St Vincent's Catholic Primary School

“Caritas Christi Urget Nos –

The love of Christ urges us to care for each other and strive for excellence in everything we do.”

‘What makes me special?’ – EYFS

In Holly Class, we have enjoyed investigating and learning all about what makes us unique individuals through exploring our driving question for our Autumn term project – ‘What makes me special?’

Through discovering ourselves, we thought about our families and what changes as we grow up. We investigated how our needs and abilities change as we grow and how we become more independent. We had so much playing ‘guess who’ by looking closely at our baby photos, noticing similarities and differences from then to now.

  • We really enjoyed reading our story ‘Funnybones’ and learning about our very own skeletons.
We were fascinated when looking different body parts and found it incredible to discover all of the different functions of our vital organs. We loved exploring our five, fantastic senses!
  • We used all five of our senses to explore popcorn!
  • We listened to the sound it made, smelt it’s gorgeous aroma, touched its round body, tasted it’s sweet flavor and looked carefully at all it’s details.
  • We came up with lots of adjectives to talk about our discoveries!

We discussed different feelings and expressions that would accompany the emotions from the story – happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and calm. We used different media to create various versions of self portraits representing different emotions.

  • Through reading our text ‘The Color Monster’, we explored and learnt about our different emotions and how they present themselves.
  • We even had a go at separating our own emotions into different containers!
  • We had great fun creating collages of our very own color monsters using magazines and newspapers to create their faces!
  • We thought carefully when selecting the eyes and mouths to make sure they represent the same emotion.
  • We thought about using bright colors to represent happiness and joyful emotions.
  • We used mirrors and oil pastels to create self portraits and discuss how I am feeing.

    We have loved learning and discover all about what makes us special. We know that each and everyone of us have been created to be unique beings, all with our own talents, likes/dislikes, families, bodies and emotions.

    We were able to talk about different times when we have felt various emotions.
    We used our phonics to write some sentences too.
    We were able to talk about different times when we have felt various emotions.
    We drew pictures to talk about these times.

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    Curriculum Intent

    At St Vincent’s it is our INTENT is to enable ALL children to thrive through the opportunities we provide them with, in order to:

    • Live their lives by the Gospel and Vincentian values instilled in them at school.
    • Understand that everyone has the right and responsibility to live in our world constructively and ensure that we leave it in a better state than when we entered it by living and working through the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in line with the UNCRC (United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child)
    • Experience creativity across the curriculum through specialist art and dance lessons and opportunities to take part in art, music, dance and creative writing competitions.
    • Know the joy of outdoor learning, the rich biodiversity within our school grounds and locality and develop a responsibility for the environment we share as stewards.
    • Understand their place in the world, globally and locally, knowing the history of our school, Mill Hill and the Daughters of Charity and knowing where our diverse community members have their roots across the world.
    • Be ready and well-prepared for their next steps in life, having high aspirations for themselves and for others because they have experienced success and a belief in learning from mistakes.
    • Have a life-long curiosity, stimulated by the driving questions of Project Based Learning approach to the curriculum fostering inquiry and independent learning skills, which give confidence to ask big questions about the world.
    • Be literate and numerate having experienced a rich variety of texts to stimulate and excite the mind while developing skills in investigating and problem solving to enable them to excel in their future passions.
    • Be confident and happy young people that have a broad understanding and tolerance of the world and others around them with excellent communication skills honed by their experience of Restorative Justice and respect of the dignity and wishes of the individual.

    Curriculum Context

    St Vincent’s is a 1.5 form entry school with 285 children ranging from 4 -11. Children come predominantly from the parishes of Sacred Heart in Mill Hill and St Anthony’s in Edgware.

    Children come from a diverse range of socio-economic backgrounds, speak 17 different languages and hail from 26 different ethnic groups. The curriculum we present, and promote, to the children is an endeavour to reflect these differences by providing opportunities to explore the different countries, languages and customs our children are part of through the projects they investigate. We have looked closely at the context of our school, the backgrounds of the children and how life is for a child growing up in North London today. We have used the underlying principles of our Catholic Faith and the example of our namesake St Vincent to create a set of values which lie at the heart of our curriculum.

    We are aware of the changing nature of society and the pressures faced by young children as they enter the next stage of their education. The rise in Mental Health related issues has been widely documented across the media. Therefore, issues such as internet safety and the enormous impact across society of social media are at the forefront of our minds when planning our curriculum. With the current worldwide concerns relating to Covid 19, racial justice, equality and diversity, as well as gender and economic background, we feel it is our duty to prepare the children through a concerted focus on building independence, resilience and communication skills linked to our Vincentian Values.