On Monday, we started our celebrations leading up to St Piran’s day – 5th March! Being Cornish and/or living in this wonderful county is a privilege and to understand our sense of place is crucially important for our children.
We explored the story of St.Piran and how, in the 5th Century, this Irish bishop was upsetting too many people and therefore banished from the country. Being tied to a millstone, Piran was thrown over the edge of the Irish cliff …. never to be seen again. However, once he hit the sea, the storms calmed and Piran floated peacefully over to arrive in ….Perranporth! There he built up his own church and people travelled for miles to hear him spread the word of Christianity.
Read a version of the story of St.Piran here! T01 Life of St Piran (1)
With the celebrations of St Piran, there will inevitably be some wonderful sea shanties being heard across the county. We listened to ‘South Australia’ – and learned about the Gold Rush in the 19th Century, when Cornish miners were in demand. Getting on a ship for a new life in Australia was challenging and definitely needed some hearty singing to help the Cornish men on their way!
This term in reading assemblies, we are going to be exploring traditional Cornish myths and legends. We started off on Tuesday by learning about one of the most famous ones: the Giants of the Mount. We explored what legends were, how they might have started and how they change over time. Over the next few weeks we will be learning about piskies, mermaids and more!
On Wednesday, in both assemblies, we had a geography focus. We recapped our definition of geography and what a geography lesson might include. Then we discussed what a continent is and reminded ourselves of the continents of the world. After that, we focused on Europe as a continent – ending with a fascinating video on the human and man-made features of this amazing continent!
We did some sea shanty singing in Thursday morning assembly! Particularly, Roll The Old Chariot and Wellerman. They sounded fantastic and everyone sang with lots of gusto!
In Thursday afternoon’s assembly, we shared the story ‘Giraffes can’t dance’ by Giles Andreae. Giraffes Can’t Dance is an important story for teaching children about accepting that everyone is different, embracing their own differences, and building confidence and self-esteem. We discussed how the friendly cricket encouraged Gerald to create his own unique dancing style and how Gerald then surprised everyone with his elegant dance moves. The children recognised how Gerald was feeling at the beginning of the story and how he felt at the end: how he went from sad to happy. They noticed that his friend helped him to find his confidence and also that it is “amazing to be different”.
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