Hello,
A few words on our Children’s Mental Health initiative, the Big build competition, and FROGS’ enrichment clubs.
Supporting Children’s Mental Health Week
Thank you so much to all who helped by writing gift tags for the Grasmere staff for our Love Yourself, Be Kind to Others initiative. The lovely messages were delivered to the staff room in the form of a wellbeing tree, along with brownies from local charity The Luminary Bakery. “A very kind thought, it has had everyone in the staff room 'oohing' and 'ahhing',” said one of the staff.
Children are also still welcome to give their friends (and family – we live in hope!) some messages of kindness before half-term… A little bit of kindness goes a long way!
Don’t forget, this Thursday parents and carers can meet the school’s psychologist, Dr Ellen Presser.
Thank you also to those who have already bought some books from our Health and Mental Health wishlist. Here they are looking great in the library, along with some older books on the same theme:
You can still buy some books for the library until the end of February. Or help the school buy more books on the subject by giving £1 on Friday for Inside Out day, where kids can wear a piece of clothing inside out to show they care about how people are feeling inside.
On the subject of mental health, this article explains how many more of us will be affected by mental health issues due to the pandemic, and makes the case for more social interaction and a sense of community as a great way to boost mental health: “Is the casual socialising that we previously thought so little of – the school plays, the church fêtes – more important that we noticed at the time? “Those things are not just pleasant and fun: they’re investments in your future sanity and wellbeing. The way you build community resilience is through knowing each other.”
So in this spirit we will doing our best to organise lots of events for the Grasmere community to get together in the spring. If you have any ideas or would like to help organise some events, please get in touch on frogs.grasmere@gmail.com or come along to our next meeting on Friday 18 March, 9am, at the school.
In particular, we’re looking for someone to organise our traditional Easter Egg Hunt on the 30/31 March; it involves collecting the chocolate egg donations and sorting them to make sure each class has enough eggs to hunt, and organise a rota of volunteers to help them hide the eggs in the garden. We’re also planning a jumble sale on Saturday April 23, a rollerblading/skateboarding/scooting afternoon, something for the Queen’s Jubilee, and a Summer fair.
Contruction competition
Please take part in Grasmere’s Big Build. The construction competition deadline is the last day of half-term, you’ll find all the details on our dedicated page. Lego, cardboard, Minecraft blocks are all great materials to work with! We’re looking forward to seeing your creations. Billy, the school’s care taker, who’s been building all sorts of things for the school for over a decade, will be our judge.
Enrichments clubs
After a successful first batch of clubs organised by FROGs, the school as agreed to take over completely the organisation of the next sessions, starting after half-term. They are always looking for more club ideas, so if you know other clubs from neighbouring schools who could also work at Grasmere, please let us know. We’d love to see a cooking club, or even a martial club or dance club in the evenings (for parents and/or kids!) as the hall is free from 6pm every day.
FROGS volunteers are running two of the Enrichments clubs at Grasmere to raise money for the school: the Art club and the Library club.
The Art club has raised just over £400 for the school. This will be used to subscribe the school to the SCRAP Project, something that has been on Barley’s (Grasmere’s art teacher) wishlist for a while. Now she will be able to stock up on all kinds of fabric, plastic, card, paper, toys, comics, wood off-cuts, stationary, etc… all part of a great recycling project.
The Library club has raised over £500 for the school, with money going toward new shelf labels and dividers, a new CD player for audiobooks, and a budget of over £350 to buy some new books.
If you’re interested in running a club at the school to raise money for FROGs and share your passion with the children, please let us know.
The next event is the Year 3 cake sale on Friday 25 February.
Have a lovely half-term,
FROGS