Firs School News

Pupils from The Firs School have taken part in the Junior Language Challenge since it began 7 years ago.  Children learn a new language using a CD Rom and, so far, the children have had the opportunity to learn Spanish, Italian, Greek, Dutch, Vietnamese, Russian, Saami, Zulu, Portuguese and Korean.

Two of our Year 5 pupils, Anne S and Eleanor W, made it through to the semi-finals for the Granada region, which were held at Lymm High School on 24th September. The girls learnt Greek to qualify and went on to study Korean during the summer holidays. We would like to congratulate both girls on their splendid achievement.

Anne scored an incredible ‘full marks’ in the first round of the semi-finals and has qualified to go to London during the Half Term break to take part in the Grand Final. First prize is a trip to Africa for the winner and his/her family. We wish Anne the very best of luck. She follows in the footsteps of one of our former pupils, Hugo, who made it to the final in 2008.

Anne is pictured on the right with the other winners.

EuroTalk, the company organising the event, supports a charity called Thare Machi Education, which provides purpose built interactive audio visual learning for people who have missed the chance of going to school. An entry fee for each child who takes part helps to fund the project.

The INSET 1/2 day that had been scheduled for Friday October 2nd has been rescheduled to Friday November 6th as a result of the open morning being moved.

This has already been communicated in letters but was not updated on the school calender. This has now been rectified. Apologies for any confusion.

The build is coming along nicely and will be completed for 1/2 term ready for the 2nd half of the term.

A recent photo of the build in progress.

The Firs School open morning has been moved to Sat. 7th November from the initial date of 3rd October. This is to ensure that we have the new technology/kitchen extension finished.

Progress is going well. The ground floor walls and foundations are complete and the builders are confident that all is on schedule.

The new extension

10 July 2009
Dear Parents,

We have reached the end of a very busy year and I would like to reflect on some of the events and achievements.

We have had a number of “firsts” at The Firs; our first eco council, our first chess and sewing clubs, our first ensemble, our first movie club and our first tag rugby club run by a former professional rugby player. These groups have enriched the life of the school considerably and I would like to thank all the staff involved for their enthusiasm in providing opportunities for our children to take part in such a diverse range of activities.

Our sporting teams have taken part in matches and tournaments against both independent and maintained schools in a range of sports including football, netball, hockey, cricket, rounders, athletics and handball. I am very proud to announce that both our girls and boys teams are the Chester hand ball champions! Special congratulations also go to Jade Parker, Tiffany Hughes and Abigail Fisher who all qualified for the finals at the Independent Schools Association regional athletics meeting at Robin Park in Wigan and to Harriet Fisher and Katie Merrick who came fourth in their events and Douglas Brereton and Freddie Cheshire who came fifth in their events at the same meeting. Thank you to Mrs Cheshire, Mr Gresty and all the staff and parents who help in any way at our sports clubs and matches.

Music is an important part of the life of The Firs and it is wonderful to see so many children involved in making music, either through membership of the choir and chamber choir, our ensemble or through individual lessons. Thank you to Mrs Arran for all her hard work. Our ensemble will meet at lunch time on Friday from the Autumn term so that children don’t have to choose between music and a sports club!

Congratulations to Anne Stairmand and Eleanor Wood-Bowyer who have reached the semi finals of the Junior Language competition. To achieve this they have had to learn Greek and now have the “holiday homework” of learning Korean to prepare for the semi final which will be held in September! Thank you to Mrs Wilcock for her enthusiasm and support.

Our young writers have been in action too with twelve of our J1 pupils having their mini sagas published, Hannah Batson of J4 won prizes for writing a story for younger children and Max Reeves gained a Blue Peter badge for his poetry writing.

Congratulations to Toby Kimber on gaining a green Blue Peter badge for making an eco friendly cold frame and to Josh Dawson who is an excellent sailor and has represented Wales in competitions!

Thank you to our Junior Road Safety officers, Amy Lewis and Joshua Roberts, who have done an excellent job raising awareness of road safety issues; to our stalwart team of parents who have run our park and stride sticker distribution scheme and to Pete Robson, our estate manager, for running the Let’s Bike scheme for J4 pupils.
The FSDF have provided a diverse range of social and fund raising activities including the Christmas Fair, our fabulous Fun Day which raised approximately £2500 pounds and of course the amazing ball which raised over £10,000 for Motor Neurone disease research and the Chester & Wirral renal care unit. Thank you to Mrs Patton and all of the FSDF for giving so generously of their time to organise these events. I would also like to thank Mrs Michelle Ellis, who has been part of The Firs family for 10 years, and has worked hard for and supported the school in so many ways. I would like to wish her and her family every future success and happiness as her youngest son now joins his brother in senior school.

Thank you too for your support and generosity for so many charitable events including Red Nose Day, Barnado’s, Action Research, Contact the Elderly, Chester Aid to the Homeless, Azariah and Shelter. I am very pleased to be able to tell you that the J4s have raised over £1000 to share between their nominated charities, Marie Curie Cancer Care and The Dogs Trust.

When we return in September our classes will be known by their year group names, i.e. MI will be 1F and 1R, TI will be 2P and 2W, and the juniors will be 3W, 4L and 4R, 5B and 6E and 6L. Reception and Kindergarten will remain unchanged. We hope that this will make progression through the school clearer.

I would also like to tell you about an important diary date change. As our building work will be in the” finishing” stage in September we have decided to have our Open Morning on Saturday 7th November instead of Saturday 3rd October. This means that children will be in school all day on Friday 2nd October but they will finish at 1pm on Friday 6th November. Please accept my apologies for any inconvenience this change may cause.

