With the help of our minibus, the children in UFA will be going out and about every week. Mrs Rossall and Mrs Jones took the board games group out to Belmont Care Home this week and they brought smiles to many faces. Thank you to the staff and residents of Belmont House for welcoming us. We hope to go again very soon with a different group of children. Next week, the photography group are visiting an art gallery and they will spend the afternoon working with a real artist! Stating the obvious, my animal welfare group needn’t go anywhere outside our school for a few weeks because we have four new chickens and two nests of newborn rabbits to tend to! We have had an unbelievable turn of events regarding our lovely animals and we have been blessed with tiny rabbits- Wallace and Gromit’s ‘The Ware Rabbit’ is no patch on us! We are looking after them with lots of love and care and I politely ask you all to leave the hutches alone because we do not want our scent on the babies, which could most likely cause the mother rabbits to disown and stop feeding the little ones. We will let nature take its course but I will keep a close check on their progress. Mothers and babies are all doing well and the little ones continue to have plump tummies and wriggle nicely beneath the blankets of fur.

Golden Award assembly was interesting this morning. On a journey back to the 90’s, Fairsnape Class told me they had been making Lava Lamps! I was then told all about the ‘egg experiment’ which involves dropping eggs into various liquids and monitoring the reactions. I asked how long the experiment would last for (I wish I hadn’t) and I was told that it would last until they ‘can’t stand the smell anymore’ in the classroom; I know which class I will leave last on the list to visit!

Weekly Shakespeare workshops continue and Fridays continue to be a hive of musical activity! The school band were amazing last Sunday for Family Mass and I look forward to them playing again alongside the Folk Group at our next Family Mass on Sunday 14th April, which is Palm Sunday. I am not sure how the band will wave palms and play instruments as they process from school but ‘Palm hats’ may be an idea as the children can play and the pals can wave in the breeze. We will see! Either way, the children will be playing a new hymn and playing the previous hymn, slowly building up our repertoire! We look forward to seeing Christine from CAFOD on Monday, who will be leading a Lent assembly for us and working with children afterwards.

Next week, all of our junior classes are going to the Science Museum on a trip and Parlick Class are going to Cobble Hey. We are publishing work on Pobble now and I am personally working through every child’s writing to read and make a comment before publishing. Please make sure you give your consent for us to do this. It was an absolute pleasure supporting our children at the swimming Gala. Well done to Phoebe, Isla, Lizzy, Blake, Felix, Grace, Katrina and Thomas. We were placed 4th overall in our division-absolutely fantastic!

Reading with Reception was a joy and I have been amazed at their writing skills. They have been busy making monster eggs, junk model monsters and monster egg shaped writing to tuck inside the eggs-it is all very exciting! In fact, you can’t move inside the classroom without coming into contact with exciting writing dripping off the washing lines. The phonic skills, high frequency word knowledge and handwriting is just remarkable! Our Year 1 children have been writing some wonderful stories and I can’t believe how much progress they have all made since the start of the year. Our Year 2 children are flying high in all areas and Year 6 are focusing on achieving their personal best in SATs. Year 5 went on a high school taster day today and we welcome two new student teachers: Miss Wilkinson in Beacon Class and Miss Clarke in Fairsnape Class.  We are very busy and it will be a joy to welcome Mr Gilmour back to school next week on a phased return. Mr Gilmour will be working in my office for the next few weeks, as his leg is still healing. Mrs Silvester will be staying with us for the duration of this and next half term in order for Mr Gilmour will remain out of class, working on leadership and management tasks alongside me. This will ensure his leg is fully healed for him to return to class in the final half term and not cause injury to his leg by being in a busy classroom environment too soon.

I wish you all a relaxing weekend.