New Mural to Celebrate World Book Day

We are really pleased to unveil the new mural on the wall outside Waveney Class. The mural, created by our Artist-In-Residence, Simon Bobby, features all of our very favourite book characters including the Tiger Who Came To Tea, the dragon from Room On The Broom, the Gruffalo, the Cat In The Hat, Meg and Mog, the Very Hungry Caterpillar, and many, many more. If you haven’t already done so, please do go and have a look. Can you name them all? Which of these books have you read and which is your favourite character?

We would like to offer a huge thank you to Simon for dedicating so much time to creating this mural for us. We absolutely love it!

World Book Day

7th March 2024

World Book Day is always so much fun, and this year seemed like the best one yet at Fressingfield Primary School. The children’s costumes were really quite fantastic: the teachers loved seeing some of their favourite characters from Roald Dahl, David Walliams, Beatrix Potter and JK Rowling’s books to name but a few. The photos will show just how much effort was put into each character.

We also enjoyed trying to guess what each spoon character was. Every child in the school was given a wooden spoon to transform into a favourite character. Try playing the game yourself: some of them are very obvious – in assembly when we tested the school, we all recognised Mr Bump, Harry Potter, Thing 1 and Thing 2 and Willy Wonka. But some were a little harder. Can you name all the characters in the examples in these pictures?

Some children also contributed new book covers to create a display in our library – thank you for those.

The morning was started by the school librarians, who shared with us the children’s task. They wanted all the children in the school to share their ideas for a revamped library. This included thinking about an overall theme (woodland, space, jungle and authors were some of the ideas shared), and also the type of furniture, carpeting, shelving and areas. Their designs include book nooks, story chairs, tables for group work, covered reading areas and many more.

The librarians will now collate the results and share them with the children before embarking on the redesign itself. We’re looking forward to it all.

Spirituality

A newborn baby. A daisy. An amazing sunset. To some of us, these show the glory of God. To others, these wondrous things make us realise how small we are, but how big and amazing life is!  Spirituality can be a tricky subject for adults, but we’ve been having a good think about it recently. 

Children in Congo Class helped to prepare an assembly on Spirituality. First, the children talked about evidence of spirituality in school. Then they made posters. Here are some below. 

In our assembly, we asked children to guess some of the signs we had thought of. Well done to the children who managed to think of the following; using our reflection shed, our Year 6 leavers’ assembly, our church services, especially harvest and having two minutes’ silence on Remembrance Day. How many more can you think of?

A VISIT TO DUNWICH MUSEUM AND DUNWICH BEACH

There’s no better place than Dunwich Beach to sit and contemplate the passing of time and to write a poem, which is exactly what the children of Fressingfield School did today.

The day started with either a tour around Dunwich with Sister Luke, or a visit to the lovely Dunwich Museum.

Those with – the bare-footed – Sister Luke were treated to an historical tour of what remains of ancient Dunwich. A walk along St James’ Street – once the great thoroughfare into the busy port – lead to a short walk through the woods along the clifftop path to the back of Greyfriars Monastery. We stopped to learn about the plant Alexander, which was imported by the Romans because it tastes a bit like asparagus and the legionnaires were missing their vegetables, and which now grows rampantly throughout the village, and to look at the last remaining grave of All Saints’ Church, which fell into the sea about 100 years ago.

In Greyfriars, we learnt about the merchants, wool-traders, ship-builders and other tradespeople that used to live in Dunwich. We also learnt that the town was a stopping off point for pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem. For the walk back to the museum, we marched, like real pilgrims, ringing bells and singing and banging sticks to let people know our purpose.

In the museum, Jane Hamilton, with the help of a fantastic model, told us about the great port of Dunwich and the storm of 1286 that destroyed the harbour and started the long decline of the town’s fortunes. Meanwhile, the children upstairs were able to handle some of the finds that had been found on Dunwich Beach over the years, including spurs, sheep bells, musket balls, keys and even the leg bone of a woolly mammoth. Sarah the Archaeologist was on hand to answer the children’s many questions.

As the weather was glorious, lunch was had on the pebbles of Dunwich Beach and then we split again into groups for the afternoon’s workshops. Some children started with a sketching activity: using viewfinders, they were able to select a view to sketch in the homemade books we had brought with us for the occasion. Others were on a slow, noticing walk along the tide mark to gather small items that had been washed up by the sea which they stuck onto pieces of card to create beautiful collections. At the same time, a third group were writing poems based on their walks along the beach, which will be written up when we get back to school.

All in all, we had a fantastic day. The staff at the museum and all those who came with us were really impressed by the children’s behaviour and the excellent questions they asked.

I would like to thank all those that came with us; we hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did.

Jeremy Leicester

Children’s Mental Health Week

We have been celebrating Children’s Mental Health week with assemblies, mindfulness activities, poems and a competition, organised by our anti-bullying ambassadors. 

childrensmentalhealthweek.org.uk

This year’s theme is My Voice Matters! We have learned that it’s really important to share our feelings, and let others know how we are. 

Here is a selection of some of our work.

NSPCC NUMBER DAY!

Many thanks for all your contributions for Number Day.  And thank you so much for getting your children to school looking amazing!  

