Merry Christmas!

We've had a busy last week full of festive cheer. We have enjoyed Christmas performances, enjoyed visiting the Baptist church for their live nativity, had a wonderful Christingle and enjoyed a class treat of a Christmas film all cosied up with our cuddly toys and blankets. Christmas dinner was enjoyed on Wednesday and we had a carolled to St. Anne's on Tuesday afternoon where the children proudly sang. 

As well as all of this, the children have written fantastic 'Hansel and Gretel: Volcano Adventure' stories, using the skills they have learnt in our narrative English unit. They have come to the end of their maths units, showing us good progress and have displayed their great knowledge in Geography answering 'How Active is our Planet?'

It has been a pleasure to teach wonderful Marazion this term and we hope that you have a restful and enjoyable Christmas!

Welcome to my weekly headteacher blog. This replaces the fortnightly newsletter and is an opportunity for me to celebrate and share some of the wonderful learning experiences enjoyed by children at Harrowbarrow Primary Academy. I will also share information about future events for us all to look forward to.

Please also look at the class blogs, which teachers will add to weekly to share information directly relating to their own classes.

If parents/carers need to contact me about their child or anything related to the school, this can be done through the school office on 01579 350576 or via email: head@harrowbarrowprimary.co.uk

Andrew Hunt
Headteacher

Earthquake Proof Buildings

Marazion class showed great collaboration skills when making, testing and evaluating their earthquake proof buildings today!

Merry Christmas 

We have had a busy week of finishing up all of the Christmas craft that we have been carrying out. Our Christmas door competition ended on Monday and we thank everyone for taking part, the doors all looked great.Mrs Hillman chose a winner, so well done to Eliza for her glittery Christmas door entry.
On Wednesday the children enjoyed Christmas dinner, we were feeling very festive with the Christmas music playing and the food was delicious!
Today (Friday) we have had our Christmas party. The children have enjoyed party games and a party lunch.

We look forward to the holidays now and we would like to wish you all a very merry Christmas and we can't wait to see everyone in the new year.

The nursery team

Trenode C of E VE Primary Academy 

Cardinham class - Autumn term

As the school term comes to an end, it's the perfect time to reflect on all the exciting and enriching experiences we've had. From delving into ancient history to exploring the beauty of nature, this term has been packed with opportunities for learning and creativity. Here’s a look back at some of the highlights.
One of the most fascinating parts of this term was our study of the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages. We learned about how early humans lived, what tools they used, and how their societies evolved over time. It was exciting to see how much we could learn from the objects and practices of people who lived thousands of years ago.
One of the most enjoyable writing activities was creating our own stories based on The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. We explored the themes of adventure, bravery, and friendship, and I loved using my imagination to come up with new adventures for the characters. Writing these stories not only helped develop my writing skills but also gave me a deeper appreciation for the book and its magical world.
In computing, we had the chance to create our very own book trailers. We got to pick a book that we loved, think about what makes it exciting, and then design a short trailer to share it with others. It was such a fun way to practice our digital skills while also encouraging creativity and storytelling. The trailers were a great way to promote reading and helped us develop our skills in video editing and presentation.
Our topic on rivers was a highlight of the term. We explored how rivers shape the land, affect the environment, and play an important role in human life. The best part was when we went on a trip to the River Seaton. We had the opportunity to study both the human and physical geography of the area. It was fascinating to see how people have interacted with the river over time, from settlements to the mining community, and to learn about the natural processes that shape the water and surrounding landscape.
The Christmas Crafts Afternoon was a lovely way to celebrate the season. We got creative making all sorts of decorations, from baubles to wreaths, and had a great time sharing the festive spirit. It was also a wonderful chance to take a break from our usual lessons and focus on crafting something special to take home for the holidays. The Christmas Fair was another fantastic event this term. It was full of festive stalls, games, and delicious treats. It was a great way to get into the Christmas spirit while also raising money for our school's PTFA. I had a lot of fun shopping for gifts, enjoying the treats, and participating in the different activities.
In music, we had the privilege of having choir singing lessons with Maggie from the church. She helped us improve our vocal skills and taught us some beautiful songs. The choir sessions were a great way to come together as a group and create something harmonious. It was especially nice to sing songs for the Christmas celebrations, and I’m looking forward to continuing our lessons in the new year.
One of the most magical experiences this term was our trip to Trago Mills, where we got to sing Christmas carols and meet Father Christmas! It was a wonderful way to spread festive cheer, and the look on everyone’s face when we met Father Christmas was priceless. Singing together and celebrating the season as a class made the day extra special, and it was a perfect way to end our festive activities.
To round off the term, we also had the chance to write Christmas shape poems. It was a creative way to express our thoughts about the season, and we shaped our poems into festive images like trees, stars, and snowflakes. It was a fun and artistic way to finish our term with a festive flourish. 
This term has been full of learning, creativity, and exploration. I’ve enjoyed every moment and can’t wait for what’s to come in the next term. From more exciting history topics to new adventures in geography and creative projects, there’s so much to look forward to. I’m grateful for all the experiences we’ve had and am excited to continue growing, learning, and creating in the new year. Wishing everyone a joyful holiday season!

