I hope you all enjoyed the half-term break. I know there was not much to do but at least you all got a break from home-schooling. The great news for this week is that we are all coming back. We are all very excited here and will be really pleased to have all of the children in school. The teachers are especially glad because even though home schooling has been challenging for all families it has been a lot of work for the teachers and I know they are really pleased to be returning to face to face teaching.

The whole school is returning on Monday 8^th March but I do ask you all to remember that we are still in a national lockdown and many restrictions are still in place to ensure that we keep down the transmission of COVID19. I mention this because you need to remember that from that Monday you can still only meet one other person outside so I do ask that when you drop off and pick up your children you do not congregate together in groups for a chat. I know that this will be very tempting but we have enough problems with managing social distancing because we are at the end of a cul de sac. We cannot even operate a one-way system because of our location so please do not exacerbate the situation by gathering in groups. We do not want to be responsible for the R rate going up and schools having to be shut again.

You will all have received my letter explaining how things are going to operate when we return. We have lots of exciting things for the children to look forward to as we are holding a Science Week and we are holding our World Book Day on Thursday, March 11^th. This follows a request from a parent which we thought was a good idea so all the children can now come into school on that day wearing their costumes and all their friends can see them.

I hope you all have a good weekend. Enjoy your time as a family before the children return to school. You have all done an amazing job with the home schooling but from Monday 8^th March it is back over to us. I look forward to seeing many of you then.

 

I hope you have all had a good week. Half term is upon us and although I am glad it is a holiday I wonder if you are all like me and are thinking, ‘’What am I going to do?’’ My husband has booked a few days off so we can be together and he is excited because he thinks we can sort through some cupboards. Even with not much to do I cannot get excited at the prospect of early spring cleaning which gets me back to my original question because if any of you can think of things that I can do to get me out of tidying cupboards I would be most appreciative.

I would like to thank parents again for completing our survey on remote learning. You will have seen my response to your suggestions in my newsletter. I have not responded to all of them but I have got them all on record so please do not feel that we have ignored them. Depending on when we all can return to school we may be implementing more of your suggestions after the half term break. I would also like to thank you all for the many positive comments that we did receive about the home –learning. When you are having to work very hard to re-invent the way you do your job it is satisfying to know that your efforts are appreciated.

I hope you all have a great half term – if it is only to get a rest from all the stresses of having to work and support your children with their learning.  I look forward to when we re-connect on Monday, 22^nd February.

 

I hope you enjoyed the ‘Big Bird Watch ‘weekend last week. I admit it was difficult to do much on Saturday because of the rain but I was out and about on Sunday. Where I live there are a lot of Red Kites and I do find it fascinating to watch how they appear to glide across the sky. I also feel quite scared when you get close to them (which you can do near where I live) because although I know they will do me no harm (or so I hope) they are big birds with sharp claws and beaks!

I would like to thank all those people who completed our questionnaire about online learning. We are grateful for all comments because we do want to provide you with the best quality package that we can. As remote learning is a relatively new thing for all of us it is an ever-evolving process and we are constantly reviewing how we can improve what we deliver. Even since we started in January we have added additional parts to our remote learning including reading groups and some social drop-in sessions which will start for KS2 next week. I would like to remind you all though that remote learning is a more time-consuming process than regular teaching which may mean that the school is not able to provide you with all the resources you would like.

Just one more week to go and then it is half term. I cannot believe that it has arrived already although when I think back to Christmas which is less than 6 weeks ago it feels like a lifetime has passed and I am sure that many of you feel the same way. There will of course be no home learning over the half term and it may be a good time to get your children to do activities away from any type of screen. Spending hours at a computer each day is not good for anyone but at the moment that is the only way we can continue with any semblance of our normal life so when we can get away from screens we should take the opportunity.

That is all from me –the weekend is looking quite dull but at least we can still get out. To be honest I will do anything to get away from the constant football matches which seem to be on all the time and which my husband ‘needs’ to watch. I would love to go back to the old days when all football matches were played at 3.00pm on a Saturday. Have a good weekend.