Friday Bundle 26.03.21

Hello again everyone, 

We have had another busy, happy and fun filled week in school and I would firstly like to take a moment, if I may, to share a brief but lovely, heart-warming story with you.

One of the local, elderly residents, who was out a walk, stopped for a chat and told us that it’s the highlight of her day when she goes on her daily exercise passed the school and nursery buildings and hears the children’s laughter and their happy giggles and voices. She reminisced about last Autumn, when we shared the surplus apples from our nursery tree with the local community and explained that she had taken a few for herself and her friends. This lovely lady offered to donate some bedding plants to us as a very kind “thank you” gesture. It was so lovely to be able to explain our plans to her for continuing to improve all of our outdoor school and nursery spaces and also how this includes us sharing our home grown vegetables with the community once again soon too.  It was just such a lovely moment and especially so when, as she was walking off, she laughed and said ‘That’s great, I’ll be able to make a lovely pot of soup with all your veg!’ Sometimes it’s these unplanned, special moments that remind us all about what is important and the impact that our actions can have on others and our community.

We are delighted that our P7 hoodies have just arrived!  Thanks so much PTA for organising this and also for all that you, and the other parent volunteers who are continuing to give up so much time to help us to improve and enhance all of our outdoor areas- we simply can’t thank you all enough.  We will give out the hoodies to the P7 children next week and they are very welcome to wear these, as they choose, as part of their uniform and schoolwear throughout the rest of their time in Netherlee.  We hope our fantastic P7s wear them with both happiness and pride. The PTA would like to invite you all to our AGM and next meeting. The AGM will be at 7pm on the 21st April followed by their meeting. The zoom link will be circulated before the meeting. The agenda and last minutes can be found on the website. We also have some great volunteering opportunities over the Spring Holiday to help create a greener and brighter environment for our children to learn and play in. You can sign up for a task here; Netherlee PTA (pta-events.co.uk).

As you know, we have had a short pause in Homework, whilst our pupils have returned to school, to help and support everyone to get settled back into school and family routines.  However, we now feel confident that the time is right to reintroduce homework for all stages after the upcoming spring holiday.  Therefore homework will resume, once again using Google Classrooms,  from week beginning Monday 19th April.  As before, all instructions will be posted on Google Classrooms however there will be no need for you or your child to print anything at home.  Teachers will therefore also provide their pupils with any worksheets or books etc that they require to be able to complete their homework each week.  

I am very grateful to the Parent Council for providing me with your suggestions, via their survey, in relation to school priorities for the new session starting in August.  I will now discuss and consider your suggestions carefully with all of my staff and we will then use these to help us formulate our School and Nursery Improvement Plan for Session 2021-2022.  I will of course share more information with you on this in due course.

Just a reminder that the school will close slightly earlier on Thursday 1st April ahead of the holiday period. Children in P1 and P2 should be collected at 2.15pm from their usual gates please and children in P3-7 should be collected at 2.30pm from their usual gates and collection points too please.

[P7 Only] Attached to this email is information relating to Bikeability. Bikeability Info Letter and Map

And now for something really exciting… please see the attached letter from Netherlee’s P7 House Captains who, along with two members of staff, have worked very hard to plan and organise a fun, optional activity for our children and families to enjoy.

Have a lovely weekend everyone.

Please follow us @sand_nc

Mrs Yvonne Donaldson

Head Teacher