Dear Parents, Grandparents and Carers

What a lovely start to the summer term. It is only two newsletters ago that were making alternative plans to work around the snow, but now we are taking measures to protect children from the sun...

Please find below a link to the policy on sun safety; we recommend hats, but sun glasses can cause nasty facial injuries if children fall whilst wearing them and sun cream should be applied at home and not brought in to school. We will remind children to drink plenty of water and we avoid them being outside for extended periods in strong sunshine.

Lolly Friday - tomorrow!!

With the marvellous weather, we are bringing back the after school sale of ice lollies on Fridays, commencing tomorrow. Lolly Friday proceeds will all go to the field project so bring your 50 pence along.

Charity and tax status

We are delighted to announce that Friends has obtained full charity status with the commission. It has also successfully been granted gift aid status by HMRC. This means that the government will contribute 25% to donations you make on events and sponsored events. It also opens up the possibilities of greater funding opportunities through greater reach on grants and having our own "just giving" gift aid sponsorship pages giving us reach and the tax back boost. This is marvellous news. Thanks to all who contributed to this achievement in what is amazingly only a few short weeks.

Grants

Our grant gurus team have put another application in for community event funding and are working on 3 or 4 other grants including funding for the school field. They will need your help shortly: we will be back to you. Thank you to the team for all the hard work.

EGM minutes are available on the school website on the Friends tab and make a good read if you want to catch up on the discussion that we had about next steps on the field project, critical thinking to equip our children for the changing world, and community links that are being strengthened. Feel free to contact the Chair of Friends, Mark Williams at mark41williams@hotmail.com if you have any questions or would like him to take you through some of the detail on our exciting journey.

And finally, we would like to thank Mrs Annabel Horseman for stepping into the interim Secretary role for Friends at such short notice, and for all the work she has done, always inclusive, approachable and incredibly supportive of the school and children. Thank you for taking on a tricky job and being instrumental in getting us to such a great place. Don't worry though Annabel is going nowhere: in fact, she is the driving force behind Lolly day! Ruth West as you will be aware has taken the permanent Secretary appointment.

Best wishes

Jane Paterson and the staff team

Message for Chestnut class and Year 5 Willow Class parents

We are undertaking a unit about sound. As part of this unit we will be making and designing our own instruments.

Could the children bring in a handful of beans, rice, pasta, lentils or similar for Monday 23rd April.

Whilst throwing out/recycling over the next few weeks could you keep bottle tops/plastic containers/cardboard boxes/jam jar lids and anything your child thinks maybe useful for constructing their instrument. Please bring to school the week beginning 14th May.

Please find below links to this week's letters and some updates and reminders. All of these letters are on the school website under recent letters.

Kind Regards

Kirsty Staker

Dates for the Diary -

• KS2 Sats - Monday 14th May 2018- Friday18th May 2018

• Year 6 Cycling Proficiency starts - Friday 25th May 2018