On behalf of everyone at The Firs may I wish you a safe and happy summer holiday.

Yours sincerely

Mrs M A Denton

On the 11th June we went to Spaceport and we had a trip on the ferry. We arrived at spaceport and we got into our groups. We stepped into a small room with a big screen in the middle.

We all gathered around it. The floor vibrated at times and then we went into the next room with lots of activites. My favourite activity in the first room was the tide change, you had to spin a knob and you could change the tide by the gravitational pull of the moon.

My favourite thin gin the next room was the space race, there were four stands with 4 buttons on A, B, C and D. In the middle there was a circular screen and a quiz about the galaxy.

Lucy L.

Next we went on a simulator which was much more fun than the first.

Inside was three rows of seats and I sat on the 2nd row. In front of us was a large screen on the wall. It was shaking a lot and made us slide down the the rows in the same way the rocket was going on the screen.

When we got off the simulator we went into another room with a large table in the middle. The table was actually a mirror that made you see the ceiling and on the ceiling was a monitor.

Jacob R

We went into a room with information about space we visited different stations with interactive thigs to do we went into a simulator about virtual history it was really bumpy! Then we went into another room it had quizes and facts. Then we went upstairs and got interviewed by Martians …. crazy isn’t it?

It was full of things like the first man on the moon it was really cool. At 11am we went into this dome. It was about the Oasis in space, earth, seeing if you could live on other planets and about things like dead stars and asteroids and dead moons.

We got on the ferry, every time it stopped to let people on it played “ferry cross the mersey”.

Kathryn G

Wild flowers specimens by Ellie

We were going to do Kayaking. It was very cold and I was with Ellie in a double kayak. We were not a success crashing into everything we saw, such as rocks and sea weed. After that we went body boarding. It was very fun catching big waves. Amy

Kit list by Bede

Today we went kayaking and Tyrolean and they were awesome. We got ready for the tyrollean and it was too cool. I even went on it twice but the bad thing is that they were not doing it anymore because they (surf lines) left us but it was a very good day and I was happy. Elliott

Tidy room competition in progress

Surf lines came early today and because I was doing coasteering I put on a wet suit and some wet shoes a wind protector and a helmet. We set off into a small cove and we had a small chat about what’s safe and what’s not safe. We then set off. We went for a small swim and got to a small rock we clambered up a rock to jump off a small thing. We were all pretty proud compared to what was coming up. We got onto the rock and carried on along till we got to the next jump about 1m. It was awesome. We came to a point where we had to climb up to a really high point. Bede.

Washing up with Alex and a hiding Patrick!

Rockpooling was so fun. We were in a group I was with Patrick. We caught about 17 crabs me and Patrick. It was fun then we lit a fire and we did “Firs got talent”. First it was Bede group that was really funny. Then it was the girls, they did dancing. Then Christopher was cool, then us Digby, Alex and me, we did the Hakka, and we won. James.

Kayak drawing by Ellie

We went out to do Team building. We did a game where we had a circle with lots of squares of carpet with numbers up to 20.We listened to my idea ti stamp on them all in order but in the quickest time possible. My idea worked better than Max’s and got us 19.7seconds. Next we did a rope game where our hands were stuck on a giant rope and we had to make a knot. We then did a game with 7 mats. We had to get across a marsh. But there were 7 people and you had to have a body part on the mat at all times or you would lose it. Charlotte

After tea we went to the beach and took some nets to go rock paddling, Harry and I found 3 crabs. One really big one and the other two not so big. We also found a load of shrimp called Tim and Herbert. Then we came up with “The Firs got Talent” we all had pretty good ideas, but despite our best efforts Digby won. Tyrolean was definitely my favourite activity, at first I was worried, but the drop was immense and my heart was racing. Jump I was off….When we were at home I was wanting to do it over and over again. Joshua

Then we did Tuckshop and then had a campfire on the beach. We came back and then tried to relax our whole bodies with Mrs Cheshire. Then we went to bed. Alex

Shore crab by Hannah

In coasteering you scramble over rocks and they were really slippy and it was hard to hold onto them, and you have to swim as well, plus you need to jump off rocks and I jumped off all the ones I had a chance to. At the end we saw the tyroleaners and managed to get to the same height as them. Patrick

We also did coasteering which was so fun. At the start Jim was leading us into a seaweed infested bog and we were saying “no way”. Only when we got in we found out that it wasn’t so bad. It was extremely fun. When I was swimming to a rock and when I was almost there the wave pulled me back and thrust me onto another rock. We also got tangled up in seaweed and thrown off rocks which a normal person would have hated, but I loved it, apart from the narrow part which I was really scared of but did it. Oliver

Flowers by Tiffany

Yesterday was so much fun when we all went to the sea. Today’s breakfast was so yummy it was the best I ever had in my entire life. Today we might be put into our groups. I want to be with my friends plus I have to be with other people as well. My group did kayaking but all I can remember is being freezing cold my fingers and feet were white as snow. Tiffany.

Josh and Christopher by the sea

A very yummy breakfast

Prawn by Harry

In the morning we did coasteering. It was amazing, but very cold. Brrrrrrr. My favourite part jumping off massive rocks that are at least 4m high. I would do it a million times but we had to move on. Digby.

Preparing for action

Coasteering

Mrs Cheshire leads the way

Thumbs up

Harriet on the Tyrolean

We were hoping to do our next activities, but the British weather ruined it. So we did team challenges. There were many different “difficult” challenges. But my team worked extremely hard and set a Rhoscolyn record. I found this day very enjoyable and wonder what adventures we will come across tomorrow! Stanley.

Team challenge

Let's all sit down

Team knots

Numbers challenge

Stickleback by Max