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Flintham Primary School Inholms Lane

Flintham Notts

NG23 5LF Tel: 01636 525371

E-mail : office@flintham.notts.sch.uk

Some useful dates for your diary

INSET DAYS

Friday 14 February 2020 Friday 22 May 2020 Monday 20 July 2020

Christmas Performances

Week beg. 9 December, 2019

General Election

Village Hall Polling Station

Thursday 12 December

Christmas Jumper Day

Friday 13 December

Christmas Dinner

Wednesday 18 December

Attic Drama Performance

Wednesday 18 December

Christmas Pantomime Thursday 19 December

Christmas School Disco Thursday 19 December

Nativity Service

Friday 20 December ,2019

Last day of Autumn Term Friday 20 December 2019

First day of Spring Term Monday 6 January, 2020

KS2 SATS Week

Week beg. 11 May 2020

Dear Parents/ Carers,

I can’t believe it is December already! Only 22 shopping days to Christmas!

A big THANK YOU to all those parents who have provided costumes and props for their children’s Christmas plays and who have been helping practice lines. A big THANK YOU to all the staff involved in the plays for all their hard work in rewriting scripts to ensure all children have a role by adding scenes and extra songs and pulling the performances together. It is no easy task. I have heard snippets of each play when I visit classrooms and they are all sounding wonderful. Please take note that mulled wine and mince pies will be on sale at every performance and we will once again be collecting for the Rainbows Children’s Hospice. Mrs Otton has said that there are still some tickets available for each performance if needed. Please make sure you bring your tickets to guarantee entry —we can only allow ticket holders to a performance as we have fire regulation capacity restrictions for the village hall to follow.

Are you feeling lucky? Advent Raffle tickets will be available from Mrs Otton’s office until the last day of term; so many amazing prizes to be won. The first winning tickets were drawn yesterday, Sunday 1 December. A big THANK YOU to all those who have already purchased tickets and a big THANK YOU to all our FOF for organising such a fantastic raffle; selling and distributing tickets, organising donations, collecting prizes and putting hampers together. A huge undertaking and a fantastic fundraiser for the school.

We are promoting reading at school this year and have been busy revamping the library and sorting and rearranging classroom collections. School Council will be working with Mrs Smith to arrange a reading challenge in the Spring Term to raise money for some new books. In each newsletter from now on, a member of staff will write about their favourite childhood book and those their own children enjoyed. School are purchasing these books and making a collection in the library for the children to enjoy.

Now, time to find out what’s happened at FPS so far this term and let’s hope for a drier countdown to Christmas.

Kind regards,

Mrs K. Bartlett

Creswell Crags Class 3 went back to the Stone Age on Thursday 7 November with a trip to Creswell Crags, an enclosed limestone gorge on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire. The cliffs in the ravine contain several caves that were occupied during the last ice age. Leo (Year 4) said it was an amazing trip and that the caves were cold and drippy and that they stayed

that way all year round. He said there were models of flints and a skull inside. When asked what the best part of the trip was, Leo said that was when they were given a box of bones and they had to put them together to make an animal and theirs was a carnivore—a sabre tooth tiger!

Thank you Mrs Holley for organising such an interesting and hands on experience for your class.

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FPS Visual Literacy Day, Thursday 28 November 2019 :

Year 5/6 indoor Athletics Another thrilling evening was had at the small schools athletics competition after school at Becket School on Tuesday 12 November. All the members of the team gave every event their all and we came a very proud 3rd out of 11. A super evening of sport with some excellent relay races and a special mention to Oliver, for stepping in right at the last minute. Thank you Mr Knott for organising the team and the transport for this exciting event.

FPS was full of walking, talking toys on Thursday as we all gathered for our Toy Story Literacy Day. I’ve never seen so many cowboys, space rangers, dinosaurs, soldiers, Little Bo Peeps and Andys and Sids all in one place. The children were spellbound watching the film and were brilliant at describing the characters and their relationships with each other.

The film really inspired some super work; with the children writing in a range of different genre across the school including stories, monologues, character descriptions and toy adverts. Slinkies, Mr Potato Heads, aliens and other toys have also appeared in classrooms as the children spent part of the afternoon undertaking art activities to recreate some of the main characters. Another highly successful enrichment day.

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Last week saw the first trial of our recyclable milk bottles in our plan to reduce our reliance on ‘single– use’ plastic in school. We have taken this move to send a positive message to all the children about how we all have a part to play in preserving the planet. We realised we were throwing away approximately a staggering 6,000 cartons, straws and wrappers per school year! It is a little more effort daily for parents and teachers, however, we are hoping that the effect of this will diminish when routines are established. This lovely photograph was in this week’s Newark Advertiser. The paper was very keen to write a report about our eco initiative and thank you to all those parents who have embraced our scheme.

Reducing ‘single-use’ plastic in school

Flawless Flintham

Flowerbed! We are all so impressed with our fantastic Flintham flowerbed! Mrs Lambert, Mrs Bainbridge and Gardening Club have skillfully recreated our school badge at the front of school. A lovely surprise to come back to after half-term.

School Council would like to invite all our children who want to, to take part in the Save the Children Christmas Jumper Day on Friday 13 December, 2019 at a cost of £1. Please don’t go to the expense of purchasing a Christmas jumper if your child hasn’t already got one. Pinning an unbreakable decoration to a non-uniform jumper or adding a piece of tinsel is perfect.

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The book that had me hooked as a child was, ’The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe’ by C.S. Lewis. I can still remember reading the first couple of chapters and just finding it magical that there could be another world at the back of a wardrobe and yes - I did go and check the wardrobes at home! I love animals and the animals being able to talk I thought was wonderful. My favourite characters were Mr Tumnus and Reepicheep (from Prince Caspian) and of course Aslan the lion. I really wanted to be one of those lucky four children who got transported to another world and even better that when they came home – it was as if they had never been away. I thought it was great that the girls got to be brave and fearless as well. I remember Chris, one of my big brothers, telling me there was a whole series of books about the Land of Narnia. I was so happy and I set myself the enjoyable challenge of reading all the books in the series, which I did. My parents brought me the box set of the Narnia books one

Christmas and they sat on my bookshelf for a very long time, long after I had read them all. One of my two children’s favourite books is ‘Little Captain’ by Claudio Munoz. Once when we were on holiday, we bought our boys some small wooden sailing boats and they loved sailing them on the boating lake. When I saw this book in the

library, we had to read it. It’s about a little boy who repairs a little toy boat and his grandfather makes a little wooden captain to sail it. Unfortunately, the boy loses his boat the first time he sails it – somebody out at sea needs some help! And so the real adventure begins. My boys loved this story and I read it so many times, that I had almost learned it word for word. They never tired of it. I asked them the other day which books they remembered having read to them and straight away they both said, ‘Little Captain’ and

another favourite one is called ‘The Last Noo Noo!” by Jill Murphy. A baby monster just doesn't want to stop using his dummy, but it’s time he did. My boys just loved how this story ends.

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” – Walt Disney