150 Years
Gallery and Events
Planting and Pruning Morning
On Saturday 22nd March, in partnership with Wild Amersham, we held a planting and pruning morning in our field, Rectory Meadow. It was a lovely Spring morning and we were able to plant 200 whips to thicken our hedge and prune back the existing ones. We’d like to thank all of our families who supported us as well as members of Wild Amersham.
Science Week 2025 'Change and Adapt'
We had a fantastic Science Week this year, packed full of fun activities.
The week started with a visit from Explorer Dome who led Space exploration sessions for all St Mary’s children. Everyone loved being inside the dome where planets and stars were projected onto the virtual sky around them. Continuing with the theme, Year 5 and 6 enjoyed taking part in a BBC Live Session all about Tim Peak and his time in Space. Have a look at St Mary’s shout out on its live feed!
We welcomed lots of visitors from the field of Science to our school during Science Week:
Geologists Haydon and David visited Key Stage 2 to help us to learn more about rocks and fossils, metal and ore.
Lizzie and Briony from the Freshwater Habitats Trust took children in Key Stage 1 river and pond dipping and planted some seedlings ready for Spring.
At the end of the week, we held a Careers Fair. All children in Years 3-6 visited ten stalls to find out more about jobs in the Science field. Thanks again to our St Mary’s parents and Stem Ambassadors who gave our children a really enjoyable and interesting insight into their careers. Thanks also to our parents who visited the Early Years to do the same.
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Across the school, teachers led a carousel of investigations:
Our Reception children explored air flow through rocket making, experimented with colour mixing and built bridges.
In Years 1 and 2 children created balancing robots and a skittle rainbow.
In Years 3 and 4 children explored forensic science by having a go at finger printing, investigating the properties of plastic and testing some chemical reactions.
Finally, in Year 5 and 6, children explored the properties of bubbles, investigated the best material to protect an egg and were challenged to make the most aerodynamic paper aeroplanes.
The week finished off with a showcase of all the children’s amazing posters on the theme of "Change and Adapt". Our winners have been entered into the Science Week National Competition.
Big Garden Birdwatch and Free Bird Talk
Would your family like to be find out more about the birds that visit our gardens and/or take part in the Big Garden Birdwatch 2025?
Wild Amersham are offering a free online nature talk entitled ‘ What is that bird in my garden?’ at 10-11 am on Saturday 25th January. Please look at the poster below for further information and how to join.
The Big Garden Birdwatch is the world’s largest garden wildlife survey. Every year, hundreds of thousands of people take part, helping to build a picture of how garden birds are faring.
Can you spend an hour this coming weekend to record the birds that land in your garden?
Please follow the link for further information about how to join the survey:
https://www.rspb.org.uk/whats-happening/big-garden-birdwatch
There is also a poster below which may help your children identify the birds.
Year 3/4 Rock Session
In November, pupils were visited by a professional geologist and learnt about his work in the local area. Pupils found out about his career path and how he is involved in many aspects of life, including HS2 and water exploration.
During the workshop, pupils were able to look at, and hold a range of rocks and fossils. They enjoyed asking lots of questions and it was great to have an expert there to answer them.
Year 5/6 Rock Session
In November, all pupils in Year 5 and 6 took part in a lesson lead by Mr. Bailey from School Rocks to look at fossils of echinoids (marine animals) to help us decipher how long ago they existed. The children were given out the fossils and a measuring tool called a caliper to measure lengths and heights before plotting their findings on a line graph. The children really enjoyed having this hands on experience and were shocked to find out that some of the fossils were from animals that existed 91 million years ago!
Creatures of the Night
The children loved our 'Creatures of the Night' event held in October.
Read Isaac's report below to find out more:
Working Scientifically
In Science, we are focusing on the to explicit teaching of 'Working Scientifically' skills and knowledge. This week in Year 5 and 6 we were teaching the children how to make a prediction using scientific reasoning. They were asked to predict what would happen (and why) to a mystery white powder when water was added to it. The children demonstrated their scientific knowledge with a variety of carefully-explained predictions.
Spoiler alert! It was a chemical called sodium polyacrylate which is made up of many repeating molecules that can absorb about 300 times its own weight in water!
Herb Garden
Our School Council won 2nd Prize in the Bright Ideas Competition run by Amersham and Villages Community Board. The prize enabled up to buy all the resources needed to create a Community Herb garden, which should be available next Spring for parents to use. Please read Victoria's report for further information.
No Mow May
No Mow May is a movement started by the charity Plantlife. It encourages people to let their lawn (or part of their lawn) grow long in the month of May, so flowers can flower, and in the process, helping all kinds of pollinators and other mammals, birds and amphibians that feed on them.
Wild Amersham @ Sustainable Amersham is encouraging as many people in Amersham to take part in #NoMowAmersham this year. Let’s try and create a chain of mini-meadows in our town this May. There’s lots of ideas on the Plantlife website, including ID guides, tips for looking after a longer lawn, and colouring pages for children. Register your lawn with Plantlife here. Let us know you are taking part by filling out this short form so we can track how it’s all going. Find activities for your children here. If you’d like to know what plant you are looking at, email us. Or come to one of our wildflower walks during May. Book her for the walk on the 12th of May or 17th of May.
And if you can, post any photos of your flowering lawn on social media under
Let’s see if we can turn Amersham into a flowering nature corridor of mini meadows, for plants, for insects, for nature, for us.
Science Week 2024
This year’s Science Week took place 8th March until 17th and the theme was “Time”. There were varied activities taking place across the school including:
Every class took part in a carousel of hands on practical science activities.
Dr Challoner’s Grammar school students visited year 5/6 to investigate: magnetic properties, effect of exercise on heart rate and exploring chemical reactions to make slime.
As part of British Science Week 2024, we held our own poster competition across KS1 and KS2 and the winners received Science books as prizes. The best entries were also entered into the national competition.
Mrs Reynolds, a parent of a child in year 4, visited all of KS2 to share more about her career as a physiotherapist.
Our school took part in “The Big Plastic Count” which focused on collecting data about plastic use and recycling in our homes. This information was collected Nationwide by Greenpeace in order to persuade the government to act on reducing plastic use and waste. Two of our school councillors, Lottie and Alfie, were invited to Parliament to state the case to MPs.
Although our science show didn’t happen as planned, it has been rescheduled for Friday 24th May.