Newsletter 9th November 2018

A week of Celebration

It really has been a week of commemoration, celebra-

tion, colour and light at Offham. We started the week

off on Sunday with our first ever Fireworks night to cel-

ebrate Guy Fawkes night, enjoying a spectacular dis-

play to commemorate the foiling of Faukes and his

gangs dastardly plan. Please see the write up all about

our fabulous fireworks event, which has raised a signifi-

cant amount of money for continued improvement of

the school, over the page.

Then on Wednesday we celebrated more light and col-

our during Diwali day! (see Right). Huge thanks to Miss

Rodgers, Miss Bowman and the staff members on the

compassion team for arranging a very memorable and

hugely fun celebration day for everyone!

Then today we completed our week by honouring all of

those who have fought bravely on our behalf, in the

first world war, and all subsequent conflicts around the

world. The children all made me very proud at the war

memorial which has been erected on the village green,

walking up sensibly and then holding a 2 minute silence

on arrival. The war memorial which has been put in

place by the Parish Council, is really beautiful and very

poignant, I would urge you all to take time to visit it in

the coming weeks.

Diwali Day

This week on Wednesday the whole school had a fabu-

lous day celebrating Diwali. Diwali, Deepavali or Dipavali

is the Hindu festival of lights, which is celebrated every

autumn in the northern hemisphere.

One of the most popular festivals of Hinduism, Diwali

symbolises the spiritual "victory of light over darkness,

good over evil and knowledge over ignorance." The story

that goes along with this wonderful festival is the heroic

tale of Rama and Sita. As part of the day all of the classes

were delighted to take part in some fantastic Diwali

dance workshops. The KS2 dances revolved around a re-

telling of the Rama and Sita story and the KS1 and Rain-

bow dances used lots of traditional Diwali dance moves.

The children all really enjoyed taking part in the dance

workshops and we were delighted with the outcomes—

videos can be viewed in our video section on the school

website:

https://offham-primary-school.primarysite.media/

To celebrate the Festival the children also made some

fantastic Rangoli patterns. During Diwali the main en-

trance of houses are usually adorned with a vibrant and

multicolour display of geometric floor patterns which are

called 'Rangoli'. People use flowers, rice or even pulses to

design these patterns. Creative and colourful Rangolis,

based on lots of colourful dots, instill a sense of harmony

and connectivity. Our children made their rangoli patterns

in a variety of ways, including using coloured pulses and

rice and sand.

Other activities around the school included writing Diwali

poems and information booklets about the festival and

using origami to create beautiful Diwali flowers. We all

really enjoyed our special day and have enjoyed learning

about this vibrant and exciting Festival.

Orange Class Parents

Don’t forget that it is Orange Classes special assembly on

Wednesday 21st November at 2.45pm

Remembrance Day

The school has been a real hive of commemorative and

respectful activity today as we all joined together to cele-

brate and mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the

First World War.

Every year at Offham we sell poppies and hold a minutes

silence to mark our respect for those who have fallen on

our behalf in conflicts both current and historic. However,

as this year marks such a significant historical anniversary,

we felt that it was important that we all marked it with a

whole day of activities.

It was lovely to walk around the school today and see the

children so busily learning, finding out more about the

significance of remembrance day and writing descriptive

diary entries, poems and letters about the first world war.

Each class took time out of the school day to walk up to

the memorial which has been erected on the village

green. This beautiful and poignant display pays homage to

each of the individual men from Offham village who went

away to fight and never returned. The children were very

respectful and really embraced finding out about all of the

individuals involved.

To complete our day, all classes have made their own pop-

pies, in a variety of mediums, big small and medium sized.

These will be all used to create an impressive display out-

side the library which we hope will create a lasting

memory and impression on the children. Please pop in

and see this in the coming weeks as it promises to be truly

impressive.

Fireworks Night A huge huge thank you to everyone who joined us on Sun-day to take part in our first ever Offham School Fireworks night. The evening surpassed all of my expectations and I am sure those who came along will agree, was a fun filled and fantastically well organised event! The fireworks themselves were provided by pyrotechnic company ‘Pheonix fireworks’ and were truly spectacular to behold, all set to an eclectic playlist, there was something for eve-ry generation and taste. I really enjoyed hearing all of the “ooos” and “ahhhhs” on the night, along with seeing peo-ple literally left open mouthed at the end of the display. My biggest thanks go to Mr Mark Earnshaw, our chair of governors , who, taking the helm on this new event, has been beavering away for months behind the scenes now organising the fireworks, the lighting, the funfair, the stall and more! The whole spectacular was set against the wonderful smouldering background of a giant and very impressive bonfire, provided by Church Farm. I must thank Mr Betts and Mr Martin for their hard work and exceptional gener-osity towards the event, not only with the bonfire but also providing loads and loads of parking for the evening—by 7.30 we had had to move on to our overflow emergency field to house the hundreds of cars which came along. Special thanks to Mr John, Mr Reid and Mr Alcorn who worked tirelessly most of the evening making sure every-one was parked sensibly and safely. All the members of the PTFA, Miss Rosser, Mrs Reason and Mrs Innes all did us proud too, running the food, drink, tombola and glow stalls! Without their hard work the event would never have run so smoothly! Again spe-cial thanks to Jane Pusser and the Pusser clan for their exceptional BBQing skills on the night. Mrs Pennington, Mrs Mason and Mr Reid also deserve a special mention, having all been on site from 12pm on the day, helping Mr Earnshaw and I set everything up. With-out their skills, can do attitude and kindness we would never have been able to pull off such a fab event! After expenses we think we have raised around £6000 for the school, which can be used really productively to up-grade the fabric and facilities of the building—our next project following the toilet refurbishment will be to look at the boilers and the classroom floors! This is a fantastic achievement and makes all of the hard work worth while. The winners of the Guy competition were chosen by our celebrity Orla Jordan as being Purple class in KS2, Rainbow class for the infants and the fabulous entry from the Spoons family for the village! Well done everyone!! We hope that you will all join us again for more fireworks fun next year!

