Welcome to our weekly news update. We have had an incredibly busy and exciting last week for this half-term and have examples of the fantastic opportunities which our super children have enjoyed to share with you.

Welcome to our weekly news update from across our lovely school. We have had another productive and busy week with exciting learning opportunities being explored by all of our classes.

This week, we have welcomed Paul, Peter and Paul who have supported some of our Year 5 children as they have worked toward their Levels 1 and 2 'Bike-ability'. We have all been impressed by the commitment and focus which the children showed throughout the sessions and we celebrated their achievements in our Friday assembly.

Year 4 have completed their 'Peace Education' workshops and said a huge 'Thank you' to the volunteers for their time, hard work and enthusiasm for these sessions. Year 4 have been interested each week to explore the theme linked to peace and positive values particularly enjoying the circle time activities.

Our after-school theatre group, who work alongside Emily from 'The Courtyard', shared their performance piece this week with their families, which was brilliant.

In our assemblies, we have made a start on our new value for April which is 'Respect' and in our classrooms we have thought about what this word means especially as it is one of our 3 focus rules - Ready, Respectful and Safe. We are sure that we will be able to spot this value across our school in many different ways and at different times of the day.

We also welcomed Hannah from Checkpoint who shared with us the next part of the Easter story and helped us all to get even better at the speedy song which she has taught us!

In our Friday assembly we were able to celebrate working hard in all lessons, for sharing fantastic ideas with the rest of the class, for trying hard to be the best friend that they can be, for wonderful reading, for brightening other people's day, for pushing themselves to do an activity which might be challenging and never giving up, for being an amazing 'Young Leader' and for making a sustained positive effort in maths. We also presented 2 more 'Gone Green' multiplication certificates to our Year 4 children. 'Well done' to you all.

Next week, we look forward to our enrichment morning on Tuesday and achievement assembly on Friday and other lovely Easter related activities! 

Today, it is our Easter Bingo (eyes down for 6pm) and we look forward to seeing many of you there. 

We hope that everyone has a super weekend and we all look forward to welcoming you to our last week of the term on Monday.

This week across school, we have been able to enjoy a fantastic 5 days with lots of amazing learning and positive friendships being shared. We have all thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful sunshine this week and it certainly has felt as though Spring has arrived!

As you can see, from the lovely photos, Reception have been enjoying more super time in the outside environment exploring. During their 'welly walk' last week the children really enjoyed making and testing out binoculars whilst they were spotting different birds. It is very clear that they were very impressed with the birds which they managed to spot.

In our assemblies this week, we have been continuing to work on the values of perseverance and courage.  With Mrs. Bretherton, we shared the power of the word 'yet'. We explored different skills or activities that we may not have mastered 'yet' but that did not mean that we wouldn't be able to in time.

Hannah from 'Checkpoint' visited and started the Easter story with us all, thinking about how Christians view Jesus as a King but a King without a crown, throne, chariot or cloak. We also learnt a new song with Hannah which included some exciting actions which got quicker as the song went on!

In Friday's sticker assembly, we were able to celebrate such fantastic achievements this week including the most amazing demonstration of our 'ready, respectful, safe' rules, for growing in self-confidence, great sporting skills in PE, for working so hard on their reading skills so that real progress can be seen by everyone and for being able to work out equivalent fractions at the drop of a hat!

We also enjoyed our new values poem being read out by volunteers from Key Stage 1. Thank you for sharing these important ideas with us this morning.

'Thank you' to everyone who has supported our 'Comic Relief' efforts today and it has been amazing to see such a colourful school with lots of happiness and joy on show. We have raised a great amount to donate to this charity £160.46 so far. Thank you all.

Next week, we have particular days and activities to look forward to, including Science Day on Thursday where our classes will be exploring different themes and activities which are guaranteed to be thought provoking, full of 'wow' moments and engaging. We also have non-uniform on Friday 28th March in return for a monetary donation to support our 'Friends' Easter bingo.

We wish everyone a 'Happy Weekend' and look forward to seeing you all on Monday morning.

What a wonderful week we have had together, which of course, has been made all the more exciting by our excellent 'World Book Day' celebrations today.

We have been amazed by the superb effort which everyone has put in with their outfits and the enthusiasm shown for the pleasure of reading.

Thank you everyone for your support with this very special day.

