Lunchtimes

I hope everyone enjoyed a lovely half term. The children looked so smart this morning in assembly and are ready for their next half term. We talked about how our attendance is slowly improving and how this half term is a perfect time to get back on track by attending school everyday.

I was pleased to see a number of our pupils in their Brownies and Rainbow outfits for 'Thinking Day' today. It's lovely to see so many of children committing to an out of school club and working hard to earn their badges.

This week, is a special week at school as we are holding our first ever safety week. It is called 'Safety Super Heroes - Speak up, Stay Safe!'. During the week, the children will be learning about the meaning of being safe and focusing on key areas such as the safe use of technology and safety on the roads. I hope that parents and children attend our 'Make Technology Safe' Fair on Thursday 26th February from 3pm in the hall. We are encouraging parents to bring their electronic devices (phones, laptops, iPads, gaming devices etc) to this event to get expert advice on how to make them safe for children to use. 

Lunchtimes

Just before half term, I spent a lovely lunchtime out playing with the pupils. It was an extremely cold day but the children were still enjoying themselves and the lunchtime supervisors were doing a great job with keeping them moving and entertained! The smiles show how much they love their time outside.

Some of our Reception children staying out of the cold!

Great friends

Imaginative games

Supportive staff

They love the bubbles!

A great way to keep warm!

Mehmet showing his batting skills

Freddie and Junior having fun on the trim trail

Friendships across the school

How many children can fit into one skipping rope?

A chain of Year 2 pupils

Many thanks,

Rona Mackie

Head of School

Wonderful World Week 2015

This week, we held our annual 'Wonderful World Week'. 

We started the week celebrating diversity and discovered the variety of nationalities that we have at our school. This became one of our themes of the week!

The other theme focused on food. We were really lucky to be visited by a range of local restaurants throughout the week who put on cooking demonstrations and also got the children cooking too. It created a real buzz around the school! Thank you to Sir and Madam, Ask, Jamie's Italian, Yo Sushi and Burrito Loco for running the sessions for free.

Ask session with Year 1 where they tried pasta and sorbet and learnt about where food comes from

Jamie's Italian came in to help the Year 6 children make crostini bread starters

Burrito Loco having fun with Year 2

At the end of the week, we welcomed back Jim who visits us every year to run our drumming workshops. The children love his sessions and we all enjoyed his assembly today where he played the steel pans to 'Under the sea' and 'Let it go'. The children sang along beautifully.

Jim working with our Year 6 and Lighthouse children

Many thanks to Mr Crossley and Mr Thomas for organising such a successful week. I know many of you will either be attending the Year 6 drumming assembly or going to our open classroom session at the end of the day to see what your child has learnt about this week.

Have a lovely weekend,

Rona Mackie

Head of School

News!

I thought you would like to see a couple of things that came to my attention this week that we should all be extremely proud of.

The first is about one of our pupils making the front cover of a magazine this week. Elyas (in 4H and the Lighthouse) is pictured on the front of the Riding for the Disabled Association's annual publication. Our Lighthouse children really benefit from their regular riding sessions and have learnt a lot about looking after and caring for animals as well as learning to ride. Elyas looks like such a natural!

The second thing relates to a book that has recently been published. Many of you might remember Mr Peter Burrows, who was a teacher at our school when we opened in 2001 and taught in Years 5 and 6 for many years. He has written a book for teachers about the teaching of grammar and I thought you would like to see his dedication in the book. 

Mr Burrows thanks the children and staff at Guildford Grove as well as Mrs Corlett!

Guildford Grove is truly on the map!

Many thanks,

Rona Mackie

Head of School

Maths Day

On Tuesday, Guildford Grove held its very first 'Maths Day'. The children really enjoyed the day and loved taking part in a range of activities promoting maths across the school. 

I was delighted to see how many children had taken part in the matchbox challenge. I couldn't believe the amount of things children managed to fit into such a tiny box. Our pupils are truly creative when it comes to these types of challenges and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the lists of items included in each box. 

Another highlight of 'Maths Day' was the 'Estimate the items in a jar' competition. The pupils loved walking around the school to locate the jars and enter the competition. One of the jars sat outside my office and I enjoyed hearing the conversations from the groups of children keen to have their chance to enter the competition. My favourite discussion involved a couple of our youngest students debating if they could just open the lid and count the items. I swiftly popped my head out of my office to explain how that was not the point of the game!

Finally, the children also enjoyed counting the money they brought in to complete the coin art creation in our hall. Thanks to the large amount of copper coins, they spent a good deal of the day counting in 1s and 2s and converting from pence to pounds. Great for their maths skills.

Many thanks to Mrs Peacock for organising such a fantastic day. Next week, we are looking forward to our annual 'Wonderful World' week. This year, our theme is 'Food' and we will be visited by chefs from a selection of restaurants in Guildford who will be teaching us about food from around the world. Tomorrow, I will be starting the week with our Monday morning assembly where we will be celebrating diversity.

Many thanks,

Rona Mackie

Head of School

End of term!

I hope that everyone enjoyed their Christmas break! It was lovely to see all the children back on Monday looking so smart and eager to learn. It was a real pleasure to walk around the school and see them all so focused on their work. I imagine some of them felt very tired by the end of the day.

The end of term seems such a blur now but I wanted to celebrate a few of the amazing events that occurred in the final few weeks.

Christmas Jumper Day

What a great day! The children looked great in their Christmas jumpers and you can see more pictures on our website. I did, however, want to show a few on here. Firstly, the most popular jumper proved to be a jazzy reindeer one. As you can see it popped up everywhere! It was great fun and we raised £200 for the Save the Children charity as a result.

The most original jumper award must go to Zanko. His jumper was created by turning an ordinary jumper inside out and painting the image on. Amazing!

Our Christmas productions

Well done to all our children for taking part in the best Christmas performances we have ever had. It started with KS2's carol concert at the cathedral.  The children sang beautifully and the narrators spoke so clearly and confidently. We finished the term with our KS1 and Foundation Stage nativity performances. Again, I was so impressed with the excellent singing, narrating as well as the great acting and dancing too. Pictures of these performances can also be seen on the website.

Christmas Fayre

I was so impressed with the hard work and dedication of the members of Friends of Guildford Grove to ensure that our annual Christmas Fayre ran smoothly. It was fantastic to see so many families attending and supporting this event. The money raised makes such a difference to our school and ensures that we can continue to help reduce the cost of school trips. We made approximately £1600 from this event. A great result!

Parents using their massage vouchers to receive a massage from their child. Miss Holdaway talked them through the 'Massage in Schools' programme.

Look how busy our cake stall was!

Mr Bibby busy on the barbecue.

Our lovely arts and crafts room.

Our wonderful hampers ready for the raffle.

Father Christmas and his reindeer were a huge hit!

Year 5/6 Cake Sale

Our pupils in years 5 and 6 spent the last week organising their own cake sale. Just like 'The Apprentice' the children were tasked to work as a group to organise their cake stall to try and make the most profit. The winning group with the largest profit would be hired by Dame Sugar! Congratulations to team 'Snow Bakes' who were hired after making a profit of £31.20. The whole cake sale raised £362.92.

I cannot wait to see what happens in the Spring Term. Highlights will include Red Nose Day, KS1 Spring Concert and Guildford Grove's Got Talent!

Many thanks,

Rona Mackie

Head of School