St. Michael’s Weekly Post – 13th January 2023

13^th January 2023

We would like to share our congratulations to Miss James.  She is expecting a baby and we are looking forward to welcoming them into the St Michael’s family towards the summer.

Yesterday Birch Class (Year 2) enjoyed a fantastic Cricket Festival in Marlborough.  It was a great opportunity for the children to learn and practise some new PE skills.  The children really enjoyed this sporting trip.

Swimming – Elder class and invited pupils

Today was the first swimming lesson for children in Elder Class (Year 4).  They travelled to Hungerford Leisure Centre and will do so for the rest of this term’s PE lesson.  We hope they enjoy these sessions.

Next week, there will be no swimming lesson on Friday.  We are working to find an alternative, one off, date to replace the session and we will confirm this ASAP.

Outdoor Play and Learning (OPAL)

As part of our new OPAL initiative, we are continuing to expand the variety of items children have to play with during break and lunch times.  Recently children have been having great fun building, playing and creating things with tyres, drainpipes and crates. Those with waterproofs have also been enjoying our mudslide!

In our OPAL assembly this week, the children came up with some amazing ideas of things that we could add to playtimes to make them even better. This is where we could do with your help! If you have any of the items listed below which are surplus to requirement at home, we would love to use them here at school. This will continue to ensure playtimes are led by the children, organised by the children and enjoyed by the children!

• Any unwanted kitchenware (no sharp cutlery please!) e.g. pots, pans, baking trays, weighing scales, wooden spoons etc. (We’re hoping to create a mud kitchen and have a range of interesting percussion ’instruments’ for music making!)
• Tarpaulins (to use for den/shelter building)
• Buckets and spades
• Trowels and shovels (for our digging area)
• Wooden pallets

If you happen to have any of these things, we would MASSIVELY appreciate them! Likewise, if you have any other bits and pieces that you think might be useful for different areas of our playground, do let us know.

In the long term, we’d love to have a mud kitchen built for the children to use—if you happen to have some building skills and you could spare some time to knock up a mud kitchen out of old bits of wood or pallets, that would be amazing!

Any help you could give would be hugely appreciated and would go a long way to helping children have even more fun and exciting playtimes. Do let us know using Weduc or catching us before or after school.

Many thanks,

Mr Jarvis and the OPAL team

PE – Cherry Class

Cherry Class will have PE on Mondays. From Monday 16^th January onwards, instead of Fridays.

Message from the PTA:

Reminders: Burns Night – Saturday 28^th January 7pm-11pm 
Join us for a Burns Night Celebration with live ceilidh band and a disco at the Memorial Hall, Aldbourne. Tickets are £20 each, with dinner and a welcome drink included. A licensed bar will be available. Please purchase tickets on PTA page on school website https://www.stmichaelsaldbourne.co.uk/our-school/who-we-are/st-michaels-aldbourne-pta/.

School Disco

The PTA will be hosting a school disco on Friday 24^th February. There will be two sessions, an earlier disco for Reception – Year 2 and then the slightly later session for Years 3 – 6. This replaces the previously advertised date of Friday 27^th January.

Message from St Michael’s Church:

Come join our Education Sunday Service on Sunday 29^th January. Further details attached.

Term 3

Term 4

TD days

Monday 20^th February 2023

Monday 26^th June 2023

Monday 24^th July 2023