Harvest is always an important time in our Autumn Term calendar. It is the first occasion for the children throughout the Junior School to gather together to celebrate and present in an assembly. It is also an important time in the year that we learn to appreciate and be thankful for what we have and work together to make a difference for our local community.
During October the children throughout the school are encouraged to bring in canned and non-perishable foods that can be donated to The Food Cupboard; a local charity providing food for families in need. They work 7 days a week throughout the year to ensure that food parcels reach the families most in need in our local community.
The children learn about the importance of Harvest and the work that farmers do from the crops in the field, the journey they go on to be turned into food items available for us to buy in shops and then to enjoy at meal times with our families. It gives us the opportunity to recognise how fortunate we are ourselves and encourages children to think about sharing with others less fortunate in our local area. It is always an amazing sight to see all the goods that have been donated when we create our Harvest display for our assembly and the children can see for themselves the difference that we can make when we work together - the children could not believe that there was so much food donated!
During the Assembly each class learned about Harvest and presented their findings to the rest of the Junior School. For our Reception and Year 1 children this was their first opportunity to perform in front of an audience due to having online performances and assemblies over the past 18 months.
Our youngest children in Reception thoroughly enjoyed sharing their song with lots of lovely actions about a Big Red Combine Harvester. They also shared their paintings of some of their favourite fruits and vegetables and had worked hard to say their line telling us about their picture.
Year 1 children had been reading the story The Enormous Turnip in their English lessons and decided to change the story to create their own version called The Gigantic Orange which they had great fun performing for us all with lots of expressions and actions with their storytelling. In Year 2 the children were excited and interested to learn some sign language to go with the song the Harvest Samba.
Year 3 enjoyed singing the a popular and catchy harvest song Cauliflowers Fluffy and Year 4 spoke very clearly explaining The Meaning of Harvest. They explained how long ago this was even more important as we didn’t have such good travel and transport to be able to access foods from around the world which we are now able to enjoy. Year 5 children worked in groups to recite a poem all about harvest and Year 6 showed us some posters that they had made and talked to us about how Harvest is celebrated in different countries all around the world.
It was a lovely assembly and I was very proud of all the children who stood up, learned their lines and performed their songs, poems and information clearly and loudly for everyone to hear. It was wonderful to be together and to be able to display all the food donated for the children to see. Thank you to everyone who contributed to our collection for your kindness and generosity.
Miss Kerry Duff
Head of Junior School