Hello Everyone!

We hope you enjoyed our Christmas performance of 'It's a baby!' this week. We gave three performances this week, and (although perhaps a little tired by the time we reached the final performance), we acted and sang our hearts out. Well done to all of Penhallow, particularly to those who stepped into a new role due to their friend being absent. Thank you also to parents, who helped with the learning of lines at home. 

In our Maths learning this week, Year 1 have been busy using a number line to 20. We have ordered and placed numbers on a number line, and have been using our problem solving skills to estimate which numbers could be hiding in different positions. 
Reception have been using their skills in continuous provision, to create and name different shapes. There have been plenty of maths involved in our Christmas continuous provision activities, and we have been impressed at how some children have been able to explain their own learning.

In design technology, Year 1 have been sewing Christmas stockings as a Christmas decoration. We will decorate these next week, so that they will be ready to hang on your Christmas tree.

In computing, we have all been using our skills of coding, either to program a beebot, or to create our own character on the scratch junior app.

This week, we have also put the finishing touches to our Andy Warhol inspired printing creations during our art lesson. Well done everyone!

Reminders for this week:
Monday 16th December is the Christmas Gift Room. Gifts will be £2 each (max 2 gifts per child). Be sure to bring in your money if you would like to purchase any gifts for Christmas.

Friday 20th December will be our class Christmas party. You can wear Christmas MUFTI or party clothes (warm enough to play outside at breaktimes) and you are welcome to bring in some party food to share with the class.

Friday 20th December is a 1:30 finish.

We hope you have a lovely weekend.

From the Penhallow Team

We are The Fleece Force!

Landaviddy class did a fantastic job performing our play, The Fleece Force! We are so proud of you all for working so hard during rehearsals and doing your absolute best. Well done everyone! Thank you parents/carers for all the support you gave the children in the lead up to the performances.

In History, we have continued to explore Ancient Egypt, delving into what Egyptians believed about the afterlife by describing the mummification process. We had lots of fun re-enacting this!

In Geography, we created a fact file about the country Egypt which was fascinating! Can you recall what language they speak in Egypt? Or the total population of the country?

Design & Technology involved practising sewing. This was a challenge and we need our growth mindsets. However, we persevered and many of us managed to stitch. We completed designs for our own Egyptian collars, which we are hopeful to construct next week.

During PE today, we continued to develop our ball skills when throwing and catching a tennis ball. We found that to catch the ball successfully, we needs to watch and track the ball as it moves through the air, as well as have our hands ready in a cupping position. 

Congratulations to Brody, Lowen H and Reuben for being chosen as Landaviddy's People of the Week! And a big well done to those who achieved their 99 club badges - Evie, Benjamin, George and Frankie.

Polite Reminders
Monday 16th December is the Christmas Gift Room. Gifts will be £2 each (max 2 gifts per child). Be sure to bring in your money if you would like to purchase any gifts for Christmas.

Friday 20th December will be our class Christmas party. You can wear Christmas MUFTI or party clothes (warm enough to play outside at breaktimes) and you are welcome to bring in some party food to share with the class.

We hope you have a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing you on Monday for our final week of school before Christmas!

Mrs Wilkie, Mrs Phillips, Miss Bowden and Miss Colton

It’s been a busy Friday, starting with a Trust-wide Head’s meeting at WPA this morning. As well as Bridge Schools working together throughout the year, we also have regular meetings at each other’s schools.

The day started with a tour, expertly led by our House Captains who were “wonderful ambassadors for the school.” Additional feedback included, “Everyone spoke so positively about what they saw around the school. Engaged and focused children at this time of the year can be challenging. The children were delightful.” 

We then met to discuss a range of items, including furthering our use of IT across the Trust to continually develop teaching and learning; joint training initiatives; the Trust Alternative Sports Day next year at Looe Primary, and current Ofsted updates.   

Alongside this today, Year 5 had their Egyptian WOW Day; the Choir sang at St Breock Care Home and we held our final Celebration Assembly of 2024!

Next week promises to be an exciting mix of teaching, learning and other end of term events. Here’s to another successful week ahead.    

