Friday 11th February

Happy Friday!

Those of you who are most observant will have noticed that last week’s blog has just been published. After writing it last week, it remained in the draft box until today. It wasn’t until Mrs Shinner mentioned the missing entry that I realised what had happened. You will now have two weeks worth of news to catch up with.

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week (7-13 February 2022). This year's theme is Growing Together.

We’re encouraging children (and adults) to consider how they have grown and how they can help others to grow.  The children have been thinking about the importance of mental health and many have joined in different activities and discussions around this topic. Our year five and six children also had a special workshop delivered by Phase Trust earlier in the week.

Safer Internet Day is celebrated globally in February each year to promote the safe and positive use of digital technology for children and young people, and to inspire a national conversation about using technology responsibly, respectfully, critically, and creatively. Safer Internet Day 2022 was on 8th February and was celebrated with the theme ‘All fun and games? Exploring respect and relationships online.

Educating children about how to stay safe online is an incredibly important part of any school curriculum. It can also be difficult to navigate as a parent. Having strong parental controls on Internet usage is a must in any home, despite the arguments it can cause. Children definitely shouldn’t be accessing any social media sites that are not age appropriate as it is not safe. Even with the strongest of controls, nobody can guarantee who will attempt to contact a child online and nobody can guarantee the person is who they say they are. We encourage all of children to show safe online behaviours and if they ever mention something that causes alarm we will always report it to the parents.

Thankfully, our positive Covid19 cases have remained low this week. With the government now talking about further lifting of restrictions we feel we can start to look forward to a future where our children can start mixing more across the school. All of the children have missed out on spending time with different age groups and it is important that we start to reintroduce this. Both our reception children and year six children have been making bread this week. An Egyptian recipe. Reception had a postcard from the Gingerbread Man who is currently residing in Egypt and year six have been learning about Ancient Civilisations. There were some similarities and differences between the breads they made and some reception children had a short visit to year six today so they could find out more. I did get to taste the reception bread but, sadly, year six did not offer me any.

Next week, the majority of our year six children will be attending a residential for the whole week. They are so excited and many have been packed for weeks! The organisation of this is immense and Miss Raphael and Miss Homer have worked their socks off! I happened to be in year six today when they were asking their final questions: What time do we need to go to bed? If my stuff doesn’t fit in one suitcase, can I bring another? What if my sleeping bag is bigger than the bed? What do I do if I can’t sleep? Do we have to shower everyday? The questions were varied and extensive. Year six have been like bottles of pop today as they are so excited.

We hope you all have a good weekend.

Stay safe.