The end is nigh – and not a minute too soon for the children. Their excitement has now reached fever pitch as the big day gets ever closer – good luck managing it when we hand them over to you next Wednesday afternoon.

However, keeping with the Christmas spirit, it has been a most enjoyable week in school. We have had fantastic performances from our Foundation stage and Key Stage One. The Foundation stage sang some Christmas songs with great gusto and energy and they definitely had the ‘aah’ factor with the audience. The nativity play this year was called ‘Strictly the Nativity’ and it was brilliant. I did tell the children that the final on Saturday can only be a disappointment and I really meant that. I would like to thank all the children for giving us such a good performance and all my staff for all their hard work in putting the performances together.

I had some really good news this week from the PTA. At the Christmas Bazaar we raised an impressive £1288.20 . We have also been informed by the Rotary this week that our contribution from the Fireworks is £5776.97 which is an amazing amount of money. I cannot thank the PTA enough and the people who helped them for all their hard work in raising this amount of money. I know that recently they have been a little short of volunteers so those that do help have had to work extra hard in order to raise this money.    I will be meeting with the PTA early in the New Year with ideas of how the school would like to spend this money.

Next week may only consist of 3 days but we have a lot to pack in. On Monday and Tuesday we are carrying out some winter art activities. As well as those we are having the KS1 and KS2 parties. On the day the children have their Christmas parties they may come into school in their party clothes so they do not have the fuss of changing in the afternoon. On Monday night it is our KS2 Carol Service and this year we are allowing younger siblings to attend. I do request though that if the church does get full that pre-school children sit on their parents’ knees for the service. If we find that the church gets over full or too noisy we will revert to our former arrangements next year.

On Wednesday it is our ‘Christmas Jumper’ day. I know today is the official ‘Christmas Jumper’ day but we have always done it on the last day of term because of our pantomime. The children still have to pay a forfeit of a £1 for not wearing their uniform (they do not pay a forfeit on their party day) and we will donate all the proceeds to the ‘Text Santa’ campaign. The pantomime this year is ‘Aladdin’ and if it is as good as last year’s performance I know the children are going to have a really good time.

I hope you can have a restful weekend because the next one will certainly not be. Please remember that on the Wednesday, 21^st December we finish at 2.00pm.