What a term we have had, after avoiding COVID until October half term, the children and staff have finally succumbed to the dreaded virus. Fortunately, so far, no one has been very ill and I really hope that it stays that way. I hope that everyone stays safe over Christmas and manages to have time with their family and friends.
Despite the virus, the children have managed to have a wonderful week of Christmas celebrations. The week started on Monday with our annual trip to Clearwell Caves. The children had a lovely time and Father Christmas left a beautiful colouring book for them.
Then Tuesday arrived and we were able to celebrate Christingle in our fabulous church, St. Peter’s. A huge thank you to Mrs Baulcombe, Miss Young and Mrs Weaver for providing and making the Christingles.
Wednesday came along and Willow class made Christmas biscuits and Oak class have made decorations.
Thursday came and so did the Santa Dash and Christmas dinner.
Then today, we went to the pantomime at Monmouth and the children had a fabulous time.
Thank you for all of your support this term and a huge thank you for all of the gifts that you have given staff. We really appreciate it. Have a fabulous Christmas and New Year.
What a week! As Christmas approaches at Clearwell our children get more and more excited and they get to experience lots of adventures. The week started with yet more COVID announcements, so I made the difficult decision for the Nativity to be staged without an audience. I was so sorry to do this but I have to thank all of our parents who have been so supportive in my decision. We hope that you enjoyed the video! Mrs Griffiths and her team have worked hard with the children to get them ready and the children performed fabulously, especially when a number of children are off (not all COVID related!) school. We have the cutest and kindness Reception and KS1 children ever! They are living our vision of communicating confidently and being creative.
Whilst Oak class were performing their Nativity play, Willow class were implementing their sculpture skills by creating a Roman style pot. We have studied some pottery at the Corinium Museum in Cirencester, looked at images from the British Museum, sketched our own designs and then made them. I think that they done a wonderful job!
Party day at the castle finally arrived. The children have had the last two cancelled because of snow and COVID so they were very grateful to be able to finally attend and have fun. The castle provided pass a parcel, Father Christmas – complete with gifts and a buffet. A few of our Y5 and 6 children sang to the more mature members of our village whilst they finished off their lunch. Thank you very much to all at the Castle for enabling this to happen in a COVID safe manner.
In Worship on a Friday we always share our celebrations from the week. This week we learned about one of our pupil’s certificate received for performing a speech he has learned in Tamil and he also gave us a performance using his Miruthangam. It is amazing the different sounds that can be made by using different parts of the hand. We are very lucky to have children in our school who have such great talents and are willing to share their creativity with their peers.
Thank you to Wyldwood Arts who arrived in school today with a surprise gift for every child. The bags contained a magazine with creative ideas in as well as the resources to complete the activities. The children were very happy to receive them and we look forward to working with Wyldwood in the New Year. During our Art lesson today, the children experimented with the great new watercolour crayons from Books for Bugs. Lots of excellent work but these were my favourites. One of the ideas is copyrighted to Shannon who writes and self publishes (staples them together!) her own books and I am looking forward to see the real thing in print one day. She is an exceptional writer and illustrator.
Our Celebrations
Bailey was Christi-Angel for his kind behaviour to others at the Christmas party.
We have had such a busy week with lots of experiences taking place in school. Reception children have been reading, acting and re-telling Goldilocks and the three bears, so on Thursday they got to cook and eat porridge. Mrs Knight and Abby helped them to make it but I don’t think that they needed any help eating it!
Willow class were very lucky to have Andy Seed, a local author come in and talk about one of his new books “The Story of the Forest of Dean”. The children were amazed when they found out what animals used to roam in the land that we now inhabit. This experience was paid for by the Foresters’ Forest, so thank you very much for this. It certainly inspired our children to find out more about our beautiful local area. Andy was very generous and donated a number of his own books to our new library, which is coming along nicely. The book cases arrived today so photographs will follow next week!
Lucy, one of our year 6 children is a superb swimmer and has been participating in swimming galas for while. A couple of weekends ago, she competed against two other clubs. She came first in 50m breast stroke, 50m free style, 50m butterfly and 100m on IM, which is butterfly, backstroke and front crawl. This is a great achievement and we look forward to following her success. Hopefully, one day she will appear in some National Games and maybe even the Olympics!
