Dear Parents and Carers,

apologies for the lack of a newsletter last week – it was a very busy week indeed! We had our Nativity Play, our Christmas Concert, our Christmas Fayre and much, much more. By the end of the week I think most of us were fit to drop. This week has started busily too with our trip to the Pantomime. Other than our Christmas Lunch on Thursday I’m hoping we can slow down and take things a bit more easily for the last four days of term.

There’s just a few things I wanted to say to you at this end of the week rather than waiting for Friday so this will be a shorter set of messages.

Willow Class

Most of you will know that Katie Webber is returning from Maternity Leave after Christmas. You will be very pleased to know that Mrs Laguna will still be working with us. Our plan is that, at least up to Easter, Mrs Webber will teach the class four days a week and Mrs Laguna will teach them one day a week. Mrs Laguna will generally teach the Monday but for the first week back after Christmas Mrs Webber and Mrs Laguna intend to swap their days so that Mrs Webber can welcome the class back and get them used to having her back.

Now that the library and lunch service are no longer in the right hand side of the Willow Block we intend to develop that space more to make it more suited to be R, 1, 2’s home base. There will still be some free flow between the Nursery Side and the R, 1, 2 side and, of course, the children will still share their outdoor area so they will see a lot of each other but we’ll be able to focus the Nursery continuous provision more to what those children need and the provision on the R, 1, 2 side more to what they need.

Reverse Advent Calendar

Our Christmas collection of tins, cans , packets and and boxes for the Dawlish Food Bank is growing and growing – I’m hugely impressed by the generosity of the children and families who have donated. I am looking forward to driving a car load of donations to the Food Bank after school on Friday. If you haven’t contributed yet and would like to, I know that toiletries such as shampoo, shower gel and toothpaste will particularly welcome, as will dried goods like pasta and, of course, everyone deserves a little treat at Christmas so luxuries like a box of mince pies or some chocolates would be very well received. Just drop donations in to Tammie in the office and we’ll sort them out to go to the food bank.

Alarms

People living close to the school will know that we have been having some issues with our alarm system. On a few occasions now this has caused real inconvenience to the community for which we apologise profusely. We are working with the alarm company and with Portacabin to resolve this. If you notice the alarm going off, it would be helpful if you could call the school number 01626890465 – even out of hours, that number goes through to my mobile phone so you will reach me and I can either attend myself or alert someone else to come as quickly as possible. Our longer term solution is to contract a commercial keyholding company who have officers on standby who can attend any callout within half an hour – that’s a bit quicker than me driving down from Crediton.

School Christmas Dinner

It’s our school Christmas Dinner on Thursday and Mr Tyrell will be organising some fun games for the children the same day. Children are very welcome to come to school in a Christmas Jumper if they would like to.

Dates For Your Diary

School Christmas Lunch and Christmas Parties – Thursday December 18th

End of Term – Friday 19th December

Spring Term Begins – Monday 5th January

 

Sincerely, Ed Finch