Nursery to Year Six Highlights

This week in Year One, the children have been learning about famous artists and exploring the portraits they created. Inspired by these artists, the girls became budding artists themselves and took on the challenge of sketching a portrait of a friend. They carefully observed one another and thought about the many different facial features they have been learning about during their recent Science lessons on ‘The Body’. The girls made a real effort to include as many of these features as possible in their drawings, such as eyes, noses, mouths and hair, paying close attention to shape and detail. The girls showed great concentration, creativity and pride throughout the activity and they were delighted with their finished portraits. To celebrate their hard work, they have created portrait galleries in the Year One reading corridor, where their wonderful artwork is now proudly displayed for everyone to enjoy. 

As part of our exciting STEAM Week, Year Three pupils took on a creative design challenge inspired by the traditional tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children began by listening carefully to the story, reminding themselves of the characters and key events so they could think about what each bear might need from a chair. Using cardboard boxes and simple materials, pupils designed and built chairs for the three bears, focusing on size, strength, and stability. The challenge was to create a chair suitable for all three bears — not too big, not too small, but just right! To test their ideas, the children used three teddy bears, checking the fit and making improvements where needed. This hands-on activity encouraged creativity, problem-solving, teamwork, and resilience. 

This week Year Four has been buzzing with excitement as we celebrated STEAM Week! The girls showed fantastic teamwork, resilience and creativity while taking part in a wide range of fun and challenging activities across the curriculum. One of the highlights was using the VR headsets, where they explored Space and learned in a very exciting way. Another favourite was the Planetarium, which helped the girls discover amazing facts about space, planets and stars. It felt like we were really travelling through the universe! Throughout the week, the girls have worked together to solve problems, share ideas and keep trying even when tasks were tricky. From science experiments and engineering challenges to Art and Maths, everyone had the chance to shine. STEAM Week has been fun, inspiring and full of learning. Congratulations to all the girls for their brilliant attitudes and teamwork – what a week to remember! 

Year Five pupils stepped into the world of engineering this week during an exciting Fairy Tale Engineering project inspired by The Three Billy Goats Gruff. Tasked with helping the goats cross safely to the other side, the girls were given a simple set of materials — newspaper and straws — and a big challenge. Working in teams, the pupils carefully planned, designed and constructed their own bridges, testing ideas and solving problems along the way. Creativity, teamwork and resilience were on full display as designs were adapted and strengthened. The results were nothing short of amazing, with many bridges proving both sturdy and imaginative. It is clear that we have some budding engineers on our hands and the Billy Goats would certainly approve! 

This week in our Year Six STEAM math session, the girls explored the classic Handshake Problem, which challenges you to work out how many handshakes occur if everyone in a group shakes hands with each other once. The activity encouraged children to record their findings carefully, look for patterns and explain their results. They discovered different strategies for counting efficiently and enjoyed discussing why their methods worked. Some children also explored the Tower of Hanoi problem, where they had to move a stack of discs from one peg to another, following rules that only one disc can be moved at a time and a larger disc can never be placed on a smaller one. This required careful planning, logical thinking, and step-by-step problem solving, helping children develop strategies and reason through complex challenges. 

It was wonderful to see the children thinking logically and creatively, using both numbers and reasoning to solve problems. The children were excited to notice patterns emerging in both activities and practiced explaining their reasoning clearly—a key part of problem-solving in maths and beyond!