The YoungThe Palace 2019-20 Yearbook 2 018 -1 9 Welcome Welcome to this year’s edition of the Young Palace Year Book. The idea of this publication is to give you a taste of the fabulous learning opportunities that our girls are provided with every day and to showcase their outstanding achievements. Amongst these pages you will find a wealth of extra-curricular clubs and activities, alongside music recitals, fixtures and outings from the beginning of the year. This year’s book will look a little different as it has been a year like no other. I am pleased to say that during this difficult time we have offered highly effective remote learning provision with outstanding outcomes for all girls. This has included registration, form time, assemblies, maths, English, topic lessons, cookery lessons, virtual residential trips, award ceremonies, small group maths and English lessons and much more. As a school we are proud that during lockdown 100% of core lessons were taught on Teams and that the pupils have returned to school engaged, enthused and achieving great things. Our aim here at Old Palace is to create a warm and caring environment where our girls become capable, confident and connected individuals, well positioned for a successful and meaningful future. As you browse through these pages my hope is that you will capture some of what makes Old Palace so special. Laura Nike Head of Preparatory Nursery and Pre School September Round Up The new academic year got off to a flying start with a whole range of activities in all rooms. We had fun with denim on Jeans for Genes day and raised £37 for a very special charity that supports children in the UK with Genetic Disorders. The Pre School joined in with Prep to celebrate the European Day of Languages and thoroughly enjoyed a highly amusing puppet show put on by MFL teacher Mrs McMullen, where they learnt how to say ‘hello’ in Italian, Spanish and French. As part of the topic ‘People who help us’ we have had visits from Croydon Police and The London Fire Brigade, who taught us about the Green Cross Code, Stranger Danger and the LFB slogan ‘Get out, Stay out, Call the fire brigade out’. Meanwhile, the younger children have been talking about their families and enjoying the topic of ‘Harvest’ by making use of fresh fruit and vegetables in play, art and storytelling. The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 1 Nursery and Pre School October Round Up The start of the festival season has ushered in another very busy month, beginning with a number of Black History Month events. Activities started with some wonderful storytelling from Mrs Onigbogi, followed by cooking fritters with Mrs Hines and exploring African instruments and African discovery circle time with Hawa. For Harvest and Autumn, the Toddler room went to Lloyd Park to collect leaves, pine cones and conkers. Meanwhile, Pre School pupils made some lovely animal leaf pictures, harvested our potatoes and generally helped out with gardening. They planted flowers in the troughs and curry plants and lavender in the baby garden. To finish the month, there were pumpkins to carve and Diwali to celebrate; more lovely food to make and try, dancing and dressing up for everyone! 2 The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 Nursery and Pre School November Round Up Nursery had an interesting month with the younger children getting fully involved with the theme ‘transport’. Babies, Toddlers and Transition used a wide variety of media and materials, experimenting with colours, shapes, textures, sizes and model making that resulted not only in some wonderful displays but also a large scale bus, bus stop, zebra crossing and traffic lights. These were used with enthusiasm in the garden to support imaginary play. With the onset of frosty mornings, the Pre School have been looking at the winter season, finding out about the colder regions of the world and how we adapt to the change of weather. As a group, they created a model igloo and made a lovely winter board full of snowmen and winter woollies! Thank you to everyone who donated to Children In Need; our Pyjama Day raised a magnificent £100.00 for the charity and the cake making was enjoyed by all. The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 3 Nursery and Pre School January Round Up The New Year started with a winter topic that quickly developed Transition children had fun exploring coloured lenses, seeing into exploring with all our senses. how looking through them with one or both eyes changed the world indoors and out. There was a wide range of sensory activities going on in the rooms; the babies tasted lemons and limes, explored tactile In Pre School children looked at different materials. They materials and listened to instrumental sounds. There was became very excited about knights and castles, building tall an ice tray in the Toddler room and all sorts of messy play structures in the garden, dressing up as princesses and playing combinations on table tops. These ranged from pasta and with the small world castle. They painted flags and a dragon, oats to paint and cling film, together with smelling cinnamon that soon merged into preparations for Chinese New Year playdough and fruit tasting. celebrations with the Dragon leading the way. 4 The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 Nursery and Pre School February Round Up Creative Solutions to Climate in the rooms which resulted in a lot of about the oceans, using bubble wrap enthusiasm for sorting the recycled to make a large octopus and sea weed Change materials into paper, plastic and metal and even the babies had a go, making In Nursery this month we have been collections, before using them to make all footprint butterflies and spiders for their involved in Developing Student sorts of creatures and displays. ‘monkey puzzle’ board. Creativity (a whole school initiative) In the Pre School, children spent a We also had a visit from Croydon by looking at creative solutions to the week exploring media and materials by Libraries. Children were treated to some Climate Change crisis. painting and assembling two very large captivating storytelling and were all Nursery and Pre School children have giraffes that now stand in the cloakroom encouraged to apply for library cards and been particularly good at this! They looking down on the recycling bags. visit their local library. Finally, everyone have focused on looking at specific Transition learnt about the characteristics had a go at making and tasting pancakes. environments; showing concern for living of materials by creating a ‘commotion in Using all their senses, children learnt things and the diversity of the Rainforest our ocean’ display board complete with about combining ingredients and using and Oceans. Parents have helped collect fish made of plastic and a tin can crab. utensils. materials for recycling and craft activities Meanwhile, the Toddlers had fun learning The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 5 Nursery and Pre School March Round Up The Nursery children were busy preparing for Mother’s Day. This involved a wide range of crafts and activities including: cutting, painting, sticking, planting and mark making, together with stories and discussions about our Mummies In Pre School there has been a lot of excitement as the focus was on one of our favourite topics ‘Dinosaurs’. This always provokes much thought and discussion; Q “What happened to the dinosaurs?” A “A rock from space hit the dinosaurs and then they were gone”. Children enjoyed collecting natural materials on the playing field to make a dinosaur land, solving the question of how to get the dinosaurs out of a frozen egg, exploring the dinosaur cave with torches, and seeing how combining materials can result in a small world volcano! On Friday 13th March Nursery joined the Prep Reception girls for a charity walk for Sport Relief. They walked for over 45 minutes and raised a very healthy sum of £218. 6 The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 Lockdown Nursery and Pre School Cotton Wool Sheep Creative Maths Here are some lovely photos of Eliana in Transition, who is making a spring flower number line craft! Here is Eliana in Transition doing her homework. What a fantastic cotton wool sheep! The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 7 Lockdown Nursery and Pre School Ariyah and Eliana have been learning Maths and Mini Beasts about special events by making Easter cards and chocolate nests. They’ve used Eliana in Transition has been comparing one handed tools and equipment in an two groups of objects, saying when they egg and spoon challenge, improved have the same number e.g. comparing their health and self-care by feeding the wings of a ladybird and identifying competently with a spoon after when they have the same number of making a banana smoothie, practised spots. Cosmic yoga and found time for some mathematics - filling and emptying containers indoors and out! Pre School Home Learning It is lovely to see even our youngest pupils are getting to grips with home learning. Ariyah went on a minibeast hunt and took some photos of minibeasts (with help from her big sister). She also found a dinosaur nest with ice eggs in them! Ariyah is very fond of dinosaurs so we were lucky to find them on our hunt. She also enjoyed making a paper plate ladybird, as well as doing a sorting activity on the Peppa Pig app. 8 The Young Palace Yearbook 2019-2020 Lockdown Nursery and Pre School June Round Up Pre School and Transition children were very happy this week seeing their friends and getting back into a new routine.