Celebrating VE Day

As we commemorate VE Day today, the children at school have been busy making bunting. Many at home have done the same thing and we have received lots of pictures of celebratory family lunches and beautifully decorated cakes. Year 8 were asked to continue their Scavenger Hunt Tray Challenge by making a VE Day tray today. Others cooked up Churchill’s favourite fruit cake following Mrs Landemare’s receipe – Churchill’s long-standing cook both at Downing Street during the war and then at his family home, Chartwell in Kent.

At this time of reflection, as many have listened to Churchill’s speeches and watched the Red Arrows flyby, we asked Hope’s Grandmother, (known to many as Granby), for her memories of VE Day. Hilda Stoneley was 18 years old on VE day and this is what she said:

‘Around midday, the air raid ‘all clear’ siren sounded. We wondered what it was all about. My parents heard the news on the radio. My father suggested, in the early evening, that we went to Hampstead Heath, high up to see if all the house lights were on. (During the war everything was blacked out and you were fined if you showed a light.) I was wearing my school uniform.’

‘We went to the tube station at Brent and got a tube to Hampstead, where we saw people sleeping on the platform as their houses had been bombed (or they were scared they might have been bombed.) We walked up the steep hill to the round pond, and here we found a large bonfire had been lit. We all held hands and danced around the bonfire and then the pond, and people jumped in the pond and celebrated! It was very exciting to look over London and see all the houses with their lights on and the curtains open and not blacked out.’

‘After this we walked all the way home, down the hill into Hampstead garden suburb, along past the tube station and the bus depot and along the main street across the road and home. We felt very tired but excited. We had baked potatoes for supper and red jelly! We all then went to bed – for the last time -in the Morrison shelter, in the hall.’

‘The next day I went up to London by tube with my family. We saw all the people in The Mall singing and dancing and shouting in front of Buckingham Palace. Many of them had been there all night. Lots of people were waving Union Jack flags. The Evening Standard newspaper sellers were selling little flags, it was all very exciting.’

Musical Chairs!

We would like to thank Mr Kwan for his huge contribution and hard work at Heritage during Mrs Zurcher’s maternity leave, It was a particular highlight to have Mr Kwan join us for Senior Camp last year – a real baptism of fire and of course we are so grateful for all he has done in the department throughout the year and especially for the Christmas Carol Service and Nativity. It was a real sadness that we had to cancel the Spring Recital so we were unable to hear the choirs and class instrumental groups.

Mr Kwan has said
‘I had the best time at Heritage and I will miss everyone. So much has happened in just 12 months from cooking at camp to the card game club in the summer with the now year 11’s. I also really enjoyed setting up the close harmony choir and playing for the year 5 musical. Its been a really lovely place to work and I’ve made so many friends. I would like to extend my thanks to everyone for making it such a wonderful year. I wish you all the best and hopefully I will see you all again in the not to distant future.’

Mr Kwan is setting up a piano studio and will also be teaching Organ, Theory, Composition, Bassoon and Recorder. He is offering Heritage pupils 3 free trial lessons (offer expires 01.06.20) For more information please go www.kwanmusic.co.uk or email: musicoaktree@zohomail.eu.

We wish him all the best for his next steps.

We would also like to welcome back from maternity leave Mrs Zurcher, pictured above with the beautiful Liana! Working part time she is currently teaching Year 7 and 8 (who are creating music online) and Year 9 and 10 who are doing their iGCSE course via Zoom.
When school re-opens she will be taking all Junior and Senior music lessons – with the exception of Year 9, 10 and 11’s class singing lessons which Mrs Lowe will be taking – providing an exciting addition to the Music department!

Mrs Zurcher is delighted to be back and has assured us that there will be plenty of singing and music making ahead including more of the very popular samba and drumming classes!

All About Butterflies!

Heritage’s weekly Nature Challenge has got off to a great start with many lovely pieces of work being submitted. 

Week 1 was all about looking for, identifying and drawing or painting butterflies. Optional extensions included writing a fact file about butterflies; researching the butterfly family of your chosen butterfly; making your garden butterfly friendly; creating a butterfly feeder and learning how to spot butterfly eggs. 

