Daneshill Diary 27/02/15

Headmaster’s Notes

It was a disappointing day on Wednesday for the 1st XII and Colts B&C rugby teams when the opposition team went to the ‘other’ Daneshill in Oxshott. On the other hand the U.13 girls’ hockey team had a successful afternoon on Thursday at the Berkshire Schools tournament at St Mary’s Ascot. The team came away with a trophy for winning the Plate competition having won the semi-final and final on penalty flicks. This is a fantastic achievement – well done girls!

To continue with the sporting theme; Alex Spiers has been awarded a Sports scholarship to Pangbourne College, and Megan and Jessica Weedon have also both been awarded Sports scholarships to Queen Anne’s. Huge congratulations to Alex, Megan and Jessica on these well deserved awards.

Mr Spencer

Year 3 Chembakolli morning

Today, Year 3 enjoyed an exciting morning of activity with their teachers as part of their Geography studies on a village in India – Chembakolli. There were three workshops which comprised traditional Indian activities. These included making Rakhi bracelets (given in friendship) and deciphering the Tamil language; meditation and mendhi patterns designed on paper (decorative Henna patterns traditionally drawn onto the skin); and entertainment which included games, dance, music and film.

The children also learned about food grown and used in Chembakolli, from medicinal plants to recognising the different foods eaten at home and in a southern Indian village. The highlight of the morning was a tasting session – Chai tea, chapattis, poppadums and naan bread with mango chutney.

Year 3 teachers

News from the Pre-Prep

The Pre-Prep corridors have been transformed into an amazing interactive area looking at 2d and 3d shapes. Each class has worked tremendously hard looking at their chosen shapes in depth and thinking about where they might see them in their everyday lives.

Reception pupils have looked at rectangles, cuboids, circles and spheres. A very smart lollypop lady is in charge of a circular sign telling us all about circles having a continuous curved side. The round wheels of a car and pretty round flowers complete the circles and spheres picture.  The cuboids and rectangles are all placed in a town with a cuboid dog and a cuboid man next to houses and trains with rectangular windows.

Year 1 pupils have carefully thought about squares, cubes, triangles and pyramids. The children have made beautiful square mosaic patterns and have had fun thinking about how many cubes they might see at home from tissue boxes and ice cubes to sugar lumps! Road signs have been made in big triangles and there is a scary crocodile with sharp, triangular teeth!

Year 2 have had the challenge of looking at hexagons and pentagons and have created some lovely bird boxes in pentagonal prisms. There is a delicious piece of hexagonal honeycomb with a few hard working bees and a robot made out of metal nuts. The children have enjoyed looking at the 3d nets and making hexagonal pyramids and prisms.

Pre-Prep Teachers

Nursery Corner

The children in nursery have all enjoyed making their flappy, floppy fish hats for our ‘f’ sound this week. Many are making huge strides in their use of scissors too and were able to cut them out themselves – concentration, perseverance and general determination to complete the task set! Well done to those that managed it as it is not easy to manipulate scissors and paper all at once.

With the icy mornings hopefully behind us it was great to get the older children in the pool this week where they completed a number of set tasks for the badge awards. Do keep encouraging independent dressing and undressing as they really are capable, this week not one child asked for, or needed help with, their socks which really is a first!

Our role play has become ‘Percy’s Hut’ from the Nick Butterworth ‘Percy the Park Keeper’ stories and the children are thoroughly enjoying all the tasks that Percy has to do such as repainting and repairing things and planting seeds. Fortunately he has his animal friends around to help him and he’s never too far away from a cup of tea!

Mrs Beeching

 
Sporting Fixtures
Boys:                                                                             Girls:
RUGBY TERM                                                                 HOCKEY
Wednesday25th February                                             Wednesday 25th February
U.13 A vs. Horris Hill                Cancelled                       U.13 A vs. Holme Grange          3 – 3
U.13 B vs. Horris Hill                L 25 – 45                         U.13 B vs. Holme Grange          3 – 3
Colts A vs. Horris Hill               L 5 – 45                           U.11 A vs. Berkshire Schools     5th
Colts B vs. Horris Hill                Cancelled                       U.10 A vs. Alton Convent          W 9 – 1
Colts C vs. Horris Hill               Cancelled                        U.10 B vs. Alton Convent          W 3 – 0
 
                                                                                       Thursday 26th February
                                                                                        U.13 A vs. Berkshire Schools     Won Plate
                                                                       
