A few Year 5 students were lucky enough to head over to Winterslow Primary School to take part in a Creative Writing Workshop led by author, 'Katheryn Evans'. The day was spent looking at story plots, characters and settings. We are very much looking forward to the children's finished stories!
We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who sponsored the children when taking part in the Olympic Athlete challenge. We have finally received the playground equipment that we ordered with the generous amount of money we collected. The children were very excited to see it all arrive and are enjoying playing together.
After a Covid break we were delighted to hold our MacMillan Coffee Morning again! With the help of some talented baker parents we had a larger number of families join us for a cuppa and chat.
We are delighted to say we raised £87.08 on the day and are waiting for confirmation of our online donations. A very big thank you to everyone helped and donated.
We absolutely loved being able to share our performance of 'Robin and the Sherwood Hoodies'- what a fantastic way to finish the year! Thank you to everyone for all of your hard work to make the night a success!
Our Year 5's had a fantastic afternoon at SWGS where they had to examine the evidence to solve the crime! The children got to perform lots of secondary school science activities and were all able to identify the criminal! Well done for great analytical thinking and working safely with lots of new equipment. Many thanks to the staff at South Wilts for hosting the afternoon.
Children from year 4, 5 and 6 had the opportunity to see the live re-enactment of the Life of Christ performed in the beautiful landscape at Wintershall last week. There was a real life baby Jesus, donkeys, horses and doves: A fully immmersive experience! Jesus was baptised in the lake and his disciples were fishing in boats. It was incredible to see the bible stories from worship brought to life so vividly by the actors. It was also very emotional to witness the crucifiction of Jesus who we had been following and listening to all day. We could begin to imagine how it might have felt to have been one of his followers at the time and how sad they would have been at the crucifiction but also why there was such joy to be celebrated at the resurrection.
Our Year 6 children recently had the opportunity to participate in the excellent Bikeability Course co-ordinated by Instructors from Wiltshire Council. Divided into two small groups the children experienced two days of coaching to ensure their cycling knowledge and skills were improved. At the end of the course children receive a certificate, badges and individual feedback forms. We are very grateful to our instructors for their organisation and patience over the four days.
The whole school gathered to plant a special Cherry Tree in commemoration of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee. As you can see this was led by Headteacher, Mrs Smith and every child was involved and help return soil into the hole!
We are grateful to the Parish Council who have generously funded the purchase of the tree and other Jubilee items.
On Tuesday 5th April children at St Nicholas will be running around the field to make up the distance between ourselves and Gomeldon school as part of the Commonwealth celebrations. On Friday Mrs Hill's children Olly and Seb came over from Winterslow school with the baton that they had taken around their own field for the distance between Winterslow and Porton. They had picked up the baton from a runner that came across the fields from Pitton school. We are excited to be taking part in this collaborative event so don't forget your running shoes on Tuesday!
You can also find many more photographs on our class pages!
This week we have held a clothes collection and non-uniform day where everyone wore clothing in shades of yellow and blue. We very much wanted to support the Red Cross DEC Appeal and are delighted that to date we have raised £417 from donations which we hope in some small way will help families affected by the war in Ukraine. Thank you to all our families who made generous donations.
Everyone is very much enjoying the chance to dress up as one of their favourite book characters and have also been sharing photographs of themselves reading at home.
Mrs Perry very kindly made a spectacular cake for the whole school to share in celebration of being together this Christmas time. Staff and children gathered in the school hall and sang a selection of carols and Christmas songs followed by a slice of cake.
Thank you Mrs Perry you are amazing!
Some of our older children are enjoying trying out the new games kindly purchased by the
St Nicholas PTA.
Well done and thank you for your contributions to our non uniform day we collected £171.60 for Children in Need.
Thank you to all our families who donated filled shoeboxes for the Trussell Trust Christmas appeal. We are sure that all the children and adults that receive these gifts will be delighted and very much appreciate your kindness.
Today we held our Remembrance Service, families also made donations totalling £195.90 to the Royal British Legion by purchasing poppies and other items.
We would like to extend our thanks to the many volunteers that helped support our day and worked with the children to afford them new opportunities. Many thanks to staff from Dstl and PHE for providing their time and resources and to the STEM ambassador program; specifically to John at Trilogy Communications Ltd and Bob from the Travelling Planetarium. Our day concluded with a whole-school science show provided by Do Science.
As part of our Harvest celebration we have been collecting tinned and packet food items again this year to donate to the Trussell Trust Food Bank. We have been delighted with the donations received from our school families and are very grateful for their support, in addition we will be adding donations from St Nicholas' Church to our donation.
A big 'Thank You' to everyone who made a donation!
Our Year 6 children are proud of the mosaic that they designed and made, we wish them the best of luck as they move on to the next stage of their schooling.
