All adults should do what is best for you. When adults make decisions, they should think about how their decisions will affect children.

May I take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy new year. The children have made a swift start to the new term.

We would like to welcome our new Nursery Children to Blanford Mere, they have all settled in extremely well. We wish them a fabulous learning experience here!

Well done to Lily B who is the first child this term to be awarded her Pen Licence! I am sure that there will be other children joining her soon.

Last week, Year 3/4 and the teaching team were supported by David Moss (Language Consultant) as part of the ongoing termly visit programme, to deliver their French lessons. These sessions are always well received by both the staff and the children with lots of exciting games. The teachers then continue this learning for the children throughout the rest of the term!

Year 2 launched balloons last week, as part of their new topic ‘World Explorers'. We are really excited to see how far the balloons will travel.

On Tuesday Year 6 received their first part of the ‘Growing Up’ Talk with Loudmouth theatre group, followed by an information session with our School Nurse – Laura Bickley. The children found this to be very informative and approached the sessions with maturity. There will be a follow up to this later in the year.

A big thank you to the group of Mums who gave their time in the lead up to Christmas to help us with practical preparations. Your time and support was appreciated.

We would like to invite your child to a ‘Heroes and Heroines’ Disco on Friday 25^th January 2019.

We will be having a ‘Heroes and Heroines’ themed fancy dress disco, children can come dressed as their favourite super hero, popstar, footballer, dancer… in fact anyone that they feel is an inspiration to them or children can come in their own clothes, if they prefer.

Please note that we have very young children, so we ask that no scary face masks are worn.

There will be a DJ, as well as dancing and party games, a drink and ice lolly provided too.

Entry is by ticket only. The tickets are £4.00. We require tickets to be purchased in advance, so we have accurate numbers for the disco. School staff will supervise the children at the event. You can purchase tickets at the school office from Friday 11^th January 2019 am until Friday 25^th January 2019 at 3.15pm.

Please note you cannot pay on the door for this event – so please purchase a ticket in plenty of time!

The disco will start at 4.30pm and children must be collected promptly by an adult at 6.00pm. In the past we have had several children not collected on time, if this is the case, then a fee will be charged for after school care.

You will need to download the school life app from either the Google Play store (for Android smartphones and tablets) or the Apple App Store (for iPhones, iPods and iPads). Search for ‘schoollife’ (all one word) and then look for the School Life logo;

Once downloaded and installed, open the app up and accept the notifications, when asked.

Finally, login with your personal login details below and start receiving all the important notifications.

If you do not have an Apple IOS or Google Android device, you can use your logon details on our school website to get all of the same content.

We are holding our Parents Evenings this term on Wednesday 6th and Thursday 7th February 2019. Nursery parent consultations will be on Tuesday 12th February and Wednesday 13th February.

For this and future parents evenings, all appointments should be made online.

It is really important that you are logged into the ‘SchoolLife’ app or can access the website via a ‘tablet’ or ‘desktop/laptop’ computer.

All appointments will be ‘active and live’ to book from Saturday 26^th January 2019 until Tuesday 5^th February 2019 – Yrs Rec – 6.

Nursery appointment lists will be ‘active and live’ to book from Saturday 26^th January 2019 until Monday 11^th February 2019.

Each class teacher will put up appointment lists indicating the times that they are available. Please note that these will vary slightly for each teacher.  

This is a valuable opportunity for you to meet with your son or daughter’s class teacher. We do encourage parents to bring their child for a “three way conversation”.

Nursery Parents should enter via the Nursery Entrance.

Yrs Rec- Yr 6 Please enter and exit by the main entrance doors.

As usual there will be seating available in the hall (Yr R, 1, 2), corridor (Yr 3/4) and library (Yr 5/6), so that you can wait in comfort and browse through your child’s books with them before seeing the teacher.

Appointments allow a maximum of 10 minutes for each set of parents. If you need additional discussion time you may need to make a further appointment on another day as we do try our best to ensure minimum waiting times for parents.

To ensure safe dismissal of all children from the playgrounds the following arrangements apply:

I would be grateful if parents did not ring the office to make appointments - we simply do not have the capacity to make appointments on behalf of parents.  We realise that some parents will be unable to attend the two allocated parents evenings because of work or other commitments. Staff would still like to see you, so please liaise with your child's classteacher to arrange a mutually convenient time.

Parking

I know that I have mentioned this in several other newsletters, but yet again, we have received complaints from local residents regarding parking. We ask that parents are considerate of our neighbours and the local community by - not parking across driveways, not turning around on resident’s driveways or parking on the grass verges – blocking the public footpath. We would greatly appreciate your co-operation with this. We have advised residents to write down the make/model of the vehicle and registration number and ring 101 to report this issue to the Police to take action. To avoid this, we would be very grateful if you would support us with this issue.

Please click on the link below for the Highway Code rules – which has been kindly sent into to me by a parent. Thank you!

A reminder please, that children should not bring a pencil case to school. School provides all equipment that is needed for learning. Children become very distressed when equipment is misplaced or broken and hinders their learning as they become distracted by their pencil case. Please support us by ensuring that your child leaves their pencil case at home for their homework.

Today’s ‘Safeguarding assembly’ for children in Years Rec-6

During assembly today, we were talking to the children about ‘how to keep themselves safe’. We have helped the children to understand that it is their right to be happy and safe and to encourage the understanding that any problem or worry that they may have is legitimate, and to share their worries – big or small – with their trusted adult; at home, at school, or with ChildLine.  0800 1111

The assembly was led by Mrs Miller and the content delivered in a sensitive and age appropriate way.
 

During the assembly we aimed to give children:

As parts of the country have had snow, this is a reminder of our procedures.

If a decision is made to close the school, it will be announced on local radio

Free Radio BC- 97.2

Free Radio—B’ham –96.4

Black Country Radio

Monday 4^th February 9.00am – Yr 5/6B Class assembly

Monday 4^th February pm – Yr 3/4 Maths Championship

Yr 5 Mission X – Friday 8^th, 15^th February and 1^st and 8^th March

Wednesday 6^th and Thursday 7^th February – Yr R – Yr 6- Parents Evening

Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th February – Yr R – Yr 6- Parents Consultations

Friday 15^th February – school closes for half term at 3.15pm

Monday 25^th February – school re-opens at 8.50am

Tuesday 26^th February – Year 5/6 Maths Championships

Tuesday 5^th March – School Photographer – more details to follow

Friday 22^nd March – INSET DAY - School closed to pupils

Wishing you all an enjoyable weekend.

Regards

Mrs Miller