Happy New Year! I trust you all had a lovely Christmas and festive period

spending time with your family and friends. I have heard many tales of

adventures over the holidays from visits to the heat of the southern hemisphere

to snow in Europe and Canada and, of course, all the exciting times had at home

in the UK. The children clearly have had a wonderful time! My thanks to all for

your kind gifts, they were all very much appreciated.

A warm welcome to our new staff at school. Mrs Andrea Taylor will be teaching

in 3T with Mr Tidswell, Mrs Tamara Millman has replaced Mrs Roberts as our

Learning Support Lead, Mrs Mandy Ferguson will be our new Teaching Assistant

working in Year 2 and in Nursery and Mrs Margaret Howes will be teaching

Music this term, replacing Mrs Wood. Please introduce yourself to any of the

new faces you meet!

This week the children have started their new themes and they have already

proved to be very exciting! The themes are: Nursery–Where my Wellies Take

Me; Reception— Our Planet; Year 1—Monkey Business; Year 2—Trains, Planes

and Automobiles and Year 3-Ancient Paths. My thanks to all the wonderful staff

at school for providing these exciting themes for the term ahead and creating all

the fabulous displays and environments in the classrooms over the holidays.

Year 1 returned back to school to a very untidy classroom and quickly realised

that an animal had been living in there over the holidays! The children have

investigated and have found out it was a very shy monkey. Year 2 had a surprise

visit to the National Railway Museum on the first day of term to learn about

George Stephenson, who built the first public inter-city railway line. Reception

have been busy creating models using recycled materials and have also spent time

at Forest School learning how to tie knots and make bows and arrows. Year 3

children have been archaeologists investigating Ancient Egyptian artefacts and

Nursery have been building snowmen out of play dough and playing and

experimenting with ice!

The new co-curricular programme also started this week and the children have

enjoyed the variety on offer. I hope you have all received your term card with

the forthcoming events for this term. Details of all events will be sent out

separately.

Following our work on Compassion last term, the

focus of our assemblies, PSHE lessons and discussions

will be our School Value of Humility. A display is

planned for our Value Board in the atrium—watch this

space. My thanks to Mrs Griffiths for her work in this

important area of school.

I hope many of you will be attending the Stargazing Live! this evening—always a

very popular event. Details further in the newsletter. I look forward to seeing

the Nursery parents next Thursday evening (7.00 pm in the Rayson Room) when

Mrs Bonas and her team will be leading an Explaining Literacy workshop.

Have a lovely weekend. Best wishes,

CoMPasS

You can follow us ...….. Newsletter No: 14

Friday 9th January 2015 Registered Charity No: 1141329

NEXT WEEK’S DIARY:

Mon Lunchtime: Y3 Netball

Rec Speech & Drama, Y1

K’Nex, Y1/2/3 Green Team,

Y2/3 Card Making, Y2/3

Chess (1st group), Y3

Badminton, Y3 Tag Rugby

Tues

8.30 CSF Breakfast Club

(Hedley House)

Lunchtime—Y3 Agility

Y3 Speech & Drama, Y1/2/3

Ballet, Y2 Football, Y2/3

Karate, Y2/3 Chess, Y3 Swim

Squad

Wed Y1 Active Club, Y1 Speech &

Drama, Y2 Lego, Y2 Art, Y3

Jewellery & Accessories, Y3

Science Club

Thurs

Lunchtime: Y1 Mini Hockey

Y1/2 Puzzle & Board Games,

Y2 Tag Rugby, Y2 Speech &

Drama, Y3 Mathletics, Y2/3

Table Tennis, No Y3

Animation Club

7.00 pm Explaining Literacy

in Nursery (Rayson Room)

Fri Y1 Lego (1st group), Y2

Team Games, Y3 Sewing

Club, Y3 Football, Y2 iClub

(1st group)

Have a clear out and raise funds for our charity of the year, Yorkshire Air Ambulance! Any unwanted clothes, shoes and household textiles (bedding and towels) welcome.

Please leave yellow bags in the bandstand.

Final drop off date is:

Thursday,

15th January

On the first day back after the Christmas holidays, we discovered that

something had been living in our classroom! There were sticks, leaves and twigs all over the place and even an empty banana skin. This week we have predicted what the creature is, written letters to the mystery animal and even built it ladders to encourage it to come down! And you’ll never guess what… 1B have a MONKEY living in their classroom!!

Ffion Lloyd

Emma-Louise, Beatrice, Leila, Rohan, Cameron, Ryan,

Oliver, Pietro, Harry, Rory, Shaurya, Aleena and

Isabelle

This week in 3L we have started our topic Ancient Paths. We have been practising our Geography skills and located Egypt on a map. We have been archaeologists and

discovered Ancient Egyptian artefacts. We have learnt all about the famous archaeologist: Howard Carter and his discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb! Here are some pictures of us pretending to be him peering through the walls of

the tomb into the antechamber.

2H have been observing people this

week! We are excited about our new

topic, Trains, Planes and Automobiles and

we are making a large display of a railway

station. We drew and then painted

pictures of people waiting in a station

and then we drew from a model (thank

you, Isabelle Hughes..) in order to really

understand what people look like. The

paintings and drawings are fantastic and

will be up on the wall soon!

Gold

Millie, Sophie

and Lucy

Quite a number of pupils

have mislaid their jumpers.

Please check your child’s bag

and kit. Thank you.

