New Equipment Purchased from Christmas Fayre Proceeds

5th April 16

We would like to thank you once again for contributing to the success of our Christmas Fair, which raised an incredible £1800! When the concept of holding a major fund raising event was discussed at the Class Mums & Dads meetings we decided to focus on specific targets and to prioritise the purchase of playground toys and games as well as further develop our ICT resources. As you raised such an amazing amount, we have been fortunate in being able to buy more items than originally planned.

We bought several different sets of programmable robot toys, in the shape of cars and bees, for the children to practice early programming skills; they are learning to select the correct direction and angles in addition to stopping and starting the robots. Some children have already learnt to drive the bees along a set pathway. The new mini robots are used by all the classes and as their programming skills develop, we hope that the older children will soon be able to write their own instructions and then program the toys to follow the pathways they create. To help develop language skills, the children now benefit from a set of electronic microphones, which can be used to record and play songs and enhance other speaking activities.

As we have been developing our Library, we have purchased some bean bags. These are proving very popular with children, both during class library times and at break times. We continue to expand our stock of reading books to inspire the children and help them venture into exploring books written by different authors, on an ever wider range of topics. Therefore, we have recently purchased a new set of levelled reading books, from school funds, which will give greater breadth to our reading scheme.

This week, a delivery of large playground toys arrived, including a large balance track, which the children can build to develop their own pathways. A giant “Jenga”,  ‘Connect Four’ and a huge target mat, which the children can use to improve their gross motor skills. We are also awaiting delivery of some giant building blocks and we have introduced some more hoops and a variety of balls. At our school council meetings last term, the children discussed their ideas for playtime and voted for small cars, building bricks, Meccano, boxed board games, colouring sets and crayons and some dressing up clothes; a selection of these items appear to be enlivening the free play experiences!

We are very grateful for the time and effort that so many of you put into making our Christmas Fair such a huge success and it only remains to thank you all, on behalf of the staff and the children for your generosity. We are sure that the new purchases will continue to be a great source of fun and inspiration for many years to come.

Best wishes,

Helen Marshall