w/b 1st May - Coronation celebrations
Date: 5th May 2023 @ 4:44pm
Well, what a truly wonderful day EYFS and KS1 have enjoyed together! We hope that it has been a memorable celebration to mark this historic event; the Coronation of King Charles III. Firstly, we must say that all of the children looked wonderful in their red, white and blue colours. Thank you for your support with this.
Our day began in the hall for a particularly special celebration assembly. After giving out our certificates, children from each class read a prayer aloud. These prayers had been written by each class and they were just beautiful. As the Year 1 prayer perfectly expressed, we all hope King Charles will learn from our King, Jesus. Excitingly, two members of Brereton Parish Council visited us in assembly. Firstly, they told us all about their coronation art competition. This now closes next Friday and it sounds like some exciting prizes are on offer. Please see our newsletters for more information about this competition. Additionally, Brereton Parish Council had brought something very special for each and every child: a lovely badge to commemorate the coronation. The children were very grateful to receive this gift.
After this special assembly, Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 remained in the hall together. As an introduction to today’s celebrations, we started with a story: King Charles III's Colourful Coronation. In this story, King Charles is on his way to Westminster Abbey to be crowned. He meets the colourfully dressed people one by one, from beefeaters in blue to a very yellow lollipop man. But before long, he realises he's very, very late! Will he make it to the Abbey in time? We all thoroughly enjoyed this story and were then inspired to begin our carousel of activities. Within this carousel, Year 1 and 2 worked together in groups which thus involved plenty of superb collaboration. Reception had some of their own jobs to complete but were excited to join KS1 for some of the activities – such fun!
Key Stage 1 enjoyed a carousel of five activities. With Mrs Taylor, the children worked together to create some beautiful London landmark artwork by finishing sections of photographs. As the photos show, they thoroughly enjoyed using these oil pastels. Miss Roxburgh helped the children to use split pins and paper plates to create clocks inspired by the Elizabeth Tower, the tower in which Big Ben is located. Mrs Sherliker-Hewitt had choreographed a fabulous dance which the children learnt so very well. We have such superb dancers in Key Stage One! The children were especially thrilled to visit Mrs Wiggs, as she was in charge of biscuit decorating – delicious!
The final station was in the Year 1 classroom with Mrs Knott. This was the crown making station. To make their crowns, the children used a range of materials which had been very kindly donated by Flissy’s mum. The Reception children joined the Key Stage 1 groups for this station, so that everybody had made a crown. This was also an excellent opportunity for the Reception children to spend some time in the Year 1 classroom having fun. We had planned to have a crown parade this afternoon but, alas, this was not possible with the sudden heavy rain. We have, however, enjoyed wearing our crowns all day, including for our lunch.
Reception children engaged in slightly different activities this morning as we prepared for our street party lunch. With Miss Toft, the children made their own sandwiches. There were a range of lovely combinations and the children made these sandwiches with such independence, including deciding how they would cut their sandwiches up. With Mrs North, the children decorated the cakes that we had baked yesterday. They enjoyed using red, white and blue icing and some gold and silver sprinkles – delicious! With Miss Witham, the children made fruit kebabs. They all helped to chop up the strawberries, bananas and grapes. They then made patterns with the fruit on their skewers e.g. strawberry, apple, banana, strawberry, apple, banana etc. Then, at last, it was time for our street party lunch. We were so thankful that the sun was shining, allowing us to eat outside in true street party style. We ate our sandwiches, fruit kebabs and cakes, alongside juice, crisps, cheese rolls, party rings and extra fruit/tomatoes that were on offer. What a wonderful party this was! The children tell me they shall remember their coronation street party forever.
After lunchtime play, our plans to come together as a key stage were disrupted by rumbles of thunder and then a sudden downpour of rain which we just managed to avoid! Instead, Year 1 and 2 spent the afternoon learning about street parties and how people celebrated royal occasions, including traditional games that may be played. In Reception, we have been reading some coronation themed stories. We have then all been singing one of our new favourite songs: To the sound of trumpets. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFGZ2YFhHmU .
Finally, we reflected on the day and all of the wonderful things that we enjoyed together. Year 1 have recorded their thoughts on post-its and, in Reception, we worked together to write a prayer of thanks for our day; the children said some truly beautiful things. As Flissy quite rightly said, we have all had the spirit of Jesus in our hearts as we worked together to celebrate King Charles.
We hope that you all have the most wonderful bank holiday weekend together. On Tuesday, we shall look forward to welcoming the children back to school and looking at the highlights of the Coronation of King Charles III.
With many thanks and best wishes,
The EYFS and KS1 team
