Swavesey Primary School Parent Portal - Newsletter 92 (10.03.2024)

Updates from Mrs Norden

I hope that all our 'Mums' have had a lovely Mother's Day and all their children have looked after them. Today in my house, we celebrated three 'Mums', and talked about our changing roles and how there are generational similarities and differences. We talked about caring for and supporting our children, as well as, becoming carers and support for our parents, partners, siblings and others. With Friday having been 'International Women's Day', we felt that 'Mother's Day', while having its origins in a Victorian tradition, is also a wonderful way to celebrate all women who care and support in so many ways. Thank you to all our 'Mums' and women everywhere for their kindness and caring.

Last week saw reading for pleasure at the forefront of our activities with shared reading across year groups, dressing up for World Book Day, more humorous writing inspired by James Campbell and our World Book Day school quiz on Friday. We hope you enjoyed the home reading activities. A huge thank you to Mrs Sprawson for all her organising and hard work to make the events exciting and memorable.

We are really pleased so many children enjoyed the special World Book Day lunch, and you can see some pictures of the catering staff and their efforts to make it so special by clicking here. However, there were more than 30 lunch requests after the deadline, as was also the case for the previous themed lunch, which meant that the team had to make additional arrangements to ensure all children could have a meal. Orders for food are based on the number of booked meals received by the deadline and, although the team make allowances for some additional meals, the numbers across our theme days have been more than this. Please can we ask you to ensure that you book all lunches by deadlines given for theme days and the week before for a normal lunches to support our catering team.

National Science week began on Friday (8th March), and we will have activities throughout school this week. We are looking forward to exploring 'Time' in varied ways through the science curriculum and beyond. We hope the children will share their learning at home with you.

As you may have seen in a previous newsletter, Riley our Rights' Respecting Giraffe will be placed in the Grand Arcade this week for the 'Standing Tall' exhibition. The exhibition is made up of large giraffes decorated by local artists and mini giraffes decorated by Cambridgeshire schools and youth organisations. The Minis will all go on display around the city this week, with the large giraffes being set out in their zone by 21st March. You can find a poster with more details by clicking here. The giraffe trail will be available to explore from 21st March through to 2nd June, after which Riley will return to us to join Dandelion in the quiet area. We hope many of you will be able to go and see all the fabulous giraffes.

Some of you may remember our 'Lost Words' project which spanned two years, from 2019 to 2021. As part of this project, 'Dandelion', our mini-moo, was created and our 2019 Year 5s wrote a song called 'To the Lakes', with the folk group the Young'Uns. The song was part of a wider project called 'When Cambridgeshire sings' and involved several schools across the county. Sean Cooney, one of the Young'Uns, will be in Cambridge on Saturday, 23 March, as part of an event called 'What would Nature Do', and will be performing all the songs from this project including ours. Please find more details by clicking here for the main project and here for Sean's involvement.

_{Anna-Claire Norden}

_Headteacher