Our Y6 children had an amazing time at their 2023 North Yorkshire residential. Every day, the excitement built up as they explored more of the Yorkshire landscape through adventurous activities - climbing, beck scrambling, canoeing, bouldering, and even dry-slope sledging! 

Daily updates from the visit can be seen along with lots more pictures in the gallery. https://www.hillsideavenue.org/y6-residential-visit-2023/

We had a wonderful experience with our Norfolk Music Hub Jazz ensemble on 29^th March. Children learned the basics of jazz and blues music – how rhythm, off-beat notes and syncopation create the ‘feel’. The ensemble group said our school was one of the best audiences they have had, with our children joining in enthusiastically with rhythms, riffs, sung refrains and coming up with ideas about oceans, swimming and plastic pollution for an improvised blues sad song! Children asked the group how long they have been playing instruments, what it is like to be in a band ‘on tour’ and whether the oboe is the hardest instrument to play. The group, all of whom are Norfolk music teachers, mainly started young, playing instruments from around the age of 6, and they have come together just for this tour of schools (and rather brilliantly, we would say!)

It was a great experience for all.  

Video clips of the performance are in the gallery here: https://www.hillsideavenue.org/jazz-ensemble/

The Year 5 children began their residential by exploring the site and looking ahead to the activities to come. Over the three days they took part in shelter building, canoeing, zipline, team challenges, fire-lighting and archery. News and more photos that were published each day can be seen here on the school gallery page here: https://www.hillsideavenue.org/y5-residential-visit-2023/

Well done to all the children and many thanks to all our school staff for the amazing Christmas productions this year. Have a look at our gallery for a full video of the Polar Express and more pictures here.

Polar Express

The angel who nearly missed it all

We had a delicious Christmas lunch today, enjoying turkey, sausages, vegetables, roast potatoes, stuffing, followed by ice cream dessert. A huge thank you to our wonderful kitchen staff who cook superb food every day and today prepared over 400 Christmas lunches!

Well done and thank you to our wonderful Year 6 Christmas Choir who sang beautifully to bring Christmas cheer to everyone at the dementia cafe. It was a magical atmosphere and lovely to hear many of the audience join in with old favourite carols and Christmas songs. We hope to have stirred up some happy Christmas memories and are grateful for the warm welcome we received.

We were pleased to be able to hold two Open Days for parents with children due to start Nursery or Reception in September 2023. 

The Open Days were on Monday 14th November at 9:15 and Wednesday 16th November at 1:30.

We also had six visit sessions which parents could book to come and see our Reception or Nursery classes in action.

More details are on our website here.  https://www.hillsideavenue.org/open-days-2023/

It was great to have a big turnout for each of these events, and thank you to everyone who attended for sharing in an experience of our school.

We had a wonderful Harvest Assembly this week. A large range of foods were donated by families to support the Norwich Foodbank. Children sang a range of harvest songs and we shared thoughts about food being stored for the winter, tithe barns of old and how we are sharing something of what we have to help others, a little bit like tithes of the past. Fr James shared a message for harvest about seeds that grow into fruits in our lives - joy, peace and love - with a range of exotic fruits as a reminder of the wonderful variety and richness of foods we can be thankful for.

With the sad news of the passing of HRH Queen Elizabeth II, we have been reflecting on her life and reign. Our deepest sympathy and heartfelt condolences are with the Royal Family at this time. 

All children focussed on learning about LIV village in Durban, South Africa, to end the school year.

We learned some African music and percussion, and (especially with the exceptionally warm weather) experienced how music is used in Africa to bring people together for celebration, singing and dancing out in the open air.

Children also learned about where Durban is, what the climate, wildlife and culture is like and how LIV village was formed and its purpose in providing homes, foster families and education for needy children, in order to give them a bright future.

We wrote letters and shared about our school with the children in LIV school too.

You can watch our music performances here, which we shared via video with the children at LIV:

www.hillsideavenue.org/liv-village-week-2022/