Enrichment
Our enrichment curriculum provides additional opportunity for breadth and depth. It delivers a wealth of cultural capital experiences. Our Pupil Offer and Parent Offer documents are carefully planned and reviewed annually to meet the needs of our unique cohorts.
"It is the essential knowledge that pupils need to be educated citizens, introducing them to the best that has been thought and said and helping to engender an appreciation of human creativity and achievement". Ofsted 2019
Please click here to view our Parent Offer
Haka Workshops 2022As part of our international week, year 2 had a visit from Sol. Sol is from New Zealand. He told us all about the traditional Mauri Haka and shared some of the moves and chants with us.
International Week 2022
Have you ever been to an email exhibition? We have, we created an international exhibition, with 29 different stalls, each displaying information, artefacts and pictures from a different country.
World Book Week 2020
Simon James
Wow – what a fantastic visit from the author Simon James we had this year! The corridors were buzzing with talks of his texts and his colourful illustrations. Simon shared his aspirational journey of becoming an author with the children and spoke about the determination that was required to illustrate his texts. The children heard Simon read one of his popular stories whilst watching him draw some of his most popular illustrations. When drawing, he spent time discussing the thought process that was behind his popular characters and how he originally came up with his ideas.
Dressing up Day
What fantastic characters we saw around school! The children’s costumes were nothing short of incredible. Thank you to all our grown-ups who spent time in supporting children in their book character transformations.
Both children and grown-ups alike spent time during their day passionately describing their chosen character and retelling the stories that they were part of. We thoroughly enjoyed seeing a wide range of characters this year…we had characters from ‘Harry Potter’ to ‘Where’s Wally?’ We are already looking forward to next year’s dress up day too!
Drop Everything and Read!
Children all over the school eagerly listened for the sound of a bell during book week as they knew this meant they had to drop everything and read! Here you can see some ecstatic elephants who have ‘dropped everything’ during Let’s Explore to enjoy a good story.
Tales from Mother Nature
Our children were lucky enough to have two visiting authors this term. Our second author Jenny, from Tales from Mother Earth, brought her colleague to share their story of ‘Phoebe the Bee’. The children began to understand the importance that bees have on our eco-system and why they are so important. As a result of the workshop, the children all now know how to respect and look after bees!
Year 2 Circus Skills Workshops
The children were visited by the Circus Allstars! The day started with an assembly by the expert circus instructor, Rob. He performed difficult circus tricks and demonstrated the circus skills the children would be learning during the day. The children learnt many new and unusual skills such as how to tight-wire, juggle, spin plates, balance feathers, control a diabolo and walk on stilts.
Planet Saving Superheroes Drama Workshop
Through acting, improvisation and role-play, this drama workshop taught the children about the importance of our environment and how to recycle. The children developed an understanding of what they can do to make the world a more sustainable place through a fun and engaging approach to a serious subject.
Visit to the Ashford Garden Cattery
During our topic of ‘We Could Be Heroes’ the children found out about the lives of real life heroes such as Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole and local charity workers. Some year 2 children had the opportunity to visit the RSPCA Ashford Garden cattery and learn about the charity’s work in rehoming cats from a first-hand experience.
Road Safety Magic Show
Years one and two were visited by David who presented the Road Magic Safety show. The children were treated to an amazing, fun show which was full of important safety messages for them to take away with them. The children really enjoyed the show and were very impressed with David’s magic tricks (as were the adults!). The message about road safety was very clear and the children understood the importance of road safety and how to stay safe out and about.
Great Fire Of London Workshop
Using drama, music and movement the children were transported back in time to the Great Fire of London in 1666. The children were engaged from the word go. They met some famous people from the past, such as Samuel Pepys, King Charles II and Thomas Farriner. The children improvised the start of the fire in Pudding Lane and learnt the Great Fire of London rap. This was a fascinating workshop about London’s disastrous fire and the children loved every minute of it!
Norton Knatchbull Jazz Band visited our school
All of the children across the school were invited to attend Norton Knatchbull’s jazz band concert that took place in our school hall. The students from Knatchbull came equipped with a range of instruments: trumpets, trombones, a double bass, guitars and keyboards. Each musician introduced themselves and played some notes on their instrument. The children had the opportunity to name the instrument and were impressed with their solo performances.
