Ashdell News Easter Edition 2015

Spring Edition 3 March 2015

The Ashdell News Charity and Fundraising

World Book Day wouldn’t have been complete without a book sale and thanks to your very gen-erous donations of books , we raised a staggering £173.90!!

THANK YOU!

Non school uniform day in hon-our of Red Nose Day raised a very healthy £100.00 THANK YOU! As part of her fundraising for Bluebell Wood, Rosanna decid-

ed to do a sponsored silence , no mean feat for anyone, but a big one especially for our resident chatter box Rosanna! However she did it and raised a fabulous £60.00.. Well done Rosanna!!

Dates for the Diary

April Mon 20th Staff Training Tues 21st TERM STARTS Thurs 23rd 6-8pm Swimming Gala Goodwin Fri 24th P4 Diving@ Ponds

Forge Pre-Prep Swimming

starts Sat 25th 1pm-3pm Friends and Family

Fun Day Tues 28th P2 Hathersage Rivers Day 7.30pm FOA Meeting Wed 29th P4 Visit to Sheffield Chemistry Lab Thurs 30th Birkdale Music Festival Adjudications 4pm Center Parcs Information meeting For parents

HAPPY EASTER * HAPPY EASTER * HAPPY EASTER * HAPPY EASTER * HAPPY EASTER *

….and there is more good news- Well done Lydia !

TWITTER @Ashdellprep

An Ashdell girl does it again. We have another scholar! Lydia Campbell re-cently found out that she has been awarded a Music scholarship at Sheffield High School. So that makes a fantastic 4 scholarships this academic year. Well done to Lydia and well done to all our Prep 4 girls, you have certain-ly set the bar high for next year’s Prep 4!

We are delighted to announce that Miss Critchley and her partner Mark are the proud parents of baby Gabrielle Rose who arrived a lot earlier than she was supposed to, she obvi-ously couldn’t wait to meet her Mummy and Daddy! Gabrielle was born on Wednesday 11th March weighing 4lb 7oz. Many congratulations to Mum, Dad and baby Gabrielle. We can’t wait to meet you!

Miss Critchley is a Mummy !

Prep 2 Trip to the Mosque

P2 had a very successful Mosque visit and were made to feel extremely welcome. The girls learned all about dai-ly life as a Muslim, as well as how many stories are shared between The Koran, The Bible and The Torah.

Olde Music Hall Concert

A very lively and highly

entertaining ‘olde

tyme music hall’

themed event took

place at school recent-

ly. Amongst a whole

host of performers

including pupils from Birkdale, Sheffield High

School and Girl Guide Association, our very tal-

ented P3 and P4 girls provided the audience with

a very creative

dance routine to a

modern take on the

old war song ‘pack

up your troubles’

and a very moving

instrumental rendi-

tion of ‘keep the home fires burning’. The event

consisted of songs, recitations and monologues

from the start of World War 1 to tie in with this

important date being remembered nationally. It

was a great evening and the girls did their school

proud!

BBC Big Painting Challenge

BBC Big Painting Challenge: Live Lesson Web Stream Prep 3 & Prep 4 girls took part in the BBC Big Painting Challenge, streamed live at 11am on 25th February. Thousands of children from all over the UK took part in the challenge, hosted by

CBBC’s Ricky Martin (Art Ninja) Michelle Ackerley and artist, Nick Sharratt, (illustrator of the Tracy Beaker books). Nick carried out an excellent step by step demonstration to show how he creates his comic type charac-ters. P3 & P4 learnt to draw out a simple head shape, and then think about hair style, mouth, eyes, eyebrows and nose – Nick focussed on expressions for happy, sad, and inquisitive faces. The girls produced some fabu-lous artwork which will go on display in the Prep Art room.

Pre-Prep 1 had a great day out at the Runway Visitor Park, Altrincham, Manchester. We had a tour guide called Peter who used to work at Manchester Airport so he had lots of interesting facts to tell us. The first part of our trip was spent inside the Monarch DC10. We took it in turns to be captain and we sat in the flight deck. We learned about all the different jobs on board an air-craft and at the airport. We dressed up in different uni-forms, it was really good fun. We walked to the viewing areas and watched the airplanes take off and land.

