June 2022

22 Buckden Roundabout June 2022 School & Pre - School During the last month, we ’ ve continued our nature and growth theme at Preschool. The children have collaged flower pictures and planted bedding plants, which they ’ re now looking after. This is providing opportunities for talk about what plants need to grow and use mathematical language about size. They have also been exploring paint using carrots! We ’ re continuing the theme with a planned ‘ Mr Potato Head ’ activity. This is a great sensory activity, but also encourages talk about healthy eating as well as size, positioning, and facial and body features. No plastic features here -- it ’ s a ‘ green ’ activ- ity, using green beans, broccoli florets, carrot strips and other vegetables to build the limbs and faces! The weather has stayed mostly kind, so we ’ ve enjoyed plenty of walks to ex- plore nature and our surroundings. Thank you to everyone who has stopped to talk to us when we are out and about, es- pecially the lady walking her dog who told the children all about the moorhens in the Valley. Our maths activities have focused on shape. Our tuff tray on the balcony has been filled with brightly coloured, translucent Perspex shapes that produce colourful shadows. The children have enjoyed looking through them and drawing around them. We ’ ve also provided peg boards and mosaic shapes for 2D pic- ture - making. On the balcony, following the children ’ s interests, we ’ ve estab- lished a included a very soapy car wash station outside for the toy cars! There ’ s a new foam hopscotch set to get the children active and help number recognition, and a new a quoits game to encourage throwing, hand and eye coordination, and turn taking! Indoors, we ’ re sharing ‘ The Colour Monster ’ book again for Mental Health Week and making plans for National Tea Drinking Day, Father ’ s Day and of course the Queen ’ s Jubilee. Our Jubilee celebration is bound to include dressing up, a very special snack or lunch, and craft activities to produce a keep- sake. For committee enquiries, please contact our Acting Chair, Hel- en Lumb, at buckdenpreschoolcommittee@gmail.com. To ar- range a visit or apply for a place, please call 01480 810600 or email us at buckdenpreschool@yahoo.co.uk. For more infor- mation, visit www.buckdenpreschool.co.uk or read our up- dates on https://www.facebook.com/www.buckdenpreschool.co.uk/ BUCKDEN CHURCH OF ENGLAND PRIMARY ACADEMY May 2022 The start of the Summer Term started off with glorious weather, and continued right up to the May half term. Taking advantage of the warm weather the children enjoyed lots of lessons outside. Our reception children enjoyed their first day trip since starting school in September. They all had a fantastic day at Paxton Pits where the children had the opportunity to pond dip, hunt for bugs, bird watching and explore the plants and trees sur- rounding the Ouse valley. Children, staff and parent helpers had a lovely day making wonderful memories with lots of learning in a fun environment. In a very long time we were able to invite our Reception chil- dren ’ s parents to watch their children perform a Super hero dance, they had a great time dancing outside on the school field. After a two year break due to the Pandemic our Year 2 and Year 6 children were able to take their National Curriculum Assessments (also known as SATs). All the children involved did their absolute best and we are very proud with how the children took all the tests in their stride. Especially our Year 6 students who had to conform to strict exam conditions, they were rewarded with ice lollies and an afternoon of fun games on the playing field. We are very proud of a small group of Year 5 children who raised over £1200 to help Ukrainian children, by organising a bake sale held at the Scout Hut on Saturday 7th May. It was a fabulous afternoon and the children involved are a credit to the school. Well done everyone! During the week of the 16th to 20th May, we encouraged the children to walk to school, so that they could feel the benefits of physical exercise as well as helping the environment which as a school we are passionate about. Even children who live outside the village were able to park at the Millennium Centre and walk to school from there. Children were rewarded for their efforts with a sticker. Our PTA have been busy over the last few weeks, they organ- ised a fantastic quiz night at the Lion pub one evening, and raised £80. Currently they are busily organising a lovely School Summer Fair for the 21st May to be held on the school grounds. They are planning lots of fun activities for children to take part in with a range of stalls, raffle, BBQ/refreshments and lots more. Fingers crossed they raise lots of money to help benefit our children at school. The school office has been very busy behind the scenes the last few weeks, as we have switched over to a new MIS (Management Information System). We have chosen to link up with Arbor which is a simple, smart and cloud - based sys- tem, which will benefit not only the school by helping staff work faster, smarter and more collaboratively but it will pro- vide parents with a Parent Portal App which will allow us to communicate with parents more efficiently, parents can up- date their children ’ s information, get live updates and make online payments or bookings on the go. Finally, we are very pleased to say that at the time of writing we have no absences from staff or children relating to Covid - 19 and this thankfully has generally been the case since return- ing from the Easter holidays. Long may it continue. We wish everybody a great May half term and enjoy lots of Jubilee celebrations over the bank holiday.