From speaking with children and staff today, it sounds like we had a really great day. Here are some activities which were going on during the day: children in Yangtze class were manipulating some very large numbers to see if they could find different properties; children in Congo class were trying to work out combinations of ice cream flavours. They thought it was easy at first, finding combinations of flavours on double ice cream cones. It was, until I gave them five different flavours – and flake or no flake – to consider; children in Colorado played a version of the beetle drive; children in Danube class designed t-shirts with numbers and patterns on. Throughout the day, we also took part in a Times Tables Rock Stars NSPCC challenge. I don’t think we won the tournament, but we had a lot of fun. The children definitely agreed that it was a good day, and said they fancied another Number Day next year. Well done, all!

https://ttrockstars.com/

Advent

What a great Advent we have had at Fressingfield. As well as chocolate calendars (yummy) and an awesome Christingle celebration, we have really enjoyed the benefits of our MAF UK calendars – both online and as large posters and stickers. MAF UK is a super charity, which uses pilots to carry out missions all over the world. From delivering dentists to poorer countries to taking off-road wheelchairs to rugged rural areas in Africa, the people at MAF UK do amazing things. Each day, our classes opened a virtual page of their Advent calendar and listened to a story about another MAF UK adventure. We also heard bible stories and quotes which linked in to the MAF UK mission. We felt as if we were being entertained each day, as this was such a great resource. To find out more about this charity, take a look at the MAF UK website below. 

https://www.maf-uk.org/

Maths SHARE Morning

What a fabulous turnout from so many of you for our maths SHARE morning.  It was great to see so many faces, especially a good few Dads. We are very lucky to be working with the team from Multiply Suffolk Project, and it was fantastic to introduce Lisa Gilson, as part of the team. Lisa and her colleagues have funding to work with parents/carers, organising free flexible courses and training, and we are able to use our school as a base. 

If you were not able to attend our morning, you can find out more and get in touch with the team on the link below, if you think you might benefit from some training. Courses include helping your children with maths homework and ‘back to work’ maths for the jobs market. 

https://infolink.suffolk.gov.uk/kb5/suffolk/infolink/service.page?id=RAJbS9_g1qs

But, if we’re inviting you into school, we can never resist getting you into your children’s classes!  We had a range of activities to show you, with a bit of a sparky, Christmas theme. (Well, it is December next month!). It looks like we had a lot of fun, and a chance to get those maths brains working again. Many thanks to everybody who attended.

Hilltop Residential Day 3

And so we reached our final day at Hilltop. And the biggest challenge was most definitely getting all those clothes back into the cases!  How did we get the clothes inside in the first place?

We’d all had a very calm night, with children far too tired to miss home. We ate our last delicious Hilltop breakfast with gusto, all agreeing that Hilltop sausages are ‘the best’. 

Well, the sky was grey and there was definitely drizzle in the air. ‘Prepare for the worst’ they say, and ‘Hope for the best’. This we duly did, and kitted ourselves out head-to-toe in waterproofs.

There is a reason there are far fewer photos today – the activity was the high climbing course. This required 100% concentration by ourselves, as well as checking all the children were able to clip and unclip themselves. This activity required agility, technical skill, support from each other and a wee bit of fearlessness!  We needed to learn a ‘clipping and unclipping’ technique, which ensured we were always 100% safe. Half way through, the rain stopped. But nobody noticed. Everyone was so focused on the job in hand. Everybody was definitely in their ‘stretch zone’ today, and a few deep breaths were also needed before tackling some of those more demanding bridges and tunnels. It was so lovely to hear the cheers and encouragement from children to each other. Everybody had done their very best – and then a little more. 

Before we realised it, it was almost lunchtime!  Another delicious meal awaited us. 

We’ve all agreed – it was wonderful.  Lots of us wanted to stay longer. But all of us thought the idea of our own beds tonight was maybe a little better. 

Many thanks to everybody who has supported us with this, to make it so special and memorable for our children, especially parents and carers. 

Hilltop Residential Day 2

After rising early to sunshine and blue skies (some of us earlier than others), we all enjoyed a hearty breakfast of cereal, toast, bacon, hash browns and beans. 

Our morning activity focus was climbing and teamwork. The instructors helped us put on harnesses and hard helmets, then we worked in two groups. One group was on the climbing wall, the other playing a crate stacking game. Could you work with your partners to build the crates, climb on the crates and then ring the Bell of Victory?  Climbers had the treat of knocking down the wall afterwards. 

We all learned loads of different climbing terms, including belaying and grigri. We also learned lots about moving out of our Comfort Zone and into our Stretch Zone. This is what Hilltop is all about  – being the best we can be!

After a lunch of the most delicious jacket potatoes with a choice of filling, and then a homemade flapjack, we ventured into the wood for our bushcraft session. Bushcraft is all about surviving and thriving outdoors. It’s also about campfires!  But to make campfires, we needed to collect the wood first. Our leaders explained to us about what a fire needs to burn and also how to light a fire. Caution – always try this at home WITH an adult. 

Once our fire was warm and crackling, we had a veritable feast of marshmallows, hot chocolate and popcorn in an amazing contraption made from two sieves. 

The afternoon was pretty chilled and a great alternative to the climbing in the morning. We also remembered to tidy away and ‘leave no trace’. 

Thank you Hilltop, for another delicious dinner, and a scrumptious pudding. 

We had a really clear evening and saw lots of stars. We also played an intriguing game, which involved finding a chain of UK train stations, running from board to board and avoiding the mole hills and rabbit burrows. Well done, Year 4s – more great team work. 

We are really thinking this group is one of our best ever – they have been such a delight to take.