We went on board an aircraft that had no seats in and we could see how the aircraft was actually made. Unfortunately we couldn’t go in to see Concorde because a conference was taking place, but Peter let us look through the window so we could see Concorde’s pointy nose! He told us the Queen used to sit in seat 1A and Prince Philip always sat behind! It was a really fun day out !

Come Fly with PP1

Here at Ashdell we celebrated World Book Day in true style with ‘A Mid-summer Night’s Dream’ theme. All of the children and staff came to school dressed up as characters from the play to celebrate the author, William Shakespeare. The day began with a special workshop with the Young Shakespeare Company based on ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’. All of the children from PP1-P4 had the opportunity to participate in some way during the show and the enthusiasm of the girls was fantastic to see. The P4

girls were asked to write a review of the play later in the week and some of their comments were: ‘It was a hilarious, fun-filled production that everyone enjoyed. I loved how they chose random girls from the audi-ence to play different characters.’ Alex ‘Some parts were funny, some bits were unexpected and some were romantic, amusing and mind –blowing. I felt so many mixed emotions throughout the show!’ Sophie ‘It was a mesmerising, uplifting

play and you could hear the laughter spread across the whole school when Flute pretended to be a girl!’ Alex S. In the afternoon we held a ‘Bring & Buy’ book sale in the Balfour Hall, or-ganised and run by our Prep girl librari-ans. We had an amazing assortment of books, kindly donated by the girls and their parents, raising £173.90 for our

‘Help for Heroes’ charity. A HUGE thank you to all our parents for your support with costumes and books- it was a truly extraordinary day!

World Book Day English Competition News

To celebrate World Book Day all of the girls in school participated in a ‘design a book character competi-tion’ organised by Hand Made Places. The entries were so fantastic that we decided to award a special prize to one girl in each class (judged by Mrs. Jackson & Mrs. Jandu- what a difficult task they had!) And the winners were: Harriet (PP1), Heer (PP2), Camilla (PP3), Mia (P1), Robyn(P2), Hevi (P3) and Havana (P4). But then Mrs. Barber had a telephone call from Hand Made Places to say that Jessica’s character from P4 had won a runner up prize of a ‘Mini beast Motel’ for the school- Congratulations to Jessica; we are all looking forward to using this in the patio area this summer! Details of Jessica’s entry can be seen on their website: Hand Made Places.

World Book Day

The National KS2 Prep School General Knowledge Quiz Championship 2015

Ashdell hosted a very exciting general knowledge quiz. We had two Ashdell

teams consisting of one girl from P1-P4, these were: Team 1: Eleonora (P4),

Keira (P3), Shriya (P2) & Mia P1)

Team 2: Ruby (P4), Elise (P3), Naina (P2) & Esmé (P1)Reserve team members

were: Jessica B, Molly, Imani & Holly T.

Joining us at Ashdell were teams from Birkdale Prep School, Derby Prep School, Mylnhurst Prep School, Sheffield High School and S.Anselm’s Prep School- making a total of 11 teams.

All of the children participating enjoyed the quiz and it was

lovely to see all of the children working so well as part of a

team. There were some very difficult questions this year and

we were pleased that Ashdell Team 1 scored a total of 1265

points and Ashdell Team 2 scored 890. The overall winners

were Birkdale and we wish them good luck in their next

round!

Thank you to all of our girls for making it a very successful and enjoyable event.

David Shepherd Competition Day

Ashdell entered the global art & poetry competi-tion and they were shortlisted from 2000 en-tries. We made it to the final 15, well done girls, as always we are very proud of you and you were an absolute credit to the school on the day.

Our girls had the chance to meet and sing a song to David Shepherd and TV pre-senter Michaela Stra-

chan, who were both very impressed by their singing and song choice, ‘From the tiny Ant’ , a hymn the girls sing a lot at assembly time.

Pre-Prep have been very busy painting some wonder-ful still life of bowls of fruit. The girls have produced some extremely detailed paintings, PP3 classroom is looking incredibly bright and cheerful not to mention very healthy!

Pre Prep show off their very healthy Art Work

Well done to everyone in Pre-Prep who took part in the Easter Bonnet parade and competition. All the Bonnets were amazing, Mrs Ollivent had the unenviable task of choosing the winners, she said it was very difficult as they were all worthy winners! Well done Pre-Prep you all looked amazing! The after-noon was rounded off with a fantastic Prep Concert, where our girls treated us all to wonderful instru-ment playing, spectacular gymnastics, delightful poetry and wonderful singing( the adult choir weren’t too bad either!) Thank you to all those who could make it to watch the show.

