Today was a lovely day. This morning, the sun was shining, some of our children were receiving their First Holy Communion and all was as it should be at st.Francis’. It was lovely to see so many people at church and we thank Mary Doran, Mrs Rossall, Father Sony, all parents and carers who have prepared the children for today and everyone who supports St.Francis Hill chapel. What a significant and very special Mass it was.

On my way into school, I thought I would check on the nesting duck. For those of you who aren’t aware of this, I have a nesting duck sat in a planter outside my office window. I usually like to keep on top of the Sparrow activity or the little bat (of which I haven’t seen for a while) but the duck outside my window is guarding seven eggs. Today, the duck was no where to be seen. Obviously, I checked the greenhouse but I couldn’t find her. It is quite endearing how a few parents and parishioners asked about the duck and her nest so I will keep you informed when we see little ducklings parading around school!

Last weekend was fabulous. I thank Amanda Hamer and her team of parents, children, companies and  helpers who created the most incredible floats for Goosnargh field day. I have left the list in school but I will personally post a special thanks to all who helped.

In case any of you are still wondering where I was, there I am on the left of the picture. Mr Gilmour is driving the Gator (thanks to Eddie) and we actually had to drive this on a REAL road with REAL cars after we safely managed to drive down a long driveway and collected 500 bananas! You read that correctly. It was another of those typically ridiculous moments which have now become absolutely normal.

There have been some wonderful things going on in school. Our Year 6 children were amazing at the Football Festival and the Netball players were great! Classrooms are buzzing with activity and enjoyment, children will soon be having moving up mornings and we will be welcoming our new starters for all of the special Induction events. Year 5 Buddies (current Year 4 children) will be writing cards to the new starters and they will be meeting them very soon.

I can’t wait for the library to be created (this week) and for our KS2 classrooms to have their own ‘Fabulously Funky Furniture’ as the bespoke reading areas are being fitted on Thursday and Friday. It is very exciting and I know the children will absolutely love them! We are very grateful to the Trustees of Whitechapel Charity, who have given us another grant to enable us to purchase the funky furniture for the new library. There are so many kind supporters of our school-it really is overwhelming. Thank you!

More trips are planned and the children are shining. I cannot believe that another school year has reached the final half term. I had a conversation with a parent of a little girl who started at St.Francis’ when I did. We were reminiscing about school five years ago and thinking about all of the changes. We really have risen from strength to strength and the momentum and drive just keeps going. It is an absolute joy to listen to our positive and enthusiastic staff team when they talk about what they love most-teaching our wonderful children.

We had a speech on our hands with Mrs. Silvester during Friday’s Golden Assembly. She really does ooze enthusiasm and sparkle when it comes to describing her selected Golden Award winner. After listening to her describe the winning pupil’s talents for approximately 5 minutes (and that is a long time in an assembly with 40 more certificates to follow!), I then came to what I thought was the end of the assembly until…Joshua (who is 5 years old) informed me that he would be coming back up again because the whole of Reception Class need to be given their Fencing certificates.

Now, I had discreetly sided the certificates in the assembly tray to give out on Monday as there were so many other certificates to present and we were going to make a big celebration and fuss of the Reception children then. Having been a Reception Class teacher, I really should have known better! Joshua searched for the certificates and was delighted to tell the class he had found them. That was very lucky.

When you just smile at these glorious moments, you soak it all in. I handed the assembly over to Joshua thinking that the generic (and nameless) certificates could be handed out in no particular order but I was even more delighted to find that the fencing teacher had actually written every child’s name on the back of the generic certificates! Thinking this could take a while, Joshua quickly read out every child’s name from the back of their certificate and presented them. Nobody batted an eye lid. Yes, this is completely normal for our school and it just demonstrates the happiness and security our children have. What a brilliant end to the week!

If any families and friends have pictures of the children on the floats, I would be grateful for a few to be sent by email for me to put them on our website alongside the list of names of everyone who helped.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!