fast approaching and I'm pleased to say that the CD is now available to purchase. Copies are available from the school office at a cost of £10. All proceeds (after manufacturing costs) go to the charity Tearfund.

Mr Pearce was very excited to see the CD arrive and couldn't wait to put it on and have a dance!

Children in Need

Thanks to everyone who brought in some coppers for our coin trail. We have raised nearly £53 for Children in Need.

Children in Need

Welcome to the first post on our new school blog. We hope that you find this a useful area to find out what has been happening around the school.

This first post is all about the dotty goings on on Children in Need day. Children arrived at school in all manner of spotty outfits (and some of the staff looked a bit odd too!). One child even went to the great effort of getting into character as a dalmation, with a full fancy dress costume.

Children brought in copper coins and we made a trail which went twice around the school corridor!

When some boys from Blue class collected all the money in a bucket at the end of the day they could hardly lift it. We would like to thank everyone who made an effort to dress up and brought in a contribution. We will let you know soon, after poor Mrs Sayer has counted all of those coins, what the grand total came to.