Newsletter – 6th March 2020

Dear Families,

Our Year 5 and 6 have returned safely from Grenville House having had a wonderful week of adventures. Thank you Mr B for keeping us updated daily with the lively blogs. They will remember this week all their lives.  Thank you to Mrs Dunnage, Mrs Ley and Mr B for giving up their home life luxuries to look after the children, I’m sure they will sleep well this weekend!

World Book Day
A great event, thank you to all the parents who supported this. School Council had a very hard job deciding on the winners, but finally decided upon the following:

• Early Years runners up: Billy as Mr Todd from Peter Rabbit, Morgan as Luke Skywalker, Noa as a Smed from The Smeds and The Smoos, and Leo as Fireman Sam, and our winner Paddy as Wally from Where’s Wally.
• Beech and Yew runners up Fred as Tin Tin, Grace S as Paddington, Olly as Dobby, Millie as Violet Beauregarde, George W as The Periodic Table, and our winner Grace G as The Hungry Caterpillar.
• Oak and Birch runners up: Alec as Gandalf, Elijah as Mad Eye Moody, Harriet as the parrot from Dr Doolittle, Grace as Mr Gum, and our winner Luca as the Wild Robot.

Well done to the staff who made a great effort too. Of particular note Miss Turner who I didn’t recognise in her costume as The Mad Hatter!

Winners received a £10 book voucher and all the children received a £1 world book day voucher. Happy reading everyone!

Thank you messages 
Crediton Book Fair very kindly gave some free books when they visited last week. All ordered books have now been collected. You can use the £1 off book voucher there, or at other bookshops.
Thank you to the PTFA for funding the school to buy Pie Corbett’s ‘Book Spine.’ This is a collection of quality books which he recommends all children should read, or have read to them during primary school. We are going to keep these books for teachers to read to classes.

Tummy bugs, coughs and colds
We have a number of children and staff away this week with stomach bugs and colds. We have been reminding children this week to prevent the spread of germs by remembering to ‘Catch It, Bin It, Kill It’. ‘Catch’ coughs and sneezes in a tissue, ‘Bin’ the tissue rather than keeping wet tissues in pockets or up sleeves where the germs can spread, and to ‘Kill’ germs by remembering to wash hands regularly and particularly before eating. To make sure hands are clean, we are advising singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ twice! This is particularly relevant in light of the coronavirus. While there is still no diagnosis locally, we want to make sure we are all doing our very best to keep healthy.

Mr Dray
Mr Dray is recovering after a burst appendix. He was in hospital for nine days and was very poorly indeed. He is now at home recovering and we hope to see him soon, but not before he is fit and well. The children have made cards which we hope will bring him some cheer.

PTFA News
The PTFA has recently registered for two fundraising websites which generate money to the PTFA with money then benefitting the school and children.  If you shop with Amazon, then please register with Amazon Smile (no charge) and select Chagford Primary School PTFA then Amazon donates 0.5% of your purchase price to the PTFA. There is no charge to you as the purchaser, just remember to log onto your Amazon Smile account each time you make a purchase and that is all you need to do – such a simple way of generating much needed funds! 

Parent Meetings
Please sign up for mid-year review meetings. The sign-up sheets will be available from Monday.

Poetry By Heart
Can you recite a poem from heart? It’s a great skill to be able to not only remember all of the words, but to project your voice and entertain while reciting too. This is something we will be encouraging children to do for our in class competitions. The finalists will perform on Thursday 19th March at 9.15am. All are welcome to attend. 

Easter Celebration
We will have our Easter Service at the church on Wednesday 25th March at 2.00pm, again all are welcome to attend. 

Housekeeping
A reminder to parents please that if your child/children are off sick, that you need to ring the school office (tel. 01647 432412) by 9am EACH day they are off. All other absence, including medical and dental appointments need to be authorised – please pick up a blue Absence form from the office in good time.
Can we also ask that all uniform including PE kit, shoes, trainers, lunch boxes etc are named? It makes it a lot easier to reunite missing items if we know who they belong to.

Nits
Gosh these nits are resilient! Please keep up the treatments. Thank you. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/head-lice-and-nits/  

With very best wishes,
​
Miss Tara Penny