Dear Parents,
Another short week this week with the Labour Day holiday on Thursday and Friday, never-the-less we still have a huge amount to reflect upon and celebrate. Last week we had the music circus for years three and four and, as Mr Puttock has mentioned, these were awesome events that were extremely well run. Thursday evening the year 5 parents were shown an presentation on the upcoming Xian residential trip which was very informative and reassuring. This year all of our Key Stage 2 residential visits take place on the same week with years three to five disappearing off to all corners of China. On Friday we also had our final open morning of the year where we opened the doors of the classrooms for all to come and visit and see the fantastic activities the children were taking part in. This was extremely well attended and the teachers did a fantastic job of getting all visiting adults involved. I walked into many a classroom where a visitor was reading with a group or getting their hands mucky with play dough! This was great to see and encouraging that so many parents were willing to get involved and experience the day to day life inside the classroom.
Today our Key Stage 1 student council received the first pictures of their new dustbins which they have had created. Earlier in the year student council ran a competition to design more attractive dustbins to be placed around the school to encourage children to use the dustbins. These look absolutely fabulous and will add a great splash of colour around the playground, fantastic work by the children in student council to get a real child led initiative seen through to the end.
One last note, in assembly on Monday the Head boy Guilermo and Head girl Rachael informed the children of an appeal that the year 6 children are running. In preparation for their residential visit to Guizhou the children have launched a ‘Pencil Case’ appeal. Whilst in Guizhou the children will be visiting a local school that up to two years ago was situated in a cave. This school provides education for the children of the Getu valley, most of which have very little and have to hike to school in the morning. As part of the service element of the trip our year 6 children will be visiting the school, teaching the children some English and sharing a cultural exchange. Whilst in the school the year 6 children would like to present children there with a pencil case, donated by BSB students, to aid them in their future studies. Year 6 are asking for children to make up a pencil case with erasers, pencils, colouring pencils etc but avoiding sharp objects as year 6 will take them in their hand luggage on the plane. This is a lovely idea, very similar to our shoe box appeal that we run at Christmas. If you have not already begun making up a pencil case, please do talk to your child about this and send one in for this worthy cause.
As always, have a very restful, relaxing long weekend.
Christian