We have been inspired by the talent of one of our parents this week. Mrs. Harwood (whose art is commissioned under the website name Angela Wakefield) has given two full days of her time in order to paint our greenhouse wall. The children were in awe when each class looked at her website and saw her beautiful paintings. Here are just a couple….

We wanted every child in school to ‘make a mark’ on our mural and indeed they did! The children gave Mrs Harwood a selection of ideas to put their vision into reality. Mrs Harwood has gone above and beyond to create this stunning piece of art work. If you look closely, you can see the little finger print flowers and animals, created by the children! I wish I could say that spending last Friday painting the whole wall with PVA glue was fun (it was an awful job) but I can’t. Poor Mr McGill was battling on with a broken arm and painting with his left hand! Unbelievable! We only painted the wall white on Monday and the whole mural was nearly finished by the end of Tuesday. What an incredible turnaround. Thank you so much Mrs Harwood, Mr McGill and children for giving our school such a beautiful and long lasting gift.

Whilst all this was going on, I had The Wizard of Oz in my head. I decided to make some sign posts for the outside area. We have so many zones out there now that I had to enlist the help of our builders, who were not so happy to help at first, but then saw the great vision and couldn’t resist. The Tysons team have been wonderful and instrumental in attaching all of the rustic pieces of wood I found around the school grounds. We moved the big sink (herb garden), created Rabbit Kingdom and much more. Rabbit Kingdom is a wonderful new addition to school. I think the smiles of our ‘Animal Welfare’ UFA group children say it all. I love how our children are so caring towards our chickens and rabbits. After all, they are part of our school family too!

We had a Lenten visit from Christine, who works for CAFOD and regularly comes to work with school. We also had a visit from PC Banks, who did not expect 20 2,3,and 4 Pre-School children to be joining his road safety talk…with electric cars! You will have to visit the Pre-School page for more pictures. Science Week was fantastic and Mrs Gornall came to inspire our young scientists with a forensic science talk. Following this visit, I was a suspect for a robbery and even had to give my finger prints! Have a look at the Beacon Class page for more forensic fun! Don’t forget, each class blogs about learning and you can find many pictures and more information about your child’s learning there.

The Bouncy Castles, to start our Sport Relief Week, were wonderful and all children had so much fun! Mr Gilmour will be blogging about the Sport Relief fun on our Sports page. You will find lots of pictures of all children taking part is a variety of activities. Once again, our Football and Netball teams represented school brilliantly and their behaviour was impeccable. Well done to all children who took part!

It was inspiring, as always, to listen to Steph Slater speak passionately about sport. We thank her very much for coming to school on Monday to officially open our Sport Relief Week. A huge thank you to all the donations for the Sport Relief merchandise – which resulted in four extra trips to Sainsbury’s to keep up with the demand. Also for the donations on the JustGiving page and  for all the change collected in school.

As we nearly reach the end of Lent, we kindly ask for any ’40 Days, 40 Items’ challenge bags for Kenya to be sent back any time before the end of next week. We are collecting the bags in our school hall. We look forward to class Easter assemblies every morning next week and our Palm Liturgy this afternoon. We do hope you can join us.