Hello,
In this newsletter you will find an update on our Summer Fair, new Garden Classroom and Hardship fund initiative, as well as dates for your diary for next year!
Summer fair
The sun was shining, the stalls busy, and the food delicious – it was such a lovely event and we hope you all enjoyed it! It was so nice to have the fair back after the pandemic, and to see the kids running around, having fun. We ran out of ice lollies three times and we made about £1,000 profit.
Stalls included Coconut Shy, an all-time favourite, the new Floor is Lava (complete with Mission Impossible soundtrack!), a Bouncy Castle, the classic Hook a Duck, Guess the Weight of the Watermelon, Lucky Dip and Gem Stall, as well as the great Decorate your Flower Pot stall, and wonderful Braid, nails and tattoo bar. Plus a couple of sprinklers to cool down, some nice tunes and the veggie and beef burger stalls.
A big thank you to all who helped at the fair, and donated food, drinks, prizes etc – it wouldn’t have happened without you!
PS If you child has made a little flower pot, and not taken it home, have a look in the walkway (on the shelf on the right) where we’ve put the unclaimed pots.
Garden Classroom
Our new outdoor classroom is up! This will be used by the teachers throughout the year. To help them make the most of the space, FROGS will be funding some teacher training (Barley is the school’s new outdoor learning lead) with the local charity The Garden Classroom, as well as some workshops for each year group, next year.
This is a big investment for us, so please make sure your kids take great care of it – and that includes not using it as a climbing frame at drop off and pick up! If they break anything, you will have to volunteer at FROGS events until the end of times… More seriously it cost £8,200 to build and is a very important resource for the school so please get the message across to your children if you think they will be tempted to climb on it. We don’t want to spend money fixing a brand new thing when there is so much left to do in the school.
In September we will be organising volunteer days to finish up the garden; this includes installing water and music walls and new sheds, as well as painting the mud kitchen blackboard etc. We’re also looking into getting a pizza oven for the garden, if you know any company who could donate one or anyone who could build one, let us know!
Books and toys for the summer holidays
We had lots of leftovers from the Jumble sale so we thought we would distribute them for free in time for the summer holidays. The toys have now all gone but there are lots of books left, these are now in the blue container, please help yourself today.
Hardship fund
Thank you so much for being such a generous community – we raised £2,788 for the school’s new Hardship fund. We’ve handed the money to the school. Please get in touch with them directly (Neela, Siobhan, Emmy or Debbie) if you need help. The school will send out more information about this in September.
CLASS TREATS
Nursery and reception enjoyed a trip to the Little Angel Theatre; Year 1, Year 2 and Year 4 constructed towers and bridges out of legos with Mr Brick; Year 3’s treat had to be cancelled due to Covid and will be held in September instead; Year 5 went to Rainham Marshes.
Leaving presents
Thanks to all for your donations for staff’s leaving presents.
Our volunteers bought some vouchers for Lisa and Lorena, and some lovely treats for our retiring dinner ladies Margaret and Breda.
Next year’s EVENTS
Our big projects next year will be to finish up the garden; launch our FROGS’ Sharing Shelf for books and food bank donations; spend £3,000 helping the school refurbish the nursery/reception classroom; install a new climbing wall in KS2; and paint the KS2 playground. Also on our to do list are planning a new Makerspace, getting a mural on the Library wall, and fixing those library steps…
Our upcoming events for the autumn are below, please save the dates:
Friday 16 September, 9am
AGM, coffee morning & FROGS tour of the school to show parents where we have spent our money (mural, play equipment, creative room, library, garden classroom etc).
Friday 30 September, 3.30
Y6 Cake sale (this will be accompanied by a baking day for the kids during school time)
Saturday 8 October, 10.30-12.30
Jumble Sale (we always need lots of volunteers for that one!)
Thursday 20 October, 3.30-5.30
Harvest festival, food bank donations, second-hand Halloween costumes sale
Friday 4 November, 3.30
Y5 Cake sale (this will be accompanied by a baking day for the kids during school time)
Friday 2 December, 3.30
Second-hand Xmas jumpers, baubbles and ornaments sale
Friday 9 December, 3.30-5.30
Winter Fair (each class to organise a stall, just like at the summer fair)
If you can’t volunteer but would like to support FROGS and help us add fun and colour to the school, you can always donate (including monthly donations) on our Kindlink page or buy/donate items on our wishlist. The more funds we collect this way, the more free/cheap events we can organise to make sure the whole community can join in – and the more we can do for the school.
We hope you all have a lovely summer break,
Thank you and take care,
FROGS