Newsletter for week ending 20 June 2014

Secondary Transportation Meeting
Please see letter in book bags this week from the Governing Body about the outcomes of the joint meeting held on 16th June with representatives from Icknield Community College (ICC) and the Local Authority.
If you are intending to send your child to ICC and live in Stadhampton, Newington, Chiselhampton and surroundings it is important that you read the letter and consider your options.
You might also consider engaging with the wider community to help to find solutions.

Sports Week – week commencing 23rd June 2014
As a part of 'Sports Week' on Friday 27th June we shall be having a whole-school Fun Run in the morning. This will be organised by Mrs Manzie with support from the School Council. It will be £1 to enter which will go towards School Council funds for extra break equipment. All pupils will take part in this event wearing their school PE kit. (Please have this in school every day during Sports Week).

Gardening Club
Thank you to everyone who supported the Gardening Club’s plant sale on Friday afternoon. £19 was raised, which will enable new seeds, etc to be bought in due course. Thank you to Mrs Burnell for organising this event and to everyone who bought plants.

Working Party
A huge ‘Thank You’ to the PTA for organising last weekend’s working party to help ‘spruce up’ the school and school grounds. The impact of all the hard work is very evident. Thank you all. There wasn’t enough time to treat some of the fences and outdoor classroom this time, so it is hoped that some parents may come forward to volunteer to do this – either at a weekend or after school. Please contact Georgina Wiggins or Mrs Hopkins if you can help. Thank you.

Quad Kids – report by Lola and Max
“Nearly all of Year 6 took part in a competition for Oxfordshire schools called Quad Kids. Quad Kids is a competition to see which is the best sporting school (particularly in athletics) in Oxfordshire. We got through to the semi-final which in itself is a great success. The children who got through were Josh, Max, Owen, Lola, Thea, Abby, Ruby, Amy M, Ollie and Alex.

In this competition we had to do Vortex, standing long jump, 75 metre sprint and a 600 metre race. Sadly we only came 8th out of nine schools in the semi-finals, but we all did really well, mainly because we worked as a team and helped each other finish the 600 metre race by running alongside each other and cheering them on! We all enjoyed our experience and some of us managed to also beat our personal bests.”

Food with Thought
‘Alice’s Day’ on Thursday 3rd July – ‘Wonderland’ lunch menu – chequered sandwiches and a selection from the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Assortment, including a choice from the Queeen of Hearts Pudding Collection. Further details are on the Alice’s Day posters.
Priced £2, order by Monday 30th June please.

Explore Learning
Congratulations to Ella Perring who has achieved a top 100 place (from 13,000 entries!) in the Explore Learning National Competition.
We thought we would share Ella’s success by printing her story for everyone to read:

Once upon a fairy tale, in the deep dark woods, lived twelve, not very handsome goblins. Although they were not the nicest looking creatures, with their algae coloured skin and pus-filled oozing warts they each had a special talent. Well that was all except one goblin who had never been blessed with a talent. Unfortunately for him, he was also the ugliest of them all. This goblins name was Gangrin and he had tough hairy skin, an infestation of warts and a long knobbly nose. He was made to feel that he was not part of the group.
One day Gangrin had had enough. He found his courage and went to talk to the other Goblins.
“Every day you make me feel like I am worthless and stupid but I know full well that I am not. I do have a talent I just haven’t found it yet.”
“You have a talent, yeah right; I’ll believe that the day pigs fly.”
“I will show you that I have a talent but right now I am going to find a place where I am appreciated for who I really am.”
So off Gangrin went on his quest to a new land hoping to find a better life waiting for him. As Gangrin soon found out this was to prove harder than he thought. For every village that he passed judged him only on his looks and not on who he was inside. For what seemed like years but were only actually a few months Gangrin walked into village after village every time faced with looks of disgust until one day he found hope. At first it was the same as usual the adults hiding their children from what they saw as a beast but this time the children smiled at him. Not only did they smile, some of them also skipped over to him. Initially the parents were nervous and tried to persuade their children not to go to him but the children could see something different in him.
Every day the parents watched cautiously through the window at their children playing with Gangrin and every night it would be the same. The children would come home and tell their mums and dads what a wonderful day they had had and what new enchanting story Gangrin had told them.
As years went by Gangrin grew famous across the land and was nicknamed the handsome story teller. For as each cautious parent grew to love Gangrin one of his pus-filled oozing warts or tough pieces of skin would come off and in its place would be a smooth, attractive piece of skin. Very quickly every parent grew to love Gangrin so he was soon looking the handsomest Goblin ever known to man.
Gangrin finally realised what his special talent was and that was that he was kind and caring but most of all he was the greatest storyteller in the land.

Moral
Everybody has a talent


PTA NEWS:
School Spring Clean Up- thank you to the parents who came and helped out - Sarah Green, Sam Green, Rowena Dobson, Kevin Bowerman, Paul Wiggins and Paul Gravett as well as our fantastic PTA team. It would have been nice to have seen some new faces but there are similar events in the pipeline for the summer. I think we can all agree that the school is looking great so thank you again to all who came to help.

Summertime Funtime - Saturday 21st June - 2pm until 4pm. Please come and support our mini summer fete, lots of ‘crafty’ things to do, a bouncy castle, cream teas and a tombola. Great raffle prizes to be won including a tour and tasting day at Chiltern Wines and afternoon tea at The Crazy Bear. All our competition entries will be judged with prizes for the winners.

Sports night - Friday 11th July. BBQ and bar, prepaid tickets available soon.

End of School Year Disco - Thursday 17th July. Please put the date in your diaries.

Parent Survey – if you haven't already done so, then please access the link below to answer a few short questions about the PTA and our fundraising. It really will help focus our fundraising efforts during the next school year.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/5PKFLCJ

Please note clicking on the link may not work on certain devices, e.g. iPad and iPhone, so you may need to copy and paste or type the details into your browser. Please let Georgina Wiggins or Melanie Gravett know if you have any problems accessing the survey.

Our next meeting is Tuesday 1st July 8pm at The Crown - everyone welcome!

Thank you for your continued support of the PTA.

Cake Club
Congratulations to Leo Burnell, the lucky winner of last week’s cake, kindly donated by Mrs Bowerman. A reminder to Mrs Buckner that she is on the rota for Friday 27 June.

DIARY DATES:
Saturday 21 June PTA Summer Event
Wednesday 25 June Festival of Voices Concert at Dorchester Abbey
Tuesday 8 July Clarinet Concert for parents
Wednesday – Friday 9, 10, 11 July ‘Moving –up days’ for all pupils. Reception pupils due to join in September 2014 also invited into school for 3 days.
Sports Evening – Friday 11 July-6pm for 6.30pm start. All welcome.
Friday 18 July End of school year assembly at 9.05am.
School finishes at 1.30pm.
Monday 11 – Friday 15 August Summer Sports Course at Stadhampton School. Please see posters on each classroom door and in the entrance foyer for details of how to book.
1st, 2nd September Staff INSET Days
Wednesday 3 September Start of Term 1 for all new and returning pupils



LITTLE BEARS NEWS:
Next week the Little Bears are going to continue with measuring ourselves and talk about people on stilts at the circus and measure ourselves again to look at the difference. We are also going to explore shapes and make some clowns using all of the different shapes we can find.

Community News:

• Please see attached flyer from The Ruskin School of Art about a weekend of workshops and learning for art teachers at the Ashmolean Museum and the Pitt Rivers Museum.