The jazz band performed two songs together. The atmosphere was amazing and the children were impressed by the student’s ability to perform as a group, especially as the band had only been together a year.
These are some of the children’s comments:
“Wow! That was amazing!”
“That was brilliant! I would like to play the guitar in the future.”
“That double bass is huge and plays really low notes. How does he manage to carry it?”
We are hoping that Norton Knatchbull will return for more performances in the future as the children loved this enriching experience.
The Greatest Artist Project
Children in KS1 were invited to ‘The Greatest Artists Project’. A visiting artist, Peter Swidrak, displayed the work of famous artists alongside his own. The children were so excited to be visiting an exhibition – most of them had never had the opportunity to visit an art exhibition before. The children were put into pairs and given a quiz to complete, looking carefully for the features in the works of art to enable them to locate the described painting/picture. This encouraged the children to use their observational skills and look carefully for particular details.
The children then became artists themselves and created their own piece of artwork based on one of Peter’s famous pictures. The children really enjoyed creating this piece of artwork and were able to add their unique features to them whilst keeping to Peter’s style of artwork.
Peter Swidrak
This was a brilliant experience for the children. They had the opportunity to look around the exhibition with their parents/careers after school which created a wonderful atmosphere.
The Willesborough Schools History Week
This week we are very excited to announce The Willesborough Schools History week! We have dived into the past and found out about school life at Willesborough many years ago! We have looked at artefacts, books and photographs to see how much our school has changed.
Year one and year two experienced a day from the past where they didn’t use any technology!
We all visited the photo exhibition at Willesborough Junior School. We looked at photos of children that used to come to our school and noticed how much things have changed!
Each class has been writing letters about their own school experiences to add to our time capsule. We wanted future Willesborough students to see what life was like at Willesborough Infant School in 2019! We added resources to our time capsule including Numicon, sound mats and books so that children would see what we use to help us with our learning.
Our time capsule has been placed in a special place on the Willesborough site for future children to discover!
Here are a few photos of both the children and staff in their historic costumes for the dress-up day, and also some of our own historic photos:
Year 2 Puppet Show – Goldifox
Year 2 were treated to a hilarious puppet show called Goldifox in term 1. It all started so peacefully with Andy, the storyteller, reading the well-known tale of Goldilocks and the Three Bears…until Charlie the fox came (literally) bursting through the set, and plunged the show into chaos! WHAT FUN!
This was a perfect show for the children and a great introduction to live theatre. It kept the adults entertained too!
Joe's Bows Falconry
Wow! What an incredible experience we had when Joe's Bows visited to give us a falconry demonstration and talk about some of the incredible birds of prey.
Joe brought in a variety of birds of prey to link to our current 'Up, up and away' topic.
The birds were so well trained and they were all very majestic! We saw Elf, a very small owl who weighs less than 4oz, Eva the hooded vulture who is one of the smallest breeds of vulture and Flash, a peregrine falcon who can fly at over 200mph! We saw many more birds too and were interested to discover how birds of prey hunt, see and even fly differently, in comparison to other birds. Did you know an owl cannot actually turn it's head all the way around, only 3/4 of the way - that's still very impressive!
Visit from Steve Cooper from the Cry in the Dark Charity
Steve Cooper from the Cry in the Dark charity visited us. He told us all about the charities work through 'compassion in action', bringing hope to children and their families in isolated communities in Romania.
Mrs Sarah Francis, one of our year two parents, was invited to Steve’s presentation. Mrs Francis works for the Football Premier League and, every year, the company gives each employee a very generous sum of money to donate to a charity of their own choice. After hearing about the work of the charity from her daughter, Mrs Francis decided to donate her £500 to Cry in the Dark.
Kimberley Renicks (GB Judo Athlete) visit
All children participated in 'fast pace circuits' and the atmosphere was electric!
Congratulations to Willesborough Infant School for raising £1,413.15 in sponsorship money for aspiring GB athletes and sports equipment for our school.
A special thank you to the children who raised over £35 of sponsorship money.
These children received a signed polaroid picture with Kimberley.