Winter Fayre
A huge thank you for raising £1062 in just an hour and a half at our Winter Fayre last Friday. Not only was it an amazing fundraising event, it was an opportunity to come together as a community. There was a fantastic buzz around the school – thank you for your support and to everyone’s involvement in making it such a success.    

Family Carols at Egloshayle
On a cold Tuesday evening, we held our Family Carol Service at Egloshayle Church. Thank you all for coming and making it a very special evening. Well done to all the children involved: our choir, readers and performers. A special thanks to Claire Charlton and the team at Egloshayle Church for making us so welcome.    

WPA Christmas Fun Run 2024
Thank you to everyone that donated! Online donations, plus change given and gift aid has resulted in us raising over £1000 for Children’s Hospice South West. All children, from Nursery to Year 6 ran brilliantly, and when they started to tire, the sports leaders cheered them on (along with some questionable singing of Christmas songs from Mr O'Dwyer and his megaphone ).     

House Points
Congratulations to this week’s winners, Puffins. Well done to all children earning points for their House this term. The overall winning House this term is Swans. As their reward, all children in Swans get to have a non-uniform day on Friday 10th January 2025.  

Swans – 3546
Choughs – 3434
Cormorants – 3088
Puffins – 2901  

Gardening at Wadebridge
Last week, we went up to the polytunnel on our school field. We did lots of digging, raking, weeding, painting plant pots and much more. We planted winter vegetables which everyone enjoyed. My group have been looking forward to what we could do next to upgrade and make our polytunnel a better place for wildlife and plants to thrive.
From members of the Eco Council    

Coffee Morning – Friday 20th December 08:45 (Reception Playground)
Our final coffee morning of the term takes place next Friday 20th December after drop off (outdoors!) in the Reception playground. Wrap up warm for some al fresco tea, coffee and Christmas tunes!   

Dates coming up  
Monday 16th Dec
09:00 KS2 Cinema Trip
14:00 Big Nursery & Reception Christmas Singalong with Parents and Buddies

Tuesday 17th Dec
15:00-16:00 Inter-schools Netball Competition

Wednesday 18th Dec
09:00 & 14:00 KS1 Nativity

Thursday 19th Dec
09:00 Reception & KS1 Cinema Trip

Friday 20th Dec
(am) Staff Pantomime for the children
Class Christmas Parties (unless notified on a different date from your class teacher)
Children can wear a Christmas jumper to school
School finishes for Term 1: 12:30 Nursery collection; 13:20 Reception-KS1 collection;  13:30 KS2 collection

21st Dec-6th Jan
Christmas holiday

Tuesday 7th Jan
Back to school

Friday 10th Jan
Swans - Non-Uniform Day

Monday 13th Jan
08:45 Coffee Morning
14:00-15:00 KS2 Cross Country
Term 2 ECAs begin 

Christmas in a primary school really is a special time. Last week it was great to see so many of you enjoying the children’s Christmas plays. Landaviddy’s Fleece Force performances were so enjoyable with super singing and acting. Very well done also to Penhallow who delivered two wonderful performances of It’s A Baby, remembering their lines and the songs brilliantly, and also to Talland and Chaipel Classes whose brilliant What Christmas Means to Me made everyone laugh out loud. Look out for photos from the performances on the class blogs.

This week, the children have all enjoyed a busy week rounding off their enquiries as well as enjoying Reverend Richard’s Christmas assembly on Monday, Christmas Art Day on Tuesday, Christmas Lunch on Wednesday and parties today. Our choir visited Atlantis Care Home yesterday and sang Christmas songs and carols beautifully.

FOPS Fundraising We are delighted that our Christmas Fayre raised over £600 which included the sale of snowmen, kindly donated by The Lookout café in Looe. The Wreath making workshop raised over £270 and our Christmas Gift Shop raised £280. A huge thank you to FOPS and everyone who helped to organise these events. We will keep you posted about more fundraising events and how we plan to spend the income to help the children in our school.

RSPCA and Cancer Research Campaign The School Council is delighted to have raised a generous £117 at the Christmas performances from your donations to their chosen charities: Cancer Research and the RSPCA. We also raised £62 for Save the Children on our Christmas Jumper Day.

Online Safety
• Keeping your Child Safe Online.  Attached to this blog is a leaflet which contains many important links to help you keep your child safe online, particularly at this time of year. The leaflet contains important safety points to consider at this time of year if your child is likely to receive a SMART device (TV, Speaker—Alexa, Google); new mobile phone (Android/iPhone); games console; tablet PC or laptop for Christmas.
• Swiped – Channel 4 Many of you will have watched the Emma and Matt Willis programme ‘Swiped’ which is about a school that has banned smartphones. It’s definitely worth a watch to find out more about the impact that smart phones can have on children.