1G have been great detectives this week and have discovered a mysterious animal. It must have been living here throughout the Christmas holidays. We wrote letters to the animal and left them out with a banana. Our letters were so good that the animal replied. It is a monkey but he is terribly shy and frightened of all the loud noises in school. We have created ladders and other exciting ways to encourage the monkey to come down. We

can’t wait to see if he comes to visit.

2S had a surprise on Monday morning after break. Instead of

the lessons they were expecting, they got on a coach with 2H

and went to the Railway Museum for the rest of the day. The

new topic called ‘Trains, Planes and Automobiles’ had been

introduced that morning and the children had already heard

about George Stephenson’s Rocket. The highlight of the day

was seeing the Rocket, but the children also loved seeing other

trains such as the Mallard and the Royal trains.

RS enjoyed another trip to Forest Schools. This

week we were practising tying knots! We used a

little rhyme to help us remember what

to do; ‘Criss-cross, tuck underneath and

pull!’ Once we had learned how to do this

some children decided to make

bows and arrows. It required a

lot of searching and testing to

find the right kind of stick to

make a bow. We worked in pairs

to tension the string to make

the bow work properly.

Meanwhile some children made

bird feeders and tied them in

the trees and on branches for the birds to enjoy.

Silver Isobel, Fraser, Ffion, Clara,

Helena, Sebastian, Samuel,

James and Tristan

In 3T this week we have started to explore 3D shapes in our Maths work. Freddie, our sixth form helper, worked with us to sort out 3D shapes and we used the Polydron to make shapes of our own. We created our

3D Shape Museum!

We have had a fabulous

time at Forest School

this week. The children

have made bird feeders

using hooped breakfast

cereal threaded on to

pipe cleaners

and had big

adventures

climbing trees,

playing hide

and seek and

balancing.

This week in RJ we have been putting our recycling materials to good use. The children have worked in pairs to plan and make an object. Ideas have ranged from fish tanks and robots to laptops and Power Rangers’ houses. We have looked at the different materials and shapes we have used whilst making our object and learnt some of their maths

names, like cuboid and cylinder.

Thank you to our outgoing House Captains who

presented badges to our new House Captains for this

term!

Walmgate—Jemima

Monk—Ailsa

Micklegate—Florence

Oliver, Matilda, Pippa,

Alexander, Isabelle, Sam, Sophie,

Finlay, Amelia and Ella

Matilda, Jack,

Ailsa, Joshua,

Pippa, Pietro,

Ade, Eliyah,

Joshua, Francis,

Lily, Aleena and

Billy

Stargazing Live Party 2015

The next event in the St Peters School Public Lecture Programme is the Annual Stargazing Live Party to be held

on 9th January, 2015.

This event is being run with the kind Support of The Institute of Physics, The Rotary Club of York Vikings, The

Ogden Trust and the St. Peter’s School Foundation.

This year the BBC Stargazing Live Programmes will be held in March instead of their usual January slot to

coincide with the next total solar eclipse. However, St. Peter’s School is again going to be holding a Stargazing

Live Party on Friday 9th January 2015 from 5.30 pm onwards in the Queen Anne Dining room and Shepherd Hall

at St. Olave’s School. As last year the evening will constitute an Astronomy/Physics exhibition (including mobile

planetarium), exhibitors, telescope retailers and some hands on things to do. This will be followed by a Lecture

at 7.00 pm (in the Memorial Hall). All of the tickets for the lecture have now been taken. However, everyone is

welcome to come along for a spell during the evening and it is a nice family event. Hot dogs and other hot food

will be for sale on the evening by the telescope viewing area from 6.00 till 7.00 and 8.00 to 9.00 pm.

If it is a clear night, then there should be some great views through the telescopes and this is the only

opportunity in the year when we have so many high quality telescopes pointing at the various night sky objects.

Professor Ian Morison will be joining us for the evening and we are planning for copies of his newly released

book: 'A Journey through the Universe .....' and 'An Amateurs Guide to Observing and Imaging the

Heavens' released last summer to be on sale during the evening.

The evening is being run in conjunction with York University Physics Department and York Astronomical Society

and is suitable for a family audience.

More information can be found on the school website http://www.stpetersyork.org.uk/stargazing_2015

The Public Lecture Series and The department of Religious Studies and Philosophy.

We are very excited that Keith Ward will be giving a Public Lecture on ‘The Evidence for God’ at school in

January.

Keith Ward is one of the most eminent figures in theology and philosophy today. He is famous for his

entertaining and insightful talks that argue that science and religion are not mutually exclusive.

‘It is remarkable how atheism is becoming fashionable. It has become almost compulsory to say that you

do not believe in God… I believe that science itself points in a very different direction. There is a huge

amount of evidence for the reality of a spiritual dimension to the world.’

The Lecture takes place in the Memorial Hall on Thursday 29th January at 7pm. Professor Ward’s lectures

are always popular so early ticket reservations are advisable. Tickets are free and available from

www.stpetersyork.eventbrite.co.uk or by e-mailing events@stpetersyork.org.uk or telephoning 01904

527300. There will be refreshments and a book signing afterwards

Keith Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity Emeritus at the University of Oxford and Professorial Research

Fellow at Heythrop College, London. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has written many popular

books on philosophy, religion and Christian theology. His latest in a long line, The Evidence for God; is an

exploration of six areas of human experience - the arts, morality, philosophy, science, religion and

personal experience. Ward demonstrates the existence of more than simply physical facts. His evidence

builds to an impressive argument for a 'sense for the spiritual dimension' that is beyond and yet expressed

in and through physical facts.

THE EVIDENCE FOR GOD