Dear Parents and Carers,
welcome back. It has been a jolly busy week here and half term already seems like a long, long time ago. I hope that you had a good break – our love and solidarity to those members of the community, and I’m afraid I think there was a few, who spent much of the break suffering with various coughs, colds and viruses. There seems to have been an awful lot of it about.
STOP PRESS- PE Impact Day – Monday 2nd
It is our PE Impact Day on Monday – can children please attend school in their PE kit – Key Stage Two will be playing handball and the younger pupils will be throwing and catching and working on their coordination.
Nursery News
It’s official. As of next Monday, the Nursery at Kenton Primary will be going to five days a week. We’ll be welcoming a new colleague, Karen Wickett, to help us run the setting on Mondays and Fridays and we do have plenty of space so if you know of any families nearby with two and three year olds who would like a space, please do pass this flyer on to them. Ask us for a handful of printed copies if you know somewhere useful that you could share them.
Thanks to the KSPA!!
Our library is looking better and better thanks to amazing work from the KSPA – today we received a load more bean bags and two beautiful little sofas so the space is getting cosier by the day. It’s just lovely seeing children snuggled up really enjoying those beautiful brand new books. This has been funded from the children’s hard work in our Readathon and the generosity of the parents, carers, family and friends who donated. Isn’t it nice to see that hard work pay off!
World Book Day FRIDAY March 6th
A reminder that Kenton Primary will be celebrating World Book Day on Friday next week – a day later than other schools so that it doesn’t clash with dance, PE and Forest School!
Children are welcome to come dressed up as a character from a favourite book. Some children don’t like dressing up and that, of course, is absolutely fine too – there’s absolutely no pressure and no expectation. Please don’t spend money on this – we all have enough money problems at the moment and imagination always counts above presentation in my World Book Day league table!
Community Welcome Morning
Please carry on spreading the word about our Community Welcome Morning on Thursday March 12th. We really want to see ex-pupils and all members of the community to let them see our lovely new site, make sure they feel warmly embraced into the ongoing community of the school and entertained by the children’s singing and dancing. It should be a lot of fun.
May Day – A Message from KSPA
SAVE THE DATE!!!
Monday 4th May 2026 – May Day is back!!!
Kenton School Parents Association (KSPA) are thrilled to announce that we are, once again, organising Kenton’s May Day.
This family friendly event will be on our school playing field from 12-4pm… we’re so excited that The Otter Morris Dancers are joining us again, along with Spangles The Clown 
from Circus Berzercus, Big Bear Pizzas, The Local Scoop, Posh Nosh, Glitterology Face Art, singers from Powderham Live, as well as our very own Kenton School May Pole Dancers, the KSPA Big BBQ, the Dolphin Pub Bar and lots of stall holders too!
from Circus Berzercus, Big Bear Pizzas, The Local Scoop, Posh Nosh, Glitterology Face Art, singers from Powderham Live, as well as our very own Kenton School May Pole Dancers, the KSPA Big BBQ, the Dolphin Pub Bar and lots of stall holders too!We’ve also got our AWESOME raffle – with some amazing prizes to win – including two tickets to see Lewis Capalidi at Powderham!!!
Our theme this year is “The Forest & Fairy Folk 
“ – and we’ll be awarding a special prize to the Best Dressed Family, so dig out your wings, wands, fairy skirts, and favourite green outfits! We’d love to see how creative you all are!
& Fairy Folk “ – and we’ll be awarding a special prize to the Best Dressed Family, so dig out your wings, wands, fairy skirts, and favourite green outfits! We’d love to see how creative you all are!We’ll have our Flower Wreath Making stall in the Dingly Dell, where you can make a traditional woven headdress and add flowers and foliage (please bring a bunch from your own garden) and also to add to Wicker Green Man – ready for our closing May Day Parade – which everyone is welcome to join 
.
.If you’d like to get involved, have a stall, or help out on the day we’d love to hear from you. But otherwise, just put it in your diary, and we’ll see you on the day – for one of the most exciting fundraising events of the season!
We are particularly raising money this year for our VERY exciting Forest School project – which we will be letting you know more about over the coming months!
School project – which we will be letting you know more about over the coming months!Please come along to the Community Welcome Morning on Thursday 12th March to meet Heather (Chair) and other members of the KSPA – or message via the KSPA Facebook page.