Family Worker Drop-Ins, Thursday 6th February, 9-11 am The Early Help Hub will be holding Family Worker Drop-In Sessions in our school from 9-11 am on 6th February 2025. If you would like to be able to talk in confidence, just pop along, they will be here to help and support you. They will be happy to discuss and advise on issues concerning your family for example, how to better understand your child’s needs & behaviours; positive parenting and how to keep your child safe; how to better understand the importance of routines for your family. To book a 30-minute slot, contact the school on secretary@polperroprimary.co.uk or call on 01503 272249.

Parenting Workshops January Please find attached leaflets about free parenting courses run by Cornwall Council, Together for Families.

Dates The new term starts on Tuesday 7th January. Half term will be from Monday 17th February – Friday 21st February with an INSET Day on Friday 14th February. The last day of the Spring term is Friday 4th April and the Summer Term starts on Tuesday 22nd April.

A huge thank you for all of your support so far this academic year – the children have worked incredibly hard and all deserve a wonderful Christmas break.

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas

Anthea Hillman and all of the staff at Polperro Primary Academy

We have had another busy week in Chaipel Class. 

ENGLISH
Our Circulatory System explanation texts are now complete and everybody has done a fabulous job. I will be reading them over the weekend and can't wait! Verity and Max B worked with a couple of Year 3 children on their best copy writing, showing them how to present their work as a double-page spread. The results are amazing and the children can't wait to come back and work with the Y6s again.

MATHS
Fractions: comparing, ordering and converting - you name it, we have done it this week! 

WIDER CURRICULUM
We have been investigating the ageing process and gestation stages of human life in Science. Most of the afternoons have been spent practising for our play which we performed, three times, on Thursday. Everyone was absolutely amazing and the parents and carers said it was the best they had ever seen!

CONGRATULATIONS to our People of the Week, Verity and Max S for showing our School Values and being super role models for their peers.

POLITE REMINDER
Christmas Art Day is on Tuesday, Christmas lunch on Wednesday and our Christmas party on Friday morning! 

Have a lovely weekend and see you all on Monday!

Miss Randle, Mrs Clary, Mrs Hodge and Miss Colton.

As always, it was lovely to spend time with the community together in St Cleer church. Thank you to Mrs Harris for leading the singing for us. The 12 days of Christmas and the beautiful singing from our choir were definite highlights. Thank you to the student leaders and team captains for sharing their Christmas reflections and to you - our parents, family and friends - for making it a special time together.

TALLAND'S BLOG 13.12.24

What an incredible week! The Christmas performance was incredible and our trip to Eden today was fantastic. Talland class represented themselves and the school brilliantly and we all had so much fun! We might have a few budding ice skaters in our ranks now!

That's about all the talking I'm going to do... I think you would prefer a photo off load...

We have had a wonderful week of Christmas crafts and loved having the Mums, Dads and Grandparents come along and join in the fun too.

The grownups joined in with enthusiasm at the cutting, painting and gluing activities and have made a whole host of Christmassy items to take home!

Showtime!

What a fantastic couple of performances the EYFS/KS1 children did of 'Whoops-a-Daisy Angel'!  The children really enjoyed doing both the shows, which I think showed in their performances and we know the adults that came and watched enjoyed it too.

The children visited the Christmas Tree festival on Friday - it is one of our favourite times of the year... They loved finding the Brunel tree and seeing all the other decorated trees - some are a real inspiration!

In Science the children sorted different materials into magnetic and non-magnetic - shhh... don't tell Mrs. Williamson that we even tested her coffee!  During our DT lesson the children worked collaboratively at building their Tudor buildings after planning them a week ago.  They are starting to look amazing - Thank you for all the donated boxes! 
 

The children all looked wonderful in their Christmas jumpers today. Thanks to your generous donations we have raised £51 for Save the Children.
Christmas dinner was enjoyed by all, we had crackers and squash donated by the PTFA and Christmas music to sing and dance along to. Thank you to Mrs Crago and her elf for cooking us another lovely Christmas dinner.

Incredible artists

We have really enjoyed getting stuck into our Art topic this half term about portraits.  Focusing on Lucien Freud (a celebrated portrait artist) we have enjoyed evaluating his famous portraits and trying to develop our own artistic styles.

We have considered Freud's use of colours and tried to develop different skin tones as well as working on our sketching skills.

We have challenged ourselves to move out of our comfort zones and use different styles and techniques than we usually would.  We are very please with the results so far!