Page 83 - Phonebox Magazine December 2014

Rocket Launch
Stoke Goldington First School
Festivities and Celebrations
Stoke Goldington CE First School’s festive activities this month include a trip to Stoke Goldington Christmas
Trees to visit the tree plantations, plus the long-awaited Christmas Nativity play ‘Born in a Barn’ for which all 27 children have been practising very hard!
The School’s special ‘Money Week’ will include a Christmas market in which pupils will be able to make and sell their own handcrafted items, cakes and bakes to visiting parents and School Governors.
Staff, Governors and children are also celebrating another ‘Outstanding’ inspection, this time with regard to its status as a Church School. The final report of the Statutory Inspection of Anglican and Methodist Schools (SIAMS) revealed that all areas inspected achieved outstanding grades.
The SIAMS inspector was particularly impressed by the children’s high standards of behaviour, pride in their Christian values, understanding of diverse cultures and the School’s partnership with the Church.
This latest inspection means that both Stoke Goldington CE First School and its partner School, North Crawley CE First School (federated under the Ouse Valley Partnership) have attained ‘outstanding’ OfSted and SIAMS inspections – an amazing achievement!
Emberton School
We finished off our “This is Me!” theme last half term with our exciting Senses Challenge! The children designed activities and then invited their parents to come in and take part in Blind Food Tasting,
Guess the Instrument and Pasta Feely Shapes challenges, to name but a few. The children love sharing their learning with their families in this interactive way; and took another opportunity to do so in the last Forest School session of the half term when the Halloween special saw children and parents making magic potions, wands and broomsticks from natural materials and then toasting marshmallows on the fire using sticks they had whittled themselves.
Our new theme is “Up, Up and Away” and we have been using adverbs and adjectives to describe fireworks, making rockets with 3D shapes and learning about Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space in 1961. We were also very lucky to receive a visit from the National Space Centre UK with their StarDome! Everyone crept in to the dark, inflatable planetarium and were then whisked up into space to gaze upon the constellations of Ursa Major, Cassiopeia and Orion, to see the North Star Polaris in all its glory; and to hear the African tale of “The Sun and the Moon” being brought to life along with snippets of Greek Mythology too.
Our annual Children in Need fundraising day saw everyone dressed up as their favourite superhero or space character and bring their teddy along to dress up too. Within the fun of the day we also took time to think about what really makes a superhero and who are the heroes that we come across in our everyday lives.
It was “one out, one in!” as we bid a sad farewell to Joseph and
Up, Up and Away
wished him luck in his new school, but then we were delighted to welcome Jasmine and her family and hope she will enjoy her learning journey with us.
Our Open Morning was very successful with lots of prospective children and parents coming to see what goes on at our school, and we look forward as always to welcoming new faces next year. If you are interested in your child attending a small rural school, call us on 01234 711518 and we would love to show you around!
Phonebox Magazine 83