Letters Home: 6th & 9th December 2022

December 9 2022

6th December 2022

Dear Parents/carers,

Christmas Fair:

Thank you to everyone that came to our Christmas Fair on Friday. There was a great turn out with people enjoying the variety of stalls and games. Elf on the Shelf was a particular favourite enjoyed by all family members!!

Virtual Santa:

Thank you to everyone who booked to see Virtual Santa. There were many smiley faces! It was also very interesting to hear what the children wanted for Christmas! Each child was given a present from Santa to bring home.

Events list:

Please make sure you are keeping up to date with the events taking place before Christmas. It is a busy time of year! This Thursday we are having Christmas Jumper day as the children enjoy watching a pantomime.

Tickets for Christmas performances:

You should have received 2 tickets per family for each performance. Everyone attending the events will need a ticket including siblings. The tickets will need to be handed in on arrival. No extra tickets will be issued. However if you have any tickets you are not using please return them to the office and we can pass them on.

Tea-time Club:

There will be a number of events happening in Tea time Club leading up to Christmas. There is no need to book in for a specific day as if you miss an activity you can always do it on another day. However I’m sure this will be popular so make sure you book the days you need soon.

Tesco Community Tokens:

Earlier this year we applied for the Tesco Community Grant to make improvements to our outdoor areas around school. We are pleased to say that our application was successful!

This means when you shop at Tesco and are given a little blue token to put in the box our school will feature on one of those boxes. This started on Saturday, 1st October, and runs all the way through to January.

It would be amazing if you could support our school by choosing the ‘Gomersal St Mary’s box’ for your token. The more tokens we get the bigger the grant for school!

Our selected stores are:

Cleckheaton Superstore, BD19 3HS
Birstall Express, WF17 9EH

Coffee Morning:

All welcome to our informal Coffee /Tea mornings (drink and natter). These are held every Tuesday after dropping your children off at School (8.45 till 10.00am). Under school age children welcome too as there are lots of toys for them to play with. Please join us in the Children’s Centre with Mrs Priestley suppling the drinks and biscuits.

Thank You

Parent Workshops

Tuesday Morning 9am-10.30am

ASC awareness – 17^th January 2023

Healthy Relationships with Food 31st January 2023

If you are interested in any of these courses, please see Mrs. Earnshaw to book a place.

(15 Places available for each course)

Financial Support:

Here is a website that might be useful if you are a family who are struggling with paying bills/debts/fuel costs/mental health/unemployment etc.

Cost of living | Kirklees Council

Training Days 22/23 reminder:

Here are the training days for the next school year:

Tuesday 3^rd January 2023

Thursday 4^th May 2023

Monday 24^th July 2023

Tuesday 25^th July 2023

Yours sincerely, Miss J. Barker

9th December 2022

Dear Parents/carers,

Christmas Pantomime:

Yesterday we all enjoyed a pantomime in school called Aladdin. Many thanks to Margaret Robinson, our cleaner, who is retiring at Christmas who funded crisps and drinks for all the children as a parting gift to our pupils. The panto was also heavily subsidised by school fundraising meaning we only needed to request a £1 donation. Thank you to everyone who supported this event.

Stephen said he would give it 1000 out of 10. His best bit was when he got wet!

Year 6 also gave their reviews:

‘It was really good that there were only 2 people that did the whole show.’
‘They never lost their character.’
‘It was fun how they interacted with us.’
‘We really liked that they never had costumes involved.’
‘We thought it was really creative.’

Fairtrade Chocolate:

Class 3 made special chocolate bark for the Christmas fair to support their WE Schools theme of Fairtrade! They made a profit of £20! Well done Year 3 for your hard work in raising awareness of the Fairtrade campaign.

Christmas Nativity/Christingle:

What a fantastic start to our Christmas festivities! Our Early Years children together with children in years 1 and 2 performed a traditional Nativity tableau accompanied by songs. We also learned about the history of Christingles and the children held candles in the atmospheric setting of the St Mary’s Church. The children were fantastic and many thanks goes to the staff for all the hard work that went into putting this altogether. Thank you also to St Mary’s Church for allowing us to use the Church as a perfect setting.

Tickets for Key Stage 2 Christmas performances (Wednesday 14^th December):

You should have received 2 tickets per family for each performance (2pm and 6pm). Everyone attending the events will need a ticket including siblings. The tickets will need to be handed in on arrival. No extra tickets will be issued. However if you have any tickets you are not using please return them to the office and we can pass them on.

Key Dates for the last week:

Date	Event	Where?
12^th December	As a special leaving present to the children Mrs Earnshaw is paying for Dazzling Darren to come to our school. He is a children’s entertainer and will be putting on two performances – one for younger children and one for the older children. There are no donations required. Children can wear Christmas jumpers on this day.	School
14^th December	Year 1 and 2 Christmas party (afternoon) No donations are required. Children can bring clothes to change into for the party in the afternoon.	School
14^th December	Early Years party (morning) If possible please can all Nursery pupils attend in the morning so they can be at the party. No donations are required.	School
14^th December	KS2 (Years 3, 4,5 and 6) Christmas Concert Only 2 audience members per child for each performance. Please try to leave smaller children/siblings at home.	St Mary’s Church 2pm and 6pm
15^th December	Early Years Polar Express Day Children can come to school in their pyjamas.	School
15^th December	School Christmas Dinner	Children will select Christmas dinner on the day
16^th December	Years 3, 4,5 and 6 Christmas party Children can come in non-uniform, but please note that Year 6 will still have PE in the afternoon. No donations are required.	School

Booklet to support families with preventing illness in children:

Below is attached a copy of a booklet produced by Kirklees to support families in preventing illness in children this winter.

Supporting Children online and with new devices:

Younger children need different advice and guidance than older children. Older children need different advice and guidance than teens. It can be really difficult keeping up with everything that is online and what risks and issues may affect children of different ages, so on these pages there is some age-related advice and guidance for parents and carers:

Pre-school – https://www.internetmatters.org/advice/0-5/
6 – 10 year olds – https://www.internetmatters.org/advice/6-10/

Setting up new devices:

It can be difficult knowing all the different settings that are available on different devices to help protect children, this includes allowing or disallowing chat, friends, spending money, content filters and much more. On these pages you will find the details, as well as non-technical instructions, which will help you understand what is available to you and how to set up your child’s devices.

Gaming consoles and devices – https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/gaming-consoles/
Smartphones – https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/smartphones-and-other-devices/
Broadband and mobile networks – https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/broadband-mobile/
Entertainment and search engines – https://www.internetmatters.org/parental-controls/entertainment-search-engines/

Tea-time Club:

Tesco Community Tokens:

Earlier this year we applied for the Tesco Community Grant to make improvements to our outdoor areas around school. We are pleased to say that our application was successful!

This means when you shop at Tesco and are given a little blue token to put in the box our school will feature on one of those boxes. This started on Saturday, 1st of October, and runs all the way through to January.

It would be amazing if you could support our school by choosing the ‘Gomersal St Mary’s box’ for your token. The more tokens we get the bigger the grant for school!

Our selected stores are: