It's the most wonderful time of the year

- Miss Wygnanska and Mr O’Reilly on Christmas at our Junior School

Advent is a time of preparing for the joy of Christmas; a time when our school becomes a hub of activity with the rehearsal of carols, musical performances and a focus on charitable giving. The rewards of this work can be seen in the moving performances in the Key Stage 1 Nativity play, the beautiful singing during the Junior School carol concert, and the funds raised for CAFOD at our Christmas Enterprise Fair. Each pupil has participated in her own way to our school’s Christmas preparation.

Congratulations to Mrs Kew for having written another marvellous Nativity play which incorporated Year 2 pupils’ ideas of snowy coldness through poetic verse, wonderful music, and a simple but evocative set and costumes. Lines and carols had been learnt and were delivered with poise, clarity and enthusiasm.

The girls have also had the opportunity to reflect on the Christmas story – through prayer, in Religious Education lessons, and during assemblies. The visit of the Diocesan Mission Team, who shared their own reflections on the preparation for Christmas, was another opportunity for Advent reflection. The finale at last week’s Christmas concert, Ring out the Bells, encouraged further celebration of the birth of Jesus. Now that our time of school preparation is over, we trust that the girls are ready to celebrate Christmas joyfully, sharing happiness with families and friends.

Yesterday the annual Enterprise Week – this year with a Christmas theme – culminated in the Christmas Enterprise Fair. Congratulations to everybody who took part – we are delighted to have raised over £430 for CAFOD and will be purchasing items from their World Gifts programme; including a community toilet and several school starter packs to benefit children in developing countries. During Enterprise Week each class received £10 to buy materials for their crafts, and every stall sold out, making impressive profits while learning to consider supply costs, manufacturing processes, marketing and customer service skills! Thank you very much to all of the girls for their hard work and creativity.

From the classroom

Reception pupils made some Christmas peppermint creams and had a lot of fun doing so, making the peppermint dough and cutting out Christmas shapes. The finished sweets were a bit too minty for some of the girls, but were proclaimed delicious by others. Meanwhile, Year 3 pupils were extremely busy making Christmas tags for presents and reindeers made from candy canes in the run up to the Christmas Enterprise Fair. They looked great – well done girls!

Season’s greetings from Mr Hald

As ever, the last few weeks of the Autumn Term have been extremely busy as we wind down for Christmas. Our Reception pupils are well settled in to ‘big school’, and girls across the year groups have been applying great enthusiasm to their learning.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about each year group’s activities in the weekly blog or newsletter – of course emails stack up and the weeks go by quickly; if you would like to catch up on previous blogs you can read these here.

In addition to the excellent activities mentioned above, our Junior School pupils enjoyed a delicious Christmas dinner yesterday thanks to our great catering team. Teachers and staff did an excellent job as waiters and waitresses for the girls.

I felt immensely proud during the girls’ musical performances over the recent weeks, including the Pre-prep Nativity play and the carol concert at OLEM. Thank you to Mrs Kew for writing another excellent Nativity story, and thank you also to Mrs Fisher and Mrs Gears (Senior School Music department) and our own Miss Wygnanska for their powerful orchestration of the delightful and very moving carol concert. The Year 5 and Year 6 girls’ rendition of Heart Cambridgeshire’s Sleeps ‘til Santa song which they sang so tunefully it came across like a choral song – due to air on Heart Radio on 22 December at 7.30am.

From all of the staff at St Mary’s Junior School, Cambridge we wish you a very joyful Christmas holiday and a prosperous New Year. I hope that you have a restful break and I look forward to seeing you back at school in January.

Kind regards

Chris Hald - Head of Juniors