The butterfly kits were kindly provided to Hedgehog Class by the charity 'Focus in on Life'; a small, local charity set up to celebrate the life of George Smith (1994-2012). George was a horticultural student and shared his love of the country side through his photography. The charity’s main fundraising is through the sale of cards using George’s photographs. The children have enjoyed watching the butterflies emerge and then flying into our wonderful countryside.
ANNINGTON SHARES GIFT OF FRIENDSHIP WITH PORTON SCHOOL
Friday 26th March 2021
Children at St Nicholas’ CE VA Primary School in Porton, Wiltshire, are enjoying being back at school this Spring, and the gift of a Buddy Bench from Annington, the company responsible for building the new homes at The Bluebells in nearby Allington, is set to help them settle back into their new routine.
The Buddy Bench is designed to help children to combat loneliness and foster friendships, which will be as important as ever in helping them re-adjust to school after lockdown. Children that are feeling sad or anxious can sit on the bench to signal to others that they need a friend to speak to. Made from sustainably sourced wood, the Buddy Bench is personalised with a hand-engraved message to remind all pupils of the importance of supporting one another:
“We sit, we chat and ask each other questions,
We leave as friends, with all good intentions.”
Mrs Sandy Smith, Headteacher at St Nicholas’ CE VA Primary School, commented: “It’s so important to create a safe and caring environment for children so that they are able to talk about their feelings, especially during such uncertain times. A shy or anxious child may struggle to ask someone else for support, which is why the Buddy Bench is such a vital tool in teaching the children what to do when they feel lonely, and how to act when they see that someone else needs support. We are very grateful to Annington for donating the bench to us.”
Louise Saunders, Sales and Marketing Manager at Annington, adds: “At Annington, we strive to support local communities wherever we can, right down to the very youngest schoolchildren. We are proud to gift the Buddy Bench to St Nicholas’ CE VA Primary School, and we hope that the children will be able to use it to create new friendships and feel more confident for many years to come.”
As a school we decided to support the Toilet Twinning Charity and raise money to buy a toilet block for children less fortunate than ourselves. We collected donations and then planned to hold a non uniform day to complete the collection but sadly the pandemic delayed this for a number of months. But back in the Autumn Term whilst everyone was at school we did go ahead with our plans and due to the generous donations were able to collect in total £231!! You will see that his money has funded four toilet blocks and we are sure these will make a significant difference to those children.
Thank you and well done to everyone who took part.
The theme for Anti-Bullying Week 2020 was: United Against Bullying. Anti-Bullying Week took place in England from Monday 16th - Friday 20th November. This nationwide event is organised by the Anti-Bullying Alliance and is intended to raise the awareness of the issue of bullying.
This year we linked our learning to our PSHE Jigsaw theme this term, celebrating differences.
All of the children were involved in discussions about what makes them unique and how to celebrate each others differences.
They all designed and created their own jigsaw piece with pictures and words describing what makes them unique.
'We are all different but we all fit together'
The School Council is made up of one representative from each year group (except Reception) across the school and their job is to raise important matters to Mrs Smith, Headteacher on behalf of their classmates.
This is the first meeting of this school year and all our Council members were very prepared with ideas and requests from their peers. Some of these included: altering the play trail rota, new play resources, charity fundraising, creating a wild flower & insect garden, an outside quiet area, yogurts for lunch and a school pet!
As you can see the topics raised are very varied but we are so pleased that every child takes their responsibility so seriously and comes prepared with a list of points to raise. After the meeting children go back to report the details of what was discussed to their classmates and Mrs Smith is busy trying to action as many requests as is possible.
This year we held our Remembrance Worship outside where Mrs Smith talked about why we hold these services, we also had prayers and played The Last Post whilst observing a two minute silence.
There was also a small service on Sunday 8th November at St Nicholas Church in Porton where a wreath was laid at the War Memorial from the School along with others from the Armed Forces, St Nicholas Church, Parish Council, Porton Memorial Hall and the Scout Groups of Bourne Valley.
On the outer door of the church is a display of tags with messages of Remembrance from our school and also from other members of the community. This is a special display as we have not been able to visit church in the same way this year.
We were delighted when Mrs Alison Riley and her family attended school to officially open the two new classrooms. Mrs Riley has just stepped down as Vice Chair of Governors having previously been our Chair of Governors for 4 years. She has worked tirelessly for the school and it was a fitting tribute to her dedication that she was able to cut the ribbon and officially open our new 6th class. Our thanks and gratitude to Alison Riley.
A Wonderful Operatic Experience
Many of our children and parents will recall the visit we received from the professional opera singers and the fantastic workshop and performance that followed. After this most successful visit we were then fortunate enough to receive a second visit, please see below.
Released: 19th November 2019
Guess what happens when professional opera singers spring a surprise visit to our school? This!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fz7koe-qs5A&feature=youtu.be
"This is the best day of my life"
(pupil aged 6)
Organised by Wiltshire Music Connect
Unfortunately not the ones with chocolate chips.
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