Amazing Homework!

Yet again this week I have been blown away by some

amazing homework, completed by children across this

school. It has been so fantastic to see how much the chil-

dren are enjoying our new homework style and the time

and effort they are putting into it. I would like to share

with you the following wonderful examples which were

celebrated in today’s assembly:

Finlay in YR for a fabulous Rangoli pattern

Henry in YR for a super colourful fireworks night painting

Omaya in Y1 for her futuristic potato powered car

Thomas in Y1 for his amazing Island model

Sina in Y2 for his wonderful information book on flight

Edward in Y2 for his fully working model of a steam en-gine

George in Y3 for a beautiful Roman mosaic

Emelia in Y3 for some yummy Roman cakes

Abi in Y4 for a fantastic factfile about Roman costume

Lily in Y4 for her brilliant map of the Roman invasion

Jessica and Ewan in Y5 for their very technical Fair Trade PowerPoint presentations

Teddy and Rebecca in Y6 for their amazing container ships and

Grace in Y6 for her wonderful Italian menu

Please put your DISCO FORMS in the PTFA box

outside the Office.

Congratulations to Mr H, this week’s lottery winner!

Our lottery is a BRILLIANT way to support your children at school. The more people who sign up, the bigger the

prize, and the more money we raise!

Tickets cost £1 per week, and each one is entered into a local draw for our school, as well as a national draw for

the £25 000 jackpot!

Buy your ticket at:

www.yourschoollottery.co.uk/lottery/school/offham-primary-school

If you would like to get in touch, please find one of us on the playground, or email us at offhamptfa@yahoo.com.

Keep an eye on the school newsletter, website, and car park notice board for event & news.

School Photographs

As we had to postpone school photographs due to our heating issues at the begin-

ning of the week we will now be holding these on Thursday 15th November.

Please see the calendar on the school website for other upcoming dates for your

diary.

Don’t forget to wear something

spotty for children in need day

next Friday—Full details of our

plans for the day can be found in

last weeks newsletter on the

school website.

Golden Table

A huge well done to Peach table, who blew all of the com-

petition for golden table completely out of the water this

week!

With an exceptional 22 table points I was so impressed

with this mixed table of Yellow and Rainbow class children

for their kindness, manners and exceptional behaviour at

lunchtimes throughout this week.

It is always a pleasure awarding Golden Table to our Rain-

bows and their buddies, as it truly shows how fantastic

our older

children can

be when

supporting,

teaching

and caring

for their

younger

peers!

Our Girls Football Team

On Thursday evening, nine girls from Key Stage 2 (Mia Ad-ams, Elia Ali, Hattie Bell, Grace Chenery and Megan Griffin from Year 6; Leah Mockford, Ollie O'Neil and Sophie Thomson from Year 5; and Poppy Miles from Year 4) took part in the Girls’ Football Festival at Knole Academy. With not a lot of experience of competitive football, the girls were quite anxious going into the tournament but very excited to take part. The girls performed outstandingly in every match. Having drawn their opening match with a strong St John's A team, the girls played against an even stronger Amherst team. The game was end-to-end but, unfortunately, Offham lost 1-0. The team had grown in confidence though as they had been very competitive in both games and, on another day, they may well have won both. In the third game, this confidence was clear to see. Two goals from Poppy, as well as one each from Megan and Mia, gave Offham a 4-0 victory against St John's B. The following game against Chevening was another tightly-fought battle with another goal from Poppy mean-ing Offham came away with a 1-1 draw. In their final game, Offham drew against Edenbridge 0-0 but had plenty of chances to win the game. At the end of the tournament, all nine girls were very proud of their third place finish in their group of six. To quote them: "Not bad for a group of girls who had barely kicked a football before!" A special mention to Poppy who, despite being a couple of years younger than most of the girls at the tourna-ment, was singled out by the Sevenoaks Town coaches as the player of the tournament. However, all nine girls should be extremely proud of what they accomplished. Not only did they play some fantastic football but they were extremely respectful and played every game with big smiles on their faces! They were an absolute credit to our school!

Parking

Unfortunately I have had a lot of complaints again recent-

ly about really bad parking around the school site and on

the roads directly opposite the school. Please remember

that it not appropriate to park:

In the drop off zone;

On the entrance or exit ramps to the school car-

park;

In the staff only car parking spaces;

In the PTFA raffle space;

In the disabled bay, unless you can clearly display a

disabled badge;

On the zig zag lines outside of school;

In the passing bays along church road;

Anywhere that causes an obstruction to moving

traffic.

There is limited parking available in the school car park;

there is much more in the top field accessible via North

Meadow. Please remember that entering North Meadow

the wrong way through the one way system is a traffic

offence. Please park considerately, I would hate to have

to call the local traffic wardens in to patrol! We have uploaded lots more photographs and videos

of all our festivities onto the school website! We hope

you enjoy them! Mrs John x