Performing Arts
“Happiness is being able to feel the rhythm in the raindrops” Nancy Kopman
Music
We are proud to be a school which encourages children to find joy in music. In addition to our curriculum–based learning, we host external music teachers each week who offer children lessons in piano, guitar and woodwind.
FOHNS recently purchased a class set of ocarinas. Our KS2 pupils all enjoy regular time with these instruments, and we find they are an excellent introduction to reading music.
Now a popular event in our school diary is the annual trip to join the Young Voices choir – the largest children's choir concert in the world! This opportunity is available to our older pupils. They spend a term rehearsing, with passion, a host of songs ready to perform at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham. A real wow moment for all of them!
We are often able to run a choir for our younger pupils as an after-school club, which is always very popular.
Keen to introduce music to our children from an early age, our Foundation Stage children will also learn and perform a selection of Christmas songs – leaving adults without a dry eye in the house!
Drama
“I’ve never experienced a school performance of this quality before!”
Our Year 6 pupils, ably supported by Year 5, put on the performance of their lives each December. After weeks of rehearsals, they take to the stage for 3 performances for the school, parents and older members of our community.
They sing, dance and act their hearts out, often taking on challenges they’ve not experienced before and finding a new talent to explore. In recent years we’ve had the pleasure of seeing ‘Robin Hood and the Sherwood Hoodies’, ‘Oh What a Knight!’ and ‘Pirates of the Curry Bean’.
It’s impossible not to also mention the Christmas Nativity performance put on each year by our KS1 children. With handmade costumes, a student percussion band and enthusiastic teachers guiding from the back of the hall, it is guaranteed to get the whole audience feeling festive!
Our Year 3 and 4 children also get an opportunity to perform. They take the limelight at Easter to put on a song and dance extravaganza. We are incredibly fortunate that we can use the beautiful St Peter’s Church to host this. Last year the children took on the roles from Charlie Mackesy’s ‘The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse’. They were fully immersed in their characters having spent the term studying the text and his artwork and fully understood the importance of eating cake!