This week, we have started to think about our new values of courage and perseverance. We enjoyed sharing the story of 'The Hare and the Tortoise' with Mrs. Bretherton on Monday and thought about the importance of showing resilience. On Wednesday, we welcomed Hannah from Checkpoint who shared with us the idea of everyone having their own talents and how important it is to use them for the good of others and ourselves. We have also all enjoyed having a lesson with either Jamie or Jade from 'The Courtyard'. They have been in school on Thursday and today to help with our World Book Day celebrations and helped us all to understand how different texts can be explored through drama.

Today, we had an assembly packed full of celebrations and congratulations! Our weekly Head Teacher stickers were awarded for wonderful reasons including superb writing, bravery, thinking carefully about our own choices and doing our best to make positive ones, for sharing amazing contributions in lessons and brilliant all round attitude and effort. Congratulations to you all.

In addition to our stickers, we have been able to award prizes for our 'decorate the plate' competition and our comic writing challenge. It has been such a enormous and inspiring job to judge all of the entries and Mrs. Welson was very grateful to be supported in this by Miss Moss from LHS.

'Congratulations' to all 92 children, who entered one of our competitions and a special 'Well done' to our winners. We are hoping that we can display the plates in the school hall next Friday (14th March) at 3.30pm and invite families in to see the wonderful array of designs.

Due to the disco tonight, we were unable to share them today, thank you for your understanding.

Next week as part of our continuing reading focus we are welcoming Duncan from the '£3 book sale' into school on Thursday. Each class will have the opportunity to visit and buy books and there will also be time after school for families to visit.

We have all thoroughly enjoyed the beautiful weather this week and it has put a real spring into our steps! We wish you all a 'happy weekend' and look forward to seeing you on Monday.

We have all had a lovely, busy last week of the half term and it has been jam packed with moments of celebration, enrichment activities, visits within our community and opportunities to explore our value of 'trust'.

On Tuesday, we had our third enrichment morning of this school year for all children from Year 1 through to Year 6. The children always welcome the opportunity to work with their enrichment group of friends and to explore different activities with adults across school.

Our fantastic adults all work so hard to make sure that this morning is purposeful, engaging and enjoyable for all.

As you can see from the photos Beech group, who visited Kington Court, did a fantastic job of sharing songs and poems and made everyone a 'Happy February' card which were treasured by the residents. This is such an important element of our enrichment community activities.

Our other groups had a wonderful time exploring ideas to help promote our school on our new updated website (hoping to launch in the next half term), learning about making noodles as a healthy meal option, being part of activities to promote mindfulness such as yoga, supporting our wider community with litter picking and focusing on still life using different media.

This week, Year 5 visited Kington library where Angela welcomed them back and shared stories with them. This will have been good preparation Y5 for World Book Day!

In our assemblies this week, we have thought more about the value of 'trust' and how important this is to healthy friendships. We welcomed Hannah from 'Checkpoint' on Wednesday and enjoyed the story which she shared with us.

We have also shared the video diaries of our guide dog puppies, Custard and Jack, which we all enjoyed seeing. Both of our sponsored puppies have made a really positive start to their training at the National Training Centre and we look forward to further pup-dates!

Our celebration assemblies on Thursday and Friday were a chance to say 'Congratulations and well done!' for many different reasons. We were able to award the class attendance prize for this half term to Years 2 and 5 who drew with exactly the same attendance figure! They are looking forward to planning their reward after the holiday.

We also awarded our individual prize for children who have been given one of our 'values tickets'. Everyone is working so hard to reflect our values in all that they do and there were so many tickets in the hat, congratulations if you had been given a ticket for the draw.

Our 'achievement' assembly today was made extra special by our important visitor....Mrs. Bretherton, who visited us this morning. We were all so excited and pleased to see her. We were all proud to hear of the different reasons that our certificate children had been chosen for and these included; for making amazing progress in spelling and reading, for being a positive role model giving 100% all of the time, for showing resilience and perserverance, for working really hard to improve presentation and for developing healthier friendships. Mrs. Bretherton even surprised Mrs. Welson with her own certificate! At the end of our assembly we were treated to a taster from Mrs. Darch and Mrs. Wood, from the upcoming Kington pantomime 'Dick Whittington', we were all very excited and entertained by their song. 

Across KS2 it has been the first time presenting the draw prize for completing homework and collecting the stamps. Our happy winners were really excited with their prizes and we look forward to our next draw next half term.

Today, you will have been emailed our annual reading newsletter which has details of the whole school competition linked to World Book Day (the paper plate which has come home today) and information about how we are celebrating this special day along with information about reading in our school. Please let us know if you did not receive the newsletter.

We hope that everyone has a 'happy half term' and we look forward to welcoming everyone back to school on Monday 24th February and hearing about the things you have done or places that you have visited.