We can’t wait to see you!
Reading Party and Reading Targets
last term’s Reading Party was a huge success. Lots more reading was happening at home and at school and the party itself went down a storm. There will be another Reading Party in the last week before Easter. Every child should have their target by now so if your child is in Willow Class, make sure that reading record is getting filled in every time you read together and if your child is in KS2 remind them to keep reading and keep quizzing. If you or your child doesn’t know what their target is, do message the class teacher who will be happy to remind them and to make sure you know so you can keep up the support and challenge.
Please and Thank You
Thanks to everyone who responded when we put the word out that we were looking for a child seat or two. We very quickly acquired what we needed so don’t have immediate need of any more. We could, however, do with a couple of booster cushions for children who need those so if you have any of those that your child no longer needs, we would be very grateful.
We have a plan to build a mountain at the back of willow class – for this we need all the old car and tire tractors we can get hold of. If you have any knocking about or have a contact in the car tyre business do get in touch. If you want to drop any off, round the back of the car park by the biffa bins is the spot.
The children would also love any offcuts of decking or timber for their den making, really good quality solid pallets, prams or pushchairs and plastic tubs or buckets. Again, if you have any of this stuff knocking about, leave it by the bins behind the admin block and let us know.
Help Urgently Needed at The Promise School
You will have here the dreadful news last weekend that The Promise School in Okehampton burned down. This is really shocking. A colleague from the school has been in touch to ask for our help. As well as the building itself they have lost all the things that were in the school – we can sympathise with them knowing just how awful it was losing our school and learning resources in the flood. The Promise is a special school for children with social and emotional difficulties, many have experienced multiple ACES and have also been excluded from school more than once so we know they are especially needy and this will have shaken them even more than it might shake some of our own pupils.
Pupils at The Promise will be moving into temporary accommodation of some sort in the next week or so. They are asking if we can help them out with things like lego, toy vehicles of any sort, soft toys, board games, art and craft materials, marble runs, books – all the sorts of things you would find in a set up classroom.
We are collecting donations in the reception area of the school and when we have a carful one of us will ferry it over to Okehampton. Do spread the word please and drop off anything that might be useful to reception any time that the school is open.
Attendance – Biscuit Questionnaire
Attendance does remain a real worry for me at Kenton. We have many children with an exemplary record of attendance; twenty one pupils still have attendance over 98% – a huge well done to those children and their families. However, the average attendance of the school as a whole so far this academic year is 93.6% – that’s significantly lower than the other primary schools in Ivy Education Trust and lower than the average of 94.6%.
I need some help with this, I want to make sure that children who are just a little bit under the weather still want to come to school and that their parents trust us to care for them – and to call home if it turns out that sending them in was the wrong decision rather than playing on the safe side and keeping them home. Can you help me think of a way to incentivise every family to make sure their child attends school every single day? Click this link to get to the biscuit questionnaire and give me your ideas.
No idea is too bizarre – if we need to see Mr Finch in the gunk tank when our weekly attendance tops out over 98% or if it needs a party for parents on the half term we beat Kenn and Cockwood then, believe me, I will make it happen.
Click the link to take part in the survey – one entrant will be picked at random to win a pack of those delicious Lidl Deluxe biscuits.
Sports Equipment
Amongst the many, many things that were lost in the flood was a huge amount of PE and sports equipment. A while ago, once the storage in the new hall became available, we got the go ahead to order replacements for a great deal of what was lost. For weeks now, Mrs best has been signing for mysterious packages which turn out to be full of tennis balls, hockey sets, hoops, bean bags and all the rest. This week alone we got a brand new full size crash mat to add extra fun into our gymnastics lessons and a huge box of Pickleball equipment. Mr Tyrell doesn’t hand around and just a day or two later children were busily batting balls to and fro. It looked so much fun that the staff are considering setting it up for an after school Pickleball session next week.
Forest School
Our pupils just love Forest School. It’s a real highlight of their week and, I think, of their year too. I have shared some photos below so that you can share in their joy.
A little bird tells me that we might have some exciting news to share quite soon about our very own Forest School provision a little closer to home. I’m keeping quiet about it for now but I am very excited.
