E-newsletter 16

Netball Champions!

Well done to our Year 5/6 netball team who won the Wollaston Cluster competition in style on Tuesday's rearranged event. A note from the organisers:

Thank you to all the schools who attended the netball tournament. We had 5 teams from four primary schools.  The standard of play was very good and all the games were very competitive with only a few goal between the games. We played in a league so that every team played each other in 10 minute games of two halves. This allowed the teachers to rotate the pupils through all the positions on the court. The year 12 leaders umpired the games and helped run drills for the pupils when they had a rest slot.  Well done to Grendon for winning all of their games and finishing as champions!

Red Nose Day and FOGS Easter Mufti

Thank you for your generous donations for Comic Relief and for the FOGS Chocolate Tombola.

Our Red Nose Day raised over £160 and the staff room is jam packed full of chocolate eggs ready for the Easter Fair. 

'My Dad Could Fix That...'

The strong gusts last week caused one end of the lean-to roof at the back of school to break free from its fixings and, for a short time, the roof was flapping in the wind. Young Harry in Oak must have spotted the puzzled, desperate look on my face as I stood on the bank in the Early Years area, wondering how best to repair the roof as we cordoned off the area and ushered the crowds of curious children away to a safe place.

'My dad could fix that.' said Harry.

Let this serve as a warning to all parents. Whilst we take certain things children say to us with a pinch of salt, at other times we take them on their word and, one phone call later, Harry's dad was up a ladder securing the roof in place and saving the day. 

Easter Service and FOGS Easter Fair

Please join us on Wednesday 3rd April at 1.30pm for the school's Easter Service in church, followed almost immediately back in school by the FOGS Easter Fair. Everyone is welcome.

Term Dates

A reminder that Friday 5th April is a training day and school will be shut. Term dates for the 2018-19 and 2019-20 academic year, along with important school events can be found in the News & Calendar section on the school website. 

Junior Strictly Dancers: Good Luck!

Our well rehearsed Year 3/4 dancers performed in Achievers' Assembly this morning as a warm up for the main event tomorrow night. Not only do the children look fantastic, their routines were amazing and they should all approach Saturday's competition at the Deco Theatre, Northampton with great confidence and pride.  

FOGS Film Night

A huge thanks to the FOGS team for another very successful film night. Last Friday's showing of Hotel Transylvania 3 was very popular, the children were all extremely well looked after and they all seemed to have a great time. Many thanks for supporting this event which has raised more vital funds for the school.  

Hot Meals

Our amazing school cook, Dawn, consistently creates a fantastic range of hot meals for our children (and staff). In terms of how these meals are received, children generally fall into 3 categories.

The first category is thankfully the largest group by far and is made up of children who know what is on the menu on any particualr day and who happily tuck into their food, barely surfacing for breath until they are finished. No nonsense. Get stuck in. Job done. 

The second category is for those children who approach their meal with some suspicion - where the food sounds familiar but doesn't look quite how they expect it to. Phrases which I have genuinely overheard include 'these chips are the wrong shape', 'well this isn't like Granny's lasagne' and 'this custard is not the right shade of yellow' but with some gentle encouragement the children generally get there in the end and leave with full stomachs and a smile on their face, realising that food can be the same and different without being better or worse. 

The third category belongs to that very, very small minority of children (and different children each time which is why this is a universal plea) where lunchtime is always a surprise, where the first they know of their menu choice is when it appears on the table in front of them, often immediately followed by the statement 'I don't like...'. We realise that the child who is adamant that they don't like the jacket potato that has been ordered for them probably has, at some point in their life, eaten a potato before and possibly even enjoyed it and that sometimes a child might claim to have no knowledge of what has been ordered for them when perhaps they have. Nonetheless, lunchtime staff would be very grateful if you could make sure that your child is involved in selecting their meals so that they have the best chance of leaving the hall with a full belly and so that food wastage can be reduced to a minumum. Thank you!

After School Childcare: Update

There was a very positive response to the request for expressions of interest in the Get Active after school childcare provision. I have been in regular communication with Get Active and if the number of initial responses we received translates into registered 'customers' then the provision certainly looks viable which is great news.

Following the pleasing level of feedback, Get Active are in the process of registering the school site with Ofsted - this is a process that must be completed by Get Active before they can operate at our school and they are expecting a positive response in the next couple of weeks.

In response to some queries on your expression of interest replies, I can confirm that:

• once registered, Get Active will accept childcare vouchers
• initially, the childcare provision will run during term time only
• at this stage, Get Active will not be offering before school supervision 
• current arrangements for before school supervision will continue

 I will obviously keep you updated with more news as soon as we have it.   

Many thanks for your continued support.