Weekly Update 5 2023/2429 September 2023 (by admin) |
Dear Fairfields Community,
Thank you for the great turnout of parents to the face-to-face session this morning. It is wonderful to see how engaged our parent community is! We are really looking forward to the parent workshops which will be advertised after half term.
There is a virtual session for parents to attend on Wednesday 4th October 6-7pm. Please email admin@fairfields.hants.sch.uk and an invite will be sent out on Tuesday.
Celebrations!
We love celebrating our diverse community at Fairfields and are thinking about the year ahead. We are hoping to run some after school celebrations on the following dates:
13th November: Diwali celebration
7th February: Lunar New Year celebration
25th March: Holi celebration
16th April: Eid al-Fitr celebration (as it falls in the Easter holidays)
To enable us to celebrate these we will be looking for parent volunteers to help with planning the events and with running activities on the days. You do not need to be of the faith or culture being celebrated to help! If you are interested in helping to form part of a special events planning group please let Miss Harper know by contacting the office as soon as possible. Additionally, if you would like your culture or faith to be represented with a special event please get in contact with Miss Harper.
Medical Conditions in School
Miss Moore has over 30 individual health care plans (IHCPs) not returned. Please can you return them as soon as possible so staff can be made aware of any updates in plans.
Harvest Festival – Monday 2nd October 2:15 – 3pm
This year we have focused our harvest festival on the diversity of farming. Children will learn about different types of farming and prepare a presentation for parents. You are invited to attend our walkabout and presentations between 2:15 – 3pm on Monday 2nd October.
The year groups will focus on the following and we welcome anyone with knowledge in these areas as special guests and to support year groups in their learning.
Foundation Stage: Fruit and vegetable farming
Year 1: Hay farming and arable farming including vehicles.
Year 2: Dairy Farming
Year 3: Fish Farming/ Aquaculture
Year 4: Solar farming
Year 5: Agroforestry
Year 6: Wind farming- inland and offshore
Please enter the school from under the main canopy. The PTA will also be providing refreshments for the event. Please bring cash if you would like to buy any drinks or cakes.
We will be collecting food donations for the Food Bank again this year. This year they have theme the donations as ‘bring a tin’. Please donate a tin by bringing it into school on Monday 2nd October. The donations will be on display in the school hall during the walkaround.
Football Club – Message from Miss Warwick
I had an enquiry about year 5 children joining football club. This will happen, just not quite yet. We have entered two competitions which require only one team. Once we have played our first match, we will look at adding in the year 5 children. Children who are interested will be invited to join a training session to trial.
Netball Club – Message from Mrs. Hopkins
We are still in need of some girls for our netball team so that we have enough children to enter the league. If any girls in years 5 and 6 would like to join the team and can come along to training with Mrs Hopkins each Thursday after school until 4.00, please email admin@fairfields.hants.sch.uk. We have a few spaces left to fill so will take names on a first come, first severed basis.
PTA Update
Christmas Fair - Thursday 14th December (4:30-7:30pm)
We have a date set for this year's Christmas Fair that will be held at school at the end of term. The event will be similar to previous years with stalls, activities, food & drink, Father Christmas and much more. We are also planning on including the PTA Challenge as part of this event after it was introduced last term.
More details will follow in due course but for now we are asking for volunteers to help with this event, either ahead of time as we plan everything or if you can spare some time on the day, in whatever capacity however big or small. We raised around £3000 for the school last year so we'd love to be able to contribute a similar amount this year, but we need your help to achieve this.
To register your interest at this stage please send an email to fairfieldspta@gmail.com
Top Tip for Parents
- In the School Development Session today we discussed types of parenting and how we can move between them. It differs between researchers but on the whole there seems to be 7 main parenting types:
- authoritative
- authoritarian
- attachment
- permissive
- free range
- helicopter
- uninvolved/neglectful
We talked briefly about the impact of helicopter parenting which seems to have become more prevalent since the pandemic. We believe that at different times and depending on past experiences we move from one to another. We will be looking to run workshops for parents in the future to explore this in more detail. For now, please follow the link: https://www.healthline.com/health/parenting/types-of-parenting
Updates from Year Groups
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Foundation Stage |
We have noticed that our pupils aren’t using the junk modelling area as much as in other year groups. We invite children to bring in their junk modelling creations from home. |
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Year 1 |
Year 1 have been working hard to re-tell their story based on the book 'The Gingerbread Man'. They have done some fantastic writing. Please encourage your children to record any homework you do in their purple homework books and let us know how they get on with their reading and maths each week. A tip for our bilingual parents, have you tried reading with your child in your home language? |
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Year 2 |
Year 2 have had a lovely week. We have been enjoying finding out more about penguins. We have been using known facts in maths to help us work out harder problems. We are looking forward to welcoming you to our Harvest Festival presentation on dairy farming on Monday afternoon- we hope it will be udder-ly fantastic! |
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Year 3 |
Just a reminder to year 3 parents that you need keep your children with you until 8:45 am when the class teacher will come to take the class in. At no point before that should any year 3 children be in the canopy area . Some children have been left unsupervised there and parents have walked away from the playground before the class teacher has arrived. This is a serious safeguarding issue and we kindly ask you not to do this for your child's own safety. Thank you for your continued support. |
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Year 4 |
The promised trip letter will come home tomorrow (Friday) so look out for it in your children's bags! We also look forward to sharing our solar farms with you on Monday.
We are starting a big push on times tables in year 4. The curriculum requires children to know all their times tables by the end of year 4. The children will be tested weekly on Fridays and, each week, will have a specific times table to work on. They have their log in details for TTRockstars in their homework book. 'Garage' on TTRockstars is set on the times table they are working on currently. We are going to hold a competition between the children regarding their use of TTRockstars. They were excited today to hear that this will lead to extra playtime for the winners! Please could you help them to practise their times tables at home.
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Year 5 |
We would like to post photographs of the rivers trip on the website but are unable to. Only half of the parents have completed the Annual Declaration form. Please can everyone who has not done so, do this for each child by clicking on this link: https://forms.gle/wYKv2XGpXkamhDWg6. We will work on the website next week and will only put photos of the children we have permission from. |
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Year 6 |
Year 6 visit the library on Monday afternoons, please ensure that library books are bought in on this day so we can change them frequently. |
Dates for next week
Monday 2nd October – Harvest Festival in school – parents are invited.
Wednesday 4th October – Parent Forum virtual session 6-7pm
For other key dates – please look at the calendar on the website or School Jotter.
PE days
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Foundation |
Due to start PE lessons in the Summer Term |
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Year 1 |
Tuesday |
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Year 2 |
Monday |
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Year 3 |
Friday and every other Wednesday (Children can wear PE uniform on both days if easier to remember) |
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Year 4 |
Tuesday |
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Year 5 |
Monday and Thursday (Children can wear PE uniform on both days if easier to remember) |
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Year 6 |
Monday and Wednesday (Children can wear PE uniform on both days if easier to remember) |
Start and finishing times are as follows:
Foundation Stage, year 1 and Year 2: 8:40am – 3:10pm (Foundation Stage have a staggered start at the beginning of the year and so please collect at the times you have been given).
Years 3- 6: 8:45am – 3:15pm
Have a wonderful weekend!
Miss Kelly Dillon
Headteacher
