We've had another great week back at school, with Red Nose Day today and our wonderful celebration of St Patrick on Wednesday. I know all the children and staff enjoyed doing something a bit different and wearing all sorts of costumes. Thank you especially to Miss McNabb and 2GM for leading the liturgy and learning Fr Ross' favourite St Patrick hymn and also to Aoife from Year 4 for giving us a fabulous Irish Dancing performance! Not forgetting Mrs Bignell who kindly went out and bought biscuits and green sprinkles for the whole school. However I think my highlight of the week was watching our Foundation children beat Mr Balaam at basketball!
Holy Week Preparations
This year, Mrs French-Bell has organised a series of tableaux for the classes to perform to each other as a way of commemorating the events of Holy Week. On Thursday 1st April at 10am, Fr Ross will celebrate Mass (this year it actually is Maundy Thursday!) and we invite you all to join us for this - a link will be sent next week. There is also a very secret special event planned for the last week of term - but we will keep this quiet for now!
Relationships and Sex Education Consultation
There is still time to give us your views on the new curriculum.
Details: https://www.spcps.co.uk/rse
Questionnaire: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=2zyb0X7aOEyGqInKxdC1fd2TIpdIC6lKv9LHUmH6Xv5URDk5SDUxME5PRUdITEU4UEhRVFlYNzlHTy4u
Staff Vacancies
We are currently recruiting for a Site Manager, a Lunchtime Supervisor and two 1 to 1 Teaching Assistants. Details on our website:
Building Works
At the moment, the long-awaited new fencing is being installed around the perimeter of the school and when that is finished, a team will be working to replace almost the entirety of our ageing flat roof. This is a very long job and from now until June, the school car park will be out of use for everybody as it will be used as a site compound. And when that is finished, we will finally be making a start on resurfacing the playground!
End of Term
The last day of this term is Thursday 1st April and just as we did at Christmas, all the year groups will finish school an hour earlier at the usual gates.
World Poetry Day
To celebrate World Poetry Day on Sunday 21st March 2021, our friends at ArtfulScribe and Winchester Poetry Festival commissioned Jonny Fluffypunk to make a workshop for people aged 7-11, encouraging them to lift the lid off the lockdown through the power of poetry. You can join in here: https://youtu.be/2q_4u2H64XY
This Sunday, we start to turn our attentions to preparing for Holy Week and the great events leading up to Easter. In the Gospel, Jesus talks to his disciples about his forthcoming passion and death - the ultimate sacrifice to draw people to God. Sometimes we have to make the difficult decision to sacrifice something of ourselves in order to bring some comfort and joy to those who suffer. This is an uncomfortable task. But we must never run away from it, just as Jesus did not.
Several parents did not seem to receive our weekly update via email last week, so please do let us know if you don't receive it and we will get back to the company that manages the system. There is an update email every Friday and this is also on our website, where you can subscribe to the blog and receive it through that.
Have a lovely weekend.
Michael Lobo