Friday 30th June

Happy Friday!

If anyone knows how to slow down time, please let us know! With only three weeks left of the academic year we have lots to do.

Many of our families celebrated Eid this week. We have enjoyed sharing the children’s joy of this celebration over the week, and some of our children have worn their Eid outfits to school today - they are wonderful!

Talking of wonderful outfits, reception had a fairy tale event earlier in the week and we had a beautiful array of characters in the reception classrooms. They were all very keen to share who they were. Mrs Whitely came as a ‘meadow’ with her flowery top - what an ingenious idea!

It isn’t only reception who’ve had a special day this week. Year one attended Hawne Basin and they had the best fun! They even got to go on a boat! It has been hard to contain their excitement about Rosie and Jim. The volunteers at Hawne Basin were absolutely fabulous and they had put so much thought into the day and what they could offer the children.

Also this week, our year six children have been to the recording studio at Dudley College. Whilst at the recording studio they were able to record some of their songs from their end of year production. They sound absolutely fabulous without a studio, so this opportunity is going to really enhance their beautiful voices.

Today year five visited the Molineux Stadium, home of Wolverhampton Wanderers, and they’ve had the best day. On their return Miss Frost was keen to share some of the children’s comments from the day:

“This is the best day of my life.”

“This is a dream come true.”

“I feel so important.”

“I’ve never been so excited.”

Year four are currently very, very excited as they have a big sleepover tonight … in school! They arrived this morning with enough luggage for a week! We will let you know in next week’s blog whether we actually got any sleep!

There is a saying that it takes a village to raise a child, and that is very true when we reflect on the number of visits and trips our children have experienced, not only this week, but throughout the academic year.

We have not had to ask for voluntary contributions for any of the experiences this week due to the generosity of others. Hawne Basin was run by volunteers; both the year five and six visits were arranged by parents of our school; and the year four sleepover relies on staff giving up a nights sleep! The Earls High School have been incredibly generous with their minibus and many Olive Hill staff have now completed their minibus test, enabling them to drive both our minibus and others. Our local governing body agreed early this year that we could purchase our minibus as they can see what an asset it is. All of these trips and visits rely heavily on staff going above and beyond, yes there is a lot of paperwork that has to be completed in the form of risk assessments, but they also give up their own time to do pre-visits and they certainly don’t get a lunch break when accompanying a trip.

Our parenting community have been amazing with voluntary donations, and your attendance at school fundraising events supports us to subsidise the travel costs. We do all of this for the children, and it is so worth it - we are consistently complimented on the behaviour and enthusiasm of our children. They return to school tired, but buzzing.

Not only have our trips and visits been very exciting this week, we’ve also had lots of other excitement. Year three had a very messy day, creating cars of the future from junk. Year four have recreated Stonehenge, using custard creams and nursery tasted peas from a pod, for the first time, they absolutely loved them. Year two, our very own little chatterboxes, have been eager to tell everyone of their summer holiday plans. In assembly this morning, we continued our theme of collective effervescent building resilience by learning some moves from the Haka (previously, we have performed the Viking Clap and a Mexican Wave).

You will have received a letter, via ParentMail, informing you of the expected disruption due to strike action next week. If your child is in a year group affected by the strike, please make sure you have completed the online questionnaire by 2pm on Monday.

Thank you to everyone who supported Mufti Day, we had lots of donations for our Summer Family Festival (festival sounds better than ‘event’, plus we are having a chill out zone and a music zone). We will continue to accept donations next week, please send them into school with your child or drop them at the school office.

Right, it is time to sign off - we have 50 meals to prepare; 50 beds to set up; a cinema room to set up (we use all the ‘posh’ chairs from around school otherwise known as the ‘teacher’ chairs’) and 50 children to wear out so they may actually sleep tonight.

Have a wonderful weekend.