Blog Latest News
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Accelerated Reader update
Fri 14 Jul 2023Congratulations to the children who have reached their Summer 2 target this week – remember there’s only one week left!
Abeer, Emilia, Finley and Oliver (Y3)
Jack G and Jacob (Y4)Alessandro, Ankita, Naina, Robert and Sophie (Y5)
Lucy (Y6)
A huge well done to our newest word millionaire, George G (Y3), and yet another word multi-millionaire – Sophie (Y5).
Word Count
Jasper 12,727,920
Turquoise 7,616,764
Moonstone 6,163,690
Sapphire 13,522,418
Amethyst 11,611,930
Tanzanite 24,774,583
Opal 10,237,946
Pearl 6,085,943
Quartz 4,545,948
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Sleepover fun!
Mon 10 Jul 2023It was the Year Three Sleepover on a friday night at the end of June. The pupils had a marvellous time playing a variety of board games, decorating a photo frame and completing a treasure hunt to discover the mystery location of their snacks! They also enjoyed roasting marshmallows over a campfire. Afterwards, they unpacked their sleeping bags and settled down with a delicious hot chocolate to watch a film. When the lights were turned off, a vast array of sounds could be heard from the four classrooms, including giggling, shuffling and chatting but after a while, all children were fast asleep. At crack of dawn, the children woke up and tucked into a delicious, multi-course breakfast, packed up their belongings and headed home.
“It was good, we had lots of fun. There were many different activities, more than you could count.” (Renesmee)
“My favourite part was the movie and snack because we stayed up very late.” (Poppy)
“I couldn’t pick a favourite bit because it was all so fun. There were so many activities, so you could never get bored.” (Alexandria)
Well done Year Three for a fantastic sleepover!
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New books!
Thu 06 Jul 2023Thanks to parents and children who supported our book sale in March, we earned enough points from Scholastic to buy some fabulous new fiction and non-fiction books for our Accelerated Reader library.
We still have some points left, so we are hoping to replace some of our worn-out dictionaries and buy some of the books on our Amazon wishlist. If anyone would like to buy a book as an end of year gift for the school, you can find the list at https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1ANQ6LMRI76JR?ref_=wl_share
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Hedgehog News
Wed 28 Jun 2023Garden Club were delighted that our Plant Sale raised £120 for the Shepreth Hedgehog Hospital who treat and rehabilitate hedgehogs before release back into the wild. We were happy to help out these lovely animals, who help us by eating slugs,snails and caterpillars. We were able to adopt five hedgehogs and received some very popular cuddly hedgehogs, which After School Club will be taking care of.
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Reading at The Vine
Wed 28 Jun 2023We love reading at The Vine, and over the past year it has been such a joy to see the children enjoying books, recommending them to their friends and making use of our new non-fiction area and quiet reading space in the Learning Centre.
The Learning Centre is literally at the heart of our school and contains some fabulous resources for staff and pupils to use. We have a wide range of reference books and, thanks to generous donations from staff and parents, a fabulous collection of novels and picture books for children to browse and a comfortable sofa! We also have bookshelves bursting with Accelerated Reader books for children to read and take quizzes, so they can see how their reading progresses and compete against themselves to reach their target for the half term.
Really popular series include Tom Gates, Harry Potter, Dork Diaries and Diary of a Wimpy Kid, but it has also been great to see children enjoying classics like Roald Dahl. Last term we had fun with a quiz where children had to match pictures of teachers as children with their favourite childhood books. Dogger by Shirley Hughes came out as the most popular, and all of the books that teachers loved have been collected together for the pupils to appreciate.
According to Accelerated Reader, so far this year, the pupils at The Vine have read over 85 million words. That's the equivalent of reading the Complete Works of Shakespeare 96 times! Which is quite a coincidence as Year 6 are just starting rehearsals for their production of Macbeth.
Our reference section has recently undergone a sort-out and move around, and is now being tidied and relabelled ready for research again very soon, thanks to the help of some of our volunteer learning mentors. As well as books on every subject from space to sculpture, we are fortunate to have an array of fascinating objects from all over the world to decorate our Learning Centre and give us all something to wonder about.