Friday 27th February                                                     Friday 27th February
U.9 A vs. Horris Hill                    W 11 – 3                        U.9 A vs. St Mary’s                    W
U.8 vs. Horris Hill                        W 13 – 5                       U.9 B vs. St Mary’s                    W
U.7 vs. Papplewick                     D 3 – 3                         U.8 A vs. St Piran’s                    2nd       
                                                                                        U.8 B vs. Alton Convent             L 3 – 7 
                                                                                         U.8 C vs. Alton Convent            W 3 – 7
                                                                                                                                   

Weekly Sports Reports

Sixteen girls and boys from Years 3, 4, 5 & 6 took part in the Thorngrove team relay cross country competition on Thursday 12th February. Teams of four runners were required to run 1,000m each before passing the baton to the next runner who then completed the course. The atmosphere was buzzing as twelve schools lined up ready to race. Daneshill began strongly and we held onto the lead for the duration of the races. The pupils gave a really gutsy performance and dug deep when required giving every last ounce of energy they had. It was a thrilling race to watch and I’m extremely proud of every single competitor, especially the younger runners who were running out of age group.   The final results were as follows:

U.8/U.9 Girls – 2nd Place

U.8/U.9 Boys – 2nd Place

U.10/U.11 Girls – 3rd Place

U.10/U.11 Boys -3rd Place

Daneshill finished in 2nd place overall by just a mere 2 points! Well done to everyone! The U.11 and U.13 hockey teams took part in their Berkshire County tournaments this week. The tournaments are the pinnacle of the season’s hockey calendar and both squads have been training extremely hard to ensure they represented themselves well at these prestigious events. The U.11’s travelled to Bradfield College on Wednesday for their competition. They had a tough draw in their opening games against some well drilled teams and it took a few minutes to settle into their flow, but once they adapted to the large pitches and the big hits there was no stopping them. The girls really impressed me with their excellent work rate. They demonstrated fantastic energy from start to finish and showed passion and commitment in everything they did. I was delighted to watch them hold the tournament’s eventual winners to a draw with some of the best defending I have seen all season. I was blown away by how gutsy and brave the girls were as they were not intimidated by the opposition lifting their sticks and cracking some hard balls towards them, instead they ran forwards and committed themselves wholeheartedly to defending their goal. Much to their delight, the girls qualified for the Cup competition in the afternoon. After narrowly missing out on a semi-final place, they finished the tournament in 5th place. An outstanding result and well deserved. 

The U.13’s tournament took place at St Mary’s School in Ascot on Thursday. Despite the dreary weather the girls were fired up and ready to go and went out with a bang in their first match against Waingels, winning 3-0. The girls held the next two highly contested games to a draw so the first round placings went down to goal difference. At the half time split the girls went into the Plate competition and after two more tough games they qualified for the semi-final against local rivals, St Andrews. At full time the score was 0-0 which meant a penalty flick decider. Ella Heffner, Jessica Weedon and Georgie Brooks-Ward stepped up to the mark and Holly Smith bravely took on the role of GK in the nail biting decider. We won the penalty shoot-out 3-2 and the team were elated to be in the final against Furze Platt. The Daneshill team were outstanding and dominated game play from the start, tackling hard and attacking every ball. Despite their best efforts the game ended in a draw and meant another penalty shoot out to decide the winner. Holly Smith was a superstar as GK and deflected the first shot by the opposition. It was now up to our penalty takers to step up and they didn’t disappoint! Ella, Jessica and Georgia Lea struck three perfect balls into the back of the net meaning that Daneshill took the trophy. Myself and Mr Pereira are extremely proud of the whole squad. They were tremendous in their game play and bonded together brilliantly as a team. Well done to all of them.

Miss O’Neill

This week saw the Colts A and the 2nd’s suffer two heavy defeats. Coming up against big and fast Horris Hill sides meant a steep learning curve. During the week we had talked about line speed and the importance of shutting down opposition options before they got momentum. Unfortunately in both matches that were played Horris Hill proved too strong and we weren’t able to implement our game plan. We worked hard, however, and never gave up. It was pleasing to see us carry on, heads held high, even though we were on the end of tough defeat. It was shame the other fixtures were not able to be played due to a malfunction on the Horris Hill Sat Nav!  

At the time of writing we have the Year 2’s with their first ever game for the school happening this afternoon. They are playing Papplewick on the Astro so good luck to them. Horris Hill are coming for the return fixture in the U.8’s and U.9’s so it should be a good afternoon!

Mr Baldwin