We hope you enjoy some of the wonderful results posted here.

The intention behind the challenge(s)  (which are not competitive) is to provide an additional learning opportunity, reflecting some of Heritage’s key values of nature walks and nature study.  Mrs Fletcher especially would like to encourage pupils and families to have a go and see what they can find.  She hopes they will enjoy the journey of exploration and discovery.  The challenges are the same for all year groups and many siblings and families have clearly enjoyed working together.

The Rescue Mission

Many congratulations to Mr (Pete) Atkinson, (one of our Senior School Maths teachers) who has just published ‘The Rescue Mission,’ currently listed among Amazon’s top 10 bible commentaries.

The Rescue Mission’ is an imaginatively original and brilliantly executed piece of storytelling which presents the Bible as one continuous, page-turning narrative; it’s the Bible as we’ve never experienced it before!

Mr Atkinson says:

“Writing ‘The Rescue Mission: The Bible As We’ve Never Experienced It Before’ has been a labour of love over 15 years. I started writing the book after learning about how the Bible could be read as one, continuous sweeping story from Genesis to Revelation; from creation to the new creation, where every tear is wiped away. I recall thinking – very naively – ‘why doesn’t someone write it like that’ and then sitting down and typing about Genesis, with absolutely no idea of the enormity of the task I was taking on! 

As the project grew and grew it got under my skin until I reached the point that I couldn’t let it go. I studied piles of chunky – often dusty – Bible commentaries, making copious notes, piecing together storylines, seeking subversive twists and turns, and tracking the threads which weave from Old Testament to New. Simultaneously, I needed to hone a writing style; and the only way to do that was to practice, practice, practice. I discovered that a piece of writing is always improved by deleting; I think of it like chiselling away at a block of wood, removing words, sentences – and even whole paragraphs that took an entire day to write – until the true heart of the text is exposed. 

Another significant challenge was marrying my desire for brevity and readability with doing justice to the sheer scale and detail of the Biblical story. To this end, I developed 3 narrative voices: one zooms in, seeking to elicit the thoughts and emotions of the Biblical characters; another zooms out and considers the vision and viewpoint of the Godhead, the Trinity – or to use the language in the book, ‘The Community of Elohim’. Thirdly, a mysterious character discovers the unfolding Biblical accounts in an abandoned warehouse, enabling a modern day perspective and reaction. 

The Rescue Mission was first published in 2012, receiving reviews such as ‘imaginatively original’, ‘fascinating and enthralling’, ‘true masterpiece’ and ‘I couldn’t put it down’. Nevertheless, I became convinced that the book could be improved, and a heavily rewritten 2nd edition was released in April 2020. I would absolutely love for you to read it! “

The book is available at www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0244213623. You can listen to a sample chapter at https://youtu.be/oMBXiwMh2cs And find more information at www.facebook.com/rescuemissionbook 

 

Thank You to our Key Workers

As the majority of our pupils are ‘Learning at Home’, we salute and thank the front line workers in our school community and also the Heritage staff enabling school to open for the children of these key workers.

This term, there are eight pupils on site each day.  Seven are from Infants and Juniors and they work in the Year 2 classroom.  There is one Year 8 pupil, who mostly works in the library but pops up and down to join in with things during the day. There are two staff at school each day on a weekly rota – maintaining consistency for the children.   Mr Fletcher is also onsite full time.

Pupils are following their Learning at Home curriculum at their own individual work stations. Once completed, they are able to enjoy the enrichment programme together with many other fun activities. Last week included some engineering challenges (for example building a water filter from Lego and designing a way to drop 20 blocks of Lego without them breaking apart) alongside some dragon related activities for St George’s Day!

PE lessons have covered a huge variety of skills including Joe Wicks workouts and Mr Hulett’s on line videos together with short tennis, dodge ball and short cricket.

Many thanks to our staff for also keeping this provision open in the holidays.  Children were busy playing Capture the Flag, hide and seek in the school (!) and many more games. The pupils themselves report that their favourite thing about being at school is having long play times together outside.  They all get along brilliantly well and play beautifully across the ages.  However, we know that they miss their friends and we all very much look forward to being back together soon.