It was lovely to welcome back all of our children for the new school year and our ten new Reception children have settled in well.
We were all very sad at the death of Queen Elizabeth II and had a special worship time in school to remember her life. Our children went to St Cuthbert’s Church, Plumbland to sign the book of condolence there and also viewed the flowers from the Flower Festival.
Year 3,4,5 and 6 have enjoyed their Forest School sessions this term, they have created a new fire circle and had a forest tidy. They discussed water safety in fast flowing streams and were shocked at how much the stream had filled up. Their theme for the term was ‘team work’ and they demonstrated what could be achieved by working together. They also had lots of fun playing team games.
Our swimming sessions resumed for the Junior children at Wigton swimming pool and they also enjoyed their cricket tuition sessions with Jon Gibson.
We held our Harvest Festival at St Cuthbert’s Church, Plumbland and the children talked about the way Harvest Festival is celebrated around the world. We heard about the yam festival in Ghana and Nigeria, the grape harvest of Vendinia in Argentina, the Pongal festival in India celebrating the end of winter, as well as Crop Over in Barbados and the first fruits ceremony in Swaziland. Our infant children sung the harvest song ‘If you’re grateful for your food’ and we all sung three of our favourite hymns. The children sung beautifully and completed their readings brilliantly. Our Year 6 children served refreshments to members of the community after our service and acted responsibly and maturely. Our Harvest donations came to £101.60 and we donated this to Cockermouth Food Bank.
We had a whole school visit to Carlisle Cathedral and the children enjoyed the tour of this amazing building, learning about its history and events that take place there and the features inside. They were particularly mesmerised by the height of the building inside and were fascinated comparing the medieval stained glass windows to the later Victorian ones. The children looked at the intricate designs of the misericords, where the canons sit and even got to create their own designs. They enjoyed their question and answer session with Canon Michael.
During the school year we have half termly subject themed mornings, where we work in mixed age groups completing a carousel of activities. We find these mornings really valuable and it enables us to develop our cooperation skills working in different age groups, as well as foster a love for different subjects. We enjoyed our Geography themed morning and the activities included: fieldwork outdoors- searching for and recording human and physical features, baking biscuits in the shape of the UK, learning about symbols on real maps and then creating our own, using our imagination to create a treasure map with our own key, navigating using a compass and following compass directions to solve a puzzle, completing tricky jigsaws of the countries in the world and finally finding cities, countries, rivers and mountain ranges in ‘real’ atlases and recording the grid references.
Our School Council planned our Children in Need celebrations and we had a non uniform day, completed an assault course and had competitions and puzzles.
Children in Reception, Year one and two thoroughly enjoyed their African drumming sessions led by ZoZo this term. Year 3 and 4 children have been learning to play the ukulele and year 5 and 6 children have been having guitar tuition with Colin Hendra from Cumbria Music Service.
Our children performed brilliantly in our whole school Christmas concert, ‘Silent Night’ and we all enjoyed our joint community Carol Service at St Cuthbert’s Church, Plumbland. Our children really enjoyed their visit to Theatre by the Lake to watch ‘The Borrowers and had lots of fun with their Christmas Craft morning. Other fun events included our whole school Christmas lunch, Christmas parties and Breakfast with Santa which was organised by Fops, our fundraising group.