‘In our Easter Bonnets, with all the frills upon it ‘

Science Week in Pictures

We had a great time during Science week, which finished with us all gathering on the front lawn to watch the solar eclipse. Despite the presence of a few clouds, they did very kindly move out of the way long enough for us all to have a good look as the moon moved over the sun. It was the prefect finale to a very busy and very entertaining week of science !

Science Week in Pictures

The Annual ‘KNEX’ Challenge

During National Science and Engineering Week Ashdell once again, hosted their own inter-school KNEX Challenge for Year 5 & 6 pupils supported by Design Technology Sixth formers from Birkdale School. The four boys from Birkdale ,Alex, Tanmoy, Will and Ross – teamed up with our girls as they worked in groups to complete their challenge: ‘To design and build a non-motorised fairground ride’. Pupils were split into four groups and given 2 hours to plan, develop and construct a fair-ground ride using KNEX pieces – absolutely no assembly instructions were allowed. At the end of the session, the groups presented their models to the whole school, explaining the mode of operation and giving a final evaluation, which included positive aspects about their design and a suggestion of an area for improvement. The fairground ride designs included: ‘The Sensational Sailing Ship’, inspired by a swinging pirate ship, powered by a push & pull motion; ‘The Candy Floss’, operated by a crank de-signed to create a rotary motion; ‘The Marvellous Merry-Go-Round’, operated by rotation on the axle; and the ‘Wheel of Wonder’, influenced by a merry- go- round, spinning around a central pole. Pupils from both schools thoroughly enjoyed this high quality learning experience; and it

was a pleasure to see Sixth formers supporting the younger children, working as a team,

generating enthusiasm and inspiring them to come up with innovative, workable ideas.

Prep 3’s visit to Bishops’ House was fun and very busy! The girls leaned about Tudor Archi-tecture, the role of dancing and the history of the Blythe family.

They also learned all about farming through the ages.

Sports news

P3 go back in time at Bishops’ House

This years Queen Margaret's event was once again a great day of sport. We entered two teams taking all the P4 girls and 4 P3 girls. The netball tournament was held throughout the day with cross country taking place at lunch time. The standard of play was high as always, but we worked hard all day and we played well as a team. Team 1 finished a credible 3rd in their group and Team 2 finished 6th. The girls really stepped up a gear during the day and two girls were awarded players of the tournament for improvement

and progress, Well done to Alex and Lidia. A special mention goes to Lily who was commended for excellent play by the Queen Margaret's umpires. Before lunch the girls had the opportunity to take part in cross country, this is something that Ashdell girls have enjoyed competing in over recent months. Ella had an amazing run just missing out on the medals in 4th. Grace was 17th, Lidia 24th, Eleonora 28th, Ruby 29th, Jess 31st and

Molly 34th. Well done to everyone for all your hard work and effort!

School School Policies

Summer uniform

The school maintains a very large number of poli-cies and documents relating to the safety and well-being of the girls and the efficient running of the school including: Health & Safety, Equality of Op-portunity, Safeguarding, Anti-Bullying, Policies on Teaching and Learning, Dealing with Grievances and Complaints, etc. Parents are advised that copies of these polices are kept in both staff rooms and in the administration office and are available on request. Some polices are also available to view on the school website.

After the holiday girls will be allowed to wear the

summer uniform if the weather permits. The summer

dresses should be available from John Lewis online.

The Pre Prep girls should wear white ankle socks with

summer dresses and the Prep girls white knee length

socks, both with black shoes( not ballerina type shoes

please). Prep 3 & 4 girls have the option of wearing

the great skirt with the white and grey short sleeved

blouse (available from the school uniform shop) and

white knee length socks instead of summer dresses if

they (or parents ) wish.

Have a ‘cracking’ Easter Break, where ever you are spending it, take care, stay safe and see you all in

three weeks ready to do it all over again! SUMMER TERM STARTS: TUESDAY 21st April

*SUMMER UNIFORM CAN BE WORN *

Well done to our P2 girls, Freya, Hannah, Naima and Robyn, who took part in a cross country relay competition in Norfolk Park. The girls finished 7th out of 17 teams. Fantastic running girls!