In Monday’s liturgy, we talked about times when we have been jealous in our lives and learnt about a young girl called Bernadette who was visited by Mary 18 times. This young girl lived in the town of Lourdes, which is now one of the most visited sites by Catholics around the world. October is the month of the rosary, and in school, we will be praying the rosary throughout, led be our Mini-Vinnie Good Shepherds. In school we use a resource called Ten Ten to support our prayer and liturgy, they have started to provide their own Parent Newsletters. Why not click on the link below to find out more.
Don’t forget our first family mass on Sunday 6th October. Some of the children from across the school will be reading, taking the offertory and taking part in the choir. Please don’t gravitate to the back, the point of these masses is that the children witness the entirety of the mass and see what Father Peter does, along with the parish. Children need to be sat with their families, as would normally happen at Mass. The choir will be with Mrs Lyons in the choir loft - no school uniform required for anybody. Just a lovely mass together.
Next Friday, our children from Year 1 - Year 6 will be walking down to church for the Harvest Festival. If you are able to walk with us, we would be so grateful. We are finding it increasingly hard to walk the children to church so if you can, we would really appreciate it; especially with our littlest children.
“Nature is a tool to get children to experience not just the wider world, but themselves.” – Stephen Moss.
In our final week of this half-term, our Forest School canopy will be built. We are so excited to see the start of our journey begin. Miss Lavelle and Mrs Tierney have been having working lunches every Friday to plan what they want to see and how it will look in our grounds. From hammock areas, to mini beasts and the fire pit; we cannot wait to see it come to life. This week, Miss Lavelle has been on her Forest School leaders training - and by the look of the photographs, she has had a wonderful week! From climbing trees, to making a three course dinner over the fire, she is bursting with ideas to bring back to school.
For us to develop our area, we also need to look at what others are doing too. On Wednesday afternoon, 4 of our Earth Angels from Year 5 headed to St Peters to see what their forest school was like. They had the best time, and other than getting a school dog, have the most wonderful ideas to share.
We have also had a new addition of tyres onto the playground this week and cogs!
Learning Role Models of the Week
Learning role models of the week
Virtue butterfly award winners
Parents’s Meetings - Hold booking for now - some parents data is not bein rectified. Will text when back up next week.
In two weeks, there will be the opportunity to speak to your child’s class teacher and find out how they have settled into school this year. Again, we are taking a hybrid approach to hopefully include everyone - a mixture of in school and virtually. After half term, there will be a series of coffee mornings and stay and plays so that you can see your child’s work first hand.
There is now an opportunity for parents to meet virtually with your child’s teacher. We would like to invite you to a virtual parents’ meeting to discuss your child and to celebrate their achievements. We will be using the same system we used in the past, called SchoolCloud. This will allow you to access the meeting from where ever you are (even if you are flying off somewhere exotic), with no need to wait in school. This can always be tricky, especially if you have multiple children, or have planned October half term holidays. We have found in the past year that parent attendance has been higher virtually, than it was in person. I even had the pleasure of conducting a parents’ meeting whilst the family was on a beach in Mexico!
This platform has no app for you to install, you simply use your web browser, and you will be automatically connected with the teacher at the time you have booked in the appointment schedule. Each appointment will last ten minutes and start at the allotted time. You will then see the time and count down on the screen. Please note: when the countdown ends, the meeting is automatically closed and the next appointment is started, we have no control over this. Please log in and check the audio and visual before your appointment starts.
Within the program there is a facility to add a note when you book. If there is something specific which you would like to discuss, this will enable you to communicate it to the teacher before the meeting.
The available appointments will be on Friday 18th October from 8.30am - 5.20pm. Appointments can be booked from 4pm today by clicking on this link:
When it asks you to input your child’s class at login please input the following:
Reception
Year 1
Year 2
Year 3
Year 4
Year 5
Year 6
This has to be typed exactly as above for you to enter into the booking page.
When booking, it is crucial that you use your child’s legal forename and surname – those recorded on our school management system. If any part of your child’s name is hyphenated, again it needs to be so when typing in their name. Your own name on Sims is now recorded with one of the following titles Miss, Mrs, Mr or Dr. The system will also ask for an email address so that a reminder can be sent out. If you are having any problems, please do email Mrs Nel on bursar@ourladystarofthesea.lancs.sch.uk and we will help you next week.
Office News
With two weeks to go until the end of the first half term, please can you ensure that your Parent Pay accounts are clear and All Stars payments have been made. Those children who were booked onto All Stars from the start of September will automatically roll over to the next half-term. Those children who were booked on as a result of extra-curricular clubs will come off. The club timetable for Autumn 2 will be live next week for bookings to be made.
Our Weekly Attendance
Finally, after many many meetings and emails, we have a start date for our kitchen extension. The work will start during October half term. This is quite a lengthy build and our new kitchen should be ready after February half term. For now, food will still be cooked in school until the point that they knock through. Once more formal plans have been made, I will let you know what will be happening.
Have a lovely weekend with some sunshine I hope. These Autumn days are beautiful, but so much nicer when there is no rain.
Mrs Gregan