Friday 10th May
Happy Friday!
We are loving the beautiful weather here at Olive Hill! We are so lucky to have extensive grounds attached to our school building and when the sun is shinning we certainly like to be outside. Currently, the majority of our children are using the back playground and field at lunch time and it is has been great to see the many different activities taking place - year five have recreated the BGT stage using tyres, whilst other members of their year group have been digging a large hole in the hope of creating a shelter. Our younger children continue to enjoy their dressing up clothes and small world toys, and Mr Brady continues to run sporting activities for our older children. Miss Walters has been introducing a new activity each week for the children to try and this is adding to the variety of things on offer for our children at lunch times. In this weather our numerous guinea pigs go outside in their run, and many of our children like to sit and watch them over a break or lunch time.
Not only has our outside environment been in use at break time and lunch times, it is also used a lot for outdoor learning opportunities and intervention groups. With this in mind, please make sure your child is coming to school appropriately equipped for the weather conditions. On rainy days they will need coats and suitable footwear, and on sunny days they will need sun cream applied at home, and sun hats for when they are outside. We ask that all of our children come to school with a water bottle each day.
Our new fencing is now complete, and we are expecting the roofing work to have been completed in the next few weeks. The fencing that runs between the school boundary and the gulley has been specially made and we are very impressed with the results. We have also set a trend and other schools are now requesting the same.
Next week is the start of statutory assessment season for primary schools across England. The season starts with the year six SATs and over the course of the week they will sit tests in reading, maths, spelling and grammar. From Monday to Thursday we will offer our year six cohort the opportunity to enjoy breakfast with their peers prior to the tests starting. We often have parents asking how they can best support their children, and our number one answer will always be to make sure your child is in school and on time every day - this goes for every year group across the school. If your child isn’t in school they will be missing essential elements of their learning.
We have now been operating our new lunchtime menu for a number of weeks and we have been gathering feedback from the children to ensure we continue to offer meals they enjoy (within reason, school meals have lots of requirements around sugar and fat content so chips and ice cream every day are not option). We have met with our catering providers and answered lots of the children’s questions, we will be sharing this with them during an assembly next week. The ketchup request has already been actioned! As you imagine, with 300+ children accessing school lunches each week there was a variety of feedback, including some who like the new cheese on the pizza and others not liking it (solution to this is to mix both cheddar and mozzarella), but there was one thing that was unanimous - the children really appreciate the familiarity of the kitchen staff. A huge thank you to Sue, Sam and Sarah for all your hard work in providing the children of Olive Hill with a lunch.
We hope everyone has a nice weekend - with lots of sunshine, paddling pools and ice cream!