We like to give you as parents plenty of notice of days of when children can dress up to come to school. Given that you have already bought uniform for your children and we are an ECO school, we also like to keep these simple and reusable to avoid needing to buy something special. In the spring term of 2024 we have the following special days when children can dress up and also enjoy a special theme lunch:
Friday 15th March: Comic Relief
Comic Relief has again been chosen by our School Council as one of their charities this year. Children can wear red noses, funny hair and other red items, but not football shirts, and we will be collecting for Comic Relief.
All dressing up days are optional and we are equally happy for children to wear their normal uniform. We are not asking for any donations for any of these days except Comic Relief.
Here are the previous dressing up days this term.
Thursday 18th January: AA Milne's Birthday and Winnie-the-Pooh Day
Children can dress up as a character from the Winnie-the-Pooh stories and enjoy a fun lunch include Winnie-the-Pooh's Honey Cake. We will be showing some Winnie-the-Pooh films in the Dining Hall.
Tuesday 13th February: Chinese New Year - Year of the Dragon
Children can wear just one thing red, the Chinese lucky colour or even all red or red hair - not football shirts though. We will be serving a Chinese lunch complete with Fortune Cookies, and chopsticks for those who can handle them but we will still have knives and forks and good old British baked potatoes. We will have some exciting Chinese videos in the Dining Hall.
Thursday 7th March: World Book Day
As we are having a live in-school performance of Jungle Book by M&M Productions this year, the dressing-up theme is any character from Rudolph Kipling's Jungle Book or any animal from a book, or just any book character. Themed lunch and showing the film of The Jungle Book in the Dining Hall.
Ramadan is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar and very important to many members of our school community. The exact dates of Ramadan change every year. This is because Islam uses a calendar based on the cycles of the Moon. We have Ramadan in our calendar as starting Monday 11th March but this needs to be confirmed by an actual sighting of the moon.
During the month of Ramadan, Muslims fast; not eating or drinking during the hours of daylight. Children are not expected to fast until they reach puberty.
Ramadan remembers the month the Qur'an (the Muslim holy book) was first revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. The actual night that the Qur'an was revealed is a night known as Lailut ul-Qadr ('The Night of Power').
The end of Ramadan is marked by a big celebration called 'Eid ul-Fitr' (the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast). Muslims are not only celebrating the end of fasting, but thanking Allah for the strength he gave them throughout the previous month. We wish our Muslin families strength if they are fasting and a very happy Eid celebration at the finish.
You can find more information here: Ramadan (BBC Bite Size)
In keeping with the latest government advice, we are continuing our policy of not allowing children to bring mobile phones to school and parents are advised not to give their children phones until they are older, and then to monitor their use of them use of them very closely. This is because mobile phones do not keep children safe but put them in danger, they are also a major disruption to learning. The is also the view of UNESCO the United Nations organization for education, and this approach is being adopted in other countries. Government guidance allows schools to confiscate mobile phones for a period time and to search children's bags for them if thought necessary. As many smart watches have phone capabilities and they are extremely expensive items we do not want children to wear these to school either.
We are taking part in the 15th year celebration of Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel, the UK’s largest inter-school cycling, walking, wheeling and scooting challenge. In fact we have been taking part since it started as The Big Pedal. The challenge runs from 11-22 March 2024. It’s free to take part and we would love everyone to be involved.
What do you need to do?
Encourage your child(ren) to walk, use a wheelchair, scoot or cycle to school on as many days as possible during the event.
Including everyone
We want to make sure that everyone can get involved in Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel.
Why we are taking part
Sustrans Big Walk and Wheel is a great way to build physical activity in children’s daily routine which is important for their physical health and mental wellbeing.
Active school runs also help to reduce congestion and air pollution outside the school gate. A 2021 YouGov study showed nearly half of UK children worry about air pollution near their school. And that children thought active travel was the best away to bring down these pollution levels.
Plus there are some great prizes to be won every day if we get enough children taking part!
Useful resources
To help you prepare, Sustrans has developed a handy free guide to walking, cycling or scooting to school. It is packed with advice to help you have hassle-free journey to school.
For more information about the event go to www.bigwalkandwheel.org.uk . Enjoy the challenge!
Best wishes
We apologize for the lack of hot lunches today. This is because our kitchen extractor fan is not working, and without this we cannot use any of our ovens or hobs (the gas is automatically disabled if the fan fails and operating our steam oven without it working would set off the fire alarm). We are working at getting this repaired as soon as possible, but in the meantime children will have a choice of sandwiches with the usual fruit and salad selection and a range of cold desserts or crackers with cheese or butter. We hope the fault will be repaired before Thursday but, in any case, we already have Shere Khan's Chocolate Cake in the freezer waiting for its tiger striped icing for World Book Day!
We have lots of events in Book Week to inspire children with their reading and writing. As we have a theatre group coming in to present Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Book on Tuesday we have chosen animals from this book or any books as the theme for dressing on World Book Day on Thursday 7th March. We would like to see some characters from the Jungle Book but think that lots of children have or could soon improvise the costume for an animal book character. If this is difficult but your child already has a costume of another book character this is quite acceptable. We have been having more dressing up days as children enjoy them, but we want you to be able to recycle or improvise costumes rather than wasting money, and to make it possible for every child to take part. Dressing up is entirely optional - there is no donation required and normal uniform that day is fine too.
Well done to our A team girls who won the Thurrock Cup Semi-Final!
Thank you for supporting our celebrations for of The Year of the Dragon. on Our kitchen have provided a special Chinese Lunch featuring Sweet & Sour Chicken and Vegetable Stir Fry. As we have no Chinese Language Assistant this year classes have video linked with on of our excellent former CLAs, Xioumeng Li who provided some amazing online learning for us when she was here during the pandemic. We will also be singing some of our favourite Chinese songs.
Well done to our swimmers for coming first place in the Thurrock Swimming Gala!
We restarted our Walking Bus on the first day of term, walking across Orsett Heath from The Pavilion. Due to popular demand we have now extended the route and, after dropping children off at school, staff go to the Bon Bon to collect more. The bus starts at 8.15 am from the Pavilion (changing rooms) off Orsett Heath Crescent and leaves the Bon Bon 8.30 am. You can leave children at the Pavilion from 8.00 am and at the Bon Bon from 8.25 am. Both points have some parking as the aim of the Walking Bus is both to encourage our children to enjoy the healthy activity of walking to school and to alleviate traffic and parking problems around the school. As an Eco School we hope it will also contribute towards limiting the carbon emissions which are causing harmful climate change. There is no charge for using the bus and you are welcome to join us in walking with your child.