West Rainton, Houghton-le-Spring DH4 6RN
Back by popular demand- another collaborative Nativity play between pupils from across all ages and residents of Springfield Lodge took place in St Mary’s Church just before breaking up for Christmas.
On the back of our community achieving national recognition as ‘dementia friendly community of the year’ at the recent Alzheimer’s Society event in London, this was an appropriately poignant way to end a wonderful year of working together.
It is one of the highlights of our Christmas season; the annual village carol service at St Mary’s Church.
This year, our choir sang ‘O Holy Night’ and our bellringing squad treated the community to a beautiful rendition of ‘We Wish You a Merry Christmas’. What a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas with the community we love!
Pupils from Year 3 to 6 put on three fantastic performances of the school’s version of the West End musical hit, ‘We Will Rock You!’ Featuring 28 of Queen’s most-loved hits, our pupils brought the house down with amazing solos, great acting and superb dance routines.
Who will ever forget the Globalsoft Police routine to ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ or our troupe of hippies singing ‘These are the Days of our Lives’?
We hope you enjoyed the show as much as we did rehearsing and performing it. The pupils have all worked incredibly hard, largely in their own time, to put on such a professional production. Well done Key Stage Two!
Christmas at West Rainton Primary started with a real treat as our EYFS pupils put on a beautiful production of ‘Christmas Counts’, a Nativity play based all around numbers!
It was hard to believe that many of the performers were only three years old as they danced, sang and said their lines with such professionalism beyond their years.
This was followed up by a fantastic production of ‘A Miracle in Town’ by our pupils in Year 1 and 2. Our oldest infant pupils had to learn many lines and they told the Christmas story wonderfully.
Thank you to our audiences, of over 150 people, who supported our performers so well.
A Merry Christmas to you all!
As part of our preparations for Christmas performances in our local community, Y6 have been mastering two pieces of music on the handbells.
Their recent experience of composition on the keyboards meant they could transfer their knowledge of reading music with ease into another tuned instrument.
Keep an eye out for them at St Mary’s Church carol service and our own carols around the tree event in school.
Our Y6 and reception pupils are the very best of friends! This autumn, they worked together to perform a beautiful harvest assembly for parents, including a harvest ‘squiggle’ dance. They then went to local houses to deliver our harvest hampers filled with kind donations from our school community.
As a special treat for working so brilliantly together, the children then carved pumpkins together to decorate our spooky Hallowe’en disco.
We were thrilled to be invited to share in Springfield Lodge’s Open Day as part of a national day of welcoming communities into care homes.
The morning comprised of a sing-off in which we sang two modern songs and listened to two songs from the residents. The judge had a tricky decision to make, but decided our rendition of ‘Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious’ was the winning song! We were rewarded with a fish and chip lunch in the garden and, as an extra treat, an ice cream each. What better way to celebrate the run-up to summer!
We love working together with our local community. The residents and children get on so well together.
Performing our dance routines on the stage of the Gala Theatre in Durham city is one of our favourite events of the year. This time, we took our Y6 class to reprise their performance of ‘The Greatest’ by Sia. That was followed by a ‘Mary Poppins Medley’ performed by a KS2 dance team who scooped the award for ‘most energetic routine’ on the day. Well done to all of our dancing stars.
We were delighted to welcome our friends from M&M Productions to perform for us again in school. This year we were treated to a performance of one of our favourite texts; The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. After the show, Year 4 enjoyed a stagecraft workshop, learning all about how to put on a show.
Thank you for another brilliant performance!
This year, we were delighted to work in partnership with the residents and staff of Springfield Lodge residential home to perform a joint Nativity play for our community in St Mary’s church. As part of our dementia friendly action plan, we spent valuable time learning from, and about, each other as we rehearsed. The event was one of the highlights of our Christmas.
