May 2022

18 Buckden Roundabout May2022 School & Pre - School The children have had a busy time in the run - up to the Easter holidays, marking St David ’ s Day, and St Patrick ’ s Day and Mother ’ s Day, and most recently Easter. Some of the children have visited St Mary ’ s Church, where they had an impressive behind the scenes tour of the church with Father David. Back at Preschool, we have been marking Easter and spring with a loose parts bunny activity (great for their creativity, po- sitional language, fine motor skills and naming parts of the body). The craft table has also had an Easter theme, making Easter eggs from playdoh, and our sensory table has featured spring animals, loose parts, eggs to weigh and count and sen- sory media such as compost. Sally the librarian also found us a lovely selection of Easter books. On our walks, we have often been letting the children decide the route. It ’ s really important for them to get a sense of their local area and community, so we always point out places of significance to them, such as the doctor ’ s surgery, the shops and their own homes. The newly revamped Home Corner has proven to be popular. Many ‘ dinners ’ and ‘ cakes ’ have been prepared and shared, and the children enjoy sitting back in the armchairs and flicking through the Hunt ’ s Post or Tesco food magazine! They ’ ve also really been enjoying exploring painting and mixing colours with different applicators: metal rollers, cotton buds, toy cars and toothbrushes. Sensory play is a real favourite with our current cohort, too, and they thrive on learning about letters and mathematical concepts through their play with sand, soil, len- tils, pasta and shaving foam. Their communication and ICT skills are also being developed through using our ‘ Alexa ’, and the children love picking a mixture of traditional songs and pop hits to sing along to! We have also welcomed Miss Emily, our work experience stu- dent, who will be with us every Thursday and Friday. For committee enquiries, please contact our Acting Chair, Hel- en Lumb, at buckdenpreschoolcommittee@gmail.com . To arrange 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 April 2022 For the majority of April, we were on Easter school holidays, at the time of writing it is the last day of term and it is snowing outside!!! Fingers crossed that we get to experience warmer/sunnier weather very soon. During March we experienced a significant increase of positive Covid cases within school amongst staff and students, but thankfully now the numbers are once again low. During a two - week period, we were very short staffed but we were able to continue with daily school life with the help and hard work of our staff and the flexibility of our children to adapt to different adult faces in and around the school. We shall see what the summer term brings as more Covid restrictions are lifted. Our Year 4’ s returned from our first residential trip in over two years. A group of 45 children and 4 adults had a 2 night/3 - day stay at Grafham Water Centre and took part in lots of activities such as archery, bushcraft, mountain biking and raft building. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and had lots of fun, they returned home happy and exhausted. For Comic Relief on the 18 th March the children were able to come to school for the day with messy hair or wear a hat. We raised a fantastic £344.40, so thank you to parents and chil- dren for their generous donations. On the last day of Spring Term the PTA organised a ‘ Break the Rules ’ day, the children really enjoyed being rebellious. The children were able to say no to school ties, school shoes, and yes to hoodies, colourful hair accessories, temporary tattoos, nail varnish, messy hair, unhealthy snacks and writing in a different coloured pen! We are very proud to say that Buckden Primary Academy have been awarded 1 st , 2 nd and 3 rd place in the Rotary District Young Environmentalist Award, this is the first time that one school has won all three awards. The children were presented with their awards in assembly by the District Commissioner. The winning team will now go onto participate in the National com- petition. We are very pleased that as a school we have achieved the RSPB wild Challenge Bronze Award and the children are now working to achieve Silver. The Wild Challenge award is a spe- cially developed suite of activities for schools to engage chil- dren with nature and provide practical learning opportunities. In Reception we were lucky to have a visit from the biggest tractor the children have ever seen. The children got to touch the tractor and compare their size to the giant size of the wheels. We look forward to the Summer Term! Christian Aid Coffee morning More details on page 21