With the summer holidays on the horizon, we're hoping that lots of pupils will be taking part in the Summer Reading Challenge at the library and bringing back plenty of recommendations for the new school year.
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Celebrating the Coronation at The Vine School
Mon 22 May 2023The Union Jack flag was raised and there was a sea of red, white and blue across the school.
Pupils in Reception and Preschool at The Vine had a fantastic week celebrating the coronation of King Charles. During the run up to the event pupils learnt about the King’s life as a prince, what happens in a coronation and found out about other members of the Royal family. We enjoyed making our own royal crowns and Union Jack flags to wear and wave at our coronation party, where we shared food, listened to music and gave 3 cheers for the King.
The pupils are really enjoying writing so jumped at the chance to have a go at writing a letter to the King. We hope he enjoys reading about our special celebrations.
“King Charles, I hope you live forever” Anabelle
“A coronation is where the King gets his crown” Aaron
“I think a crown would be really heavy to wear” Alfie
“This is the best day, ever!” Benji
The rest of the school also made memories to mark the historic occasion, collecting samples of the activities to store in a time capsule. Activities included: decorating biscuits, making flags and crowns, creating golden carriages, keyrings and king collages, making personal postage stamps, baking scones for a teaparty, painting stones and baking carrot cake. All enjoyed a fabulous special coronation lunch too. A truly fabulous day to remember.
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Year 4 Adventures at Burwell House
Mon 24 Apr 2023Year 4 at The Vine visited Burwell House on the 27th to 29th March. When we arrived, we played the snail game which was a game that helped us to understand where everything was around the grounds. Afterwards, we took part in the smugglers mystery where we had to find words that made up a message which gave us an idea of who the smugglers were. Later that day, we found out who we were sharing our rooms with and even had to make our beds!
On the second day, we did four activities: Burwell Challenge, hammer and nail art, the great eggscape and shelter building. Did you know if you were caught in horrendous weather without shelter you would only be able to survive for 3 hours? To help us understand this, we tried to build effective shelters that would keep people as dry and warm as possible.
On our final day, we did our favourite activity which was Burwell Fox. The teachers dressed up as farmers and the pupils pretended to be foxes hiding from them. If they got caught, they got a stamp on their hand. The people with the lowest number of stamps won!
Overall Year 4 had the best time at Burwell House.
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Year 5 visit to IWM Duxford
Mon 27 Mar 2023Thursday 23rd February proved a thoroughly great day for Year 5. As part of our 'World at War' topic, we visited the Imperial War Museum, Duxford. When we arrived, we headed straight for Hangar 8 where all the land warfare equipment was located. There we marvelled at the true size of tanks and artillery guns. Passing comments included 'this really brings the true scale of these war machines to life'. This is what we were hoping for, to see up close and personal, the actual pieces of equipment and machinery that various countries used during these terrible conflicts.
We were lucky enough to examine planes that fought above the skies during The Battle of Britain and to see them restored to their former glory made the them even more remarkable to see. It truly was an unforgettable day to fill our minds of the history of the World Wars. The adventure was superbly topped off by venturing through a much more modern, yet incredible plane - Concorde.
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Garden Club activities
Wed 08 Mar 2023Garden Club have been practising their weaving skills making willow seats in Maria's Meadow. Pupils have enjoyed learning the names of some of our native wild flowers and we look forward to planting more of these in the Spring, to continue to create a haven for nature. Maria's meadow was created in 2016 in Memory of a former pupil of the Vine School.
After School club have enjoyed helping to repair our Willow maze in their Friday Garden Club sessions. We used willow weavers from the Countryside Regeneration Trust to make rainbow patterns. We decorated with colourful ribbons and hope pupils will enjoy playing in the maze later this year.
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Preschool activities
Mon 20 Feb 2023It has been a very busy start to the year for our pre-school children. This term we have been looking at classic tales and have enjoyed sharing the story of Jack and the Beanstalk, The Gingerbread Man and Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children have enjoyed taking their learning outside to make different sized beds and build bridges in the woods as well as exploring different textures and how ingredients change when mixed together by making our own gingerbread men and porridge. The children have also enjoyed learning different maths and phonics skills with capacity and length in maths and the silly soup rhyming game in phonics being firm favourites.
