Weekly News - Friday 5th February 2021

Guess the Place

Well done to everyone who had a go at guessing where our places were this week. The Upper School place was quite tricky to guess so well done to those who guessed it was in the county of Devon, but special congratulations to Tiya, Joseph, Sarab, Grace and Sean in Year 3, Oliver in Year 4, Riddhi, Anjika, Charlotte and Oliver in Year 5 and Samir in Year 6, who all identified the place as the seaside town of Dawlish in Devon. 

Many people correctly guessed that the Lower School place was Buckingham Palace, home to our Queen, Elizabeth I. Congratulations to Phoebe, Ishani and Sikhya from Nursery, Saffron, Eleanor, Alicia, Arup, Nihaal, Aaria, Simran and Aarav in Reception, Rania, Ella, Yuvraj, Millie, Caitlin, Armaan, Aakash, Shayla, Shayna, Riyan, Amara and Alyssia from Year 1 and Inaaya, Simar, Ayush, Evie, Alexia, Simrina, Riya Skye, Alexander, Aaran, Ashvika and Armaan in Year 2, all of whom got it right!

London Youth Games Virtual Fitness Challenge

It was a Russian Twist challenge last week that our pupils took part in to contribute to the Hillingdon Borough team's efforts in the London Youth Games competition. Well done to David from Y5/6 and Hana from Y3/4 who were the twisting king and queen this week. Hillingdon were placed in 18th place after the Russian Twist round of the competition, but only 5 more pupils from our school taking part would have put Hillingdon in the top 5 boroughs, so we hope lots more of our pupils in Years 3 - 6 will take on next week's Shuttle Runs challenge. This will be posted on Monday in the Year 3 - 6 PE Google classrooms. 

A Gift for the Queen

Year 2 wowed Mrs. Pruce on Tuesday morning as they attended their lessons wearing crowns and tiaras as they embraced their lessons on portraiture study. The portraiture of the Queen was absolutely outstanding and we will be sending copies to Her Majesty to cheer up her lockdown experience. We will keep you posted if we have a response! Well done Year 2!

Year 4 Music - Storm Responses

You might like to see this video, which Mrs. Fawbert has created to show Year 4's incredible responses to "Storm" from Benjamin Britten's opera "Peter Grimes". The students were challenged to create their own artistic and poetic responses to the music whilst listening to it. Well done, Year 4!

Dress to Express

It was wonderful to see such an expression of individuality from the children in assembly today as they dressed to express themselves as part of Children's Mental Health Week. Maya T in Year 6 also prepared a lovely video to remind us of how important it is to express ourselves. You can see her video here.

Sea Shanty Fun

We had fun in assembly today as we investigated sea shanties and looked at how and why they have recently become so popular on social media! The children were astonished when a mystery guest joined our online assembly - Chris Stark from Radio 1, who is currently at the top of the charts with his own sea shanty remix! Chris spoke to the children about having ideas and making them reality and it was clear that they were inspired by his message. We all joined in with some body percussion along to a sea shanty and we have challenged the children to contribute to a school sea shanty, which Mrs. Fawbert will put together for us.

For those children who feel inspired to have a go at making their own Sea Shanty contribution at home, please find some lyrics and ideas here and the instrumental parts here.

You can see the full assembly here.

School Reports

Pupils from Year 1 - Year 6 will be receiving their school reports next week. I am sure that you will find them interesting and insightful. As many of you are aware, we focus on 'Habits of Learning' for each subject in the belief that teachers facilitate the learning but we encourage the learning to come from within the child. We work hard to develop these 'habits' which should lead to successful, curious and creative learners: 

- organisation and readiness

- independent work

- homework

- collaboration

- initiative and resourcefulness

- self-discipline

It is with home and school working together with the same aims that your children will fully benefit from what we offer at St. Helen's College. I wonder if, as adults, we could take these 'habits of learning' and apply them to our own work life! 

The teachers have surpassed expectations this term whilst delivering remote learning and being able to produce such helpful reports. 

The Parent Practice

Many of you may remember Elaine Halligan who visited us last year and ran a superb parenting workshop. Elaine has now developed her company and has launched a new website and is offering some superb courses and workshops for parents. Please do take a look at her now offerings here. Please let us know if any of you sign up for any of her sessions - we would love to hear your feedback.

Half Term Activities

Mini Monets Art Club still have a few places left for their popular half term Zoom art activities. If you have a budding young artist you might like to sign them up for a week of artistic fun which includes creating a t-shirt and pottery making! You can find the full details here.

ComputerXplorers will be running two clubs over the February half term which might be of interest to children aged 8 and over: Roblox Game Design and Kodu 3D Game Design. 

ROBLOX Game Design

Learn to design your very own game using Roblox Studio, encouraging your child to power their imagination and explore the endless possibilities that come from games design. The sessions begin with your child setting up a project with Roblox Studio and continue with them designing all elements of the game. Click on the link below to register.
https://middlesex.computerxplorers.co.uk/classes/roblox-game-design-class

KODU 3D Game Design

Students will use Kodu, a graphical programming environment, to design and build games. They will then create a range of terrains, worlds and characters, controlling the characters' movement, sound and vision using an intuitive, icon-based programming language. Click on the link below to register. 
https://middlesex.computerxplorers.co.uk/classes/kodu-game-design-class