It was lovely to see so may people in school for our ‘Special Person Christmas Lunch’ and our Christingle Service on Tuesday.  We all enjoyed a delicious Christmas lunch with our invited special guests  prepared by our fantastic school cook Karen.

During the morning the children really enjoyed making the Christingles and learning about the meaning and the work of The Children’s Society.  A special thank you to Rev Brian and Lloyd for conducting the service in the afternoon.  We will send the money donated in the Christingle Candles and from the refreshment donations to The Children’s Society.  Thank you.

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Last week we had our Children in Need morning in school.  The morning started off with a Joe Wicks work out, which everyone really enjoyed and after the session we all had a refreshing berry smoothie, yum,yum!  The play leaders then rushed to their stalls that they had prepared which included a cake stall, toy stall and lots of fun activities and games including decorate a biscuit, tin can alley, pudsey pennies and lots more.  Everyone enjoyed this amazing day and we raised a whopping £183 for Children in Need.

By Leon

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In Monday assemblies we have been talking about how everyone is different. We can look different, have different families, sound different, feel different about things, like different foods and that’s ok. People shouldn’t worry about it. On Tuesday, year 5/6 had a brilliant discussion which led to us decorating a cake to enter a competition for a charity called Educate and Celebrate. We created an amazing rainbow cake with 6 layers (thank you so much Karen!). We wrote messages around the base of the cake, here are some of them:
• be yourself
• be proud of who you are
• everyone is equal
• you can be different
• love has no labels
• everyone is human
• love who you love
• love yourself for being you

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On Monday we all got together and had our ‘Special Remembrance Day’ assembly in school.  We watched a video created by CBeebies, simply titled, ‘Poppies’ to help convey the notion of Remembrance in a way that would resonate with a young audience.

Squirrel class made acrostic poppy poems and Georgia o’Keefe inspired torn poppy pictures. Owl class made weaved poppy plates and created number poems on them.  At 11.00am we had a 2 minute silence to remember the brave soldiers who gave their lives to make ours better.

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Wow, what a busy week we have had running up to half term at Woodland.

Baby & Toddler Group

On Monday, as part of our Rural Isolation project we held our first baby and toddler group. All activities were set up around the theme of ‘A day at the seaside’ with an indoor beach including sand, paddling, skittles, play-dough ice-creams and fish to decorate. Even our snack was seaside themed- carrot ‘chips’ and cucumber ‘fish’!

Our young visitors enjoyed a variety of activities following the Early Years Foundation stage curriculum including all areas of learning. The aim of our fun afternoons is to provide an opportunity for parents, carers and young children to get out and socialise with other young families in the community.

The afternoon was planned last term by Owl class as part of the ‘Make a Difference Project’ and implemented by this year’s Playleaders.  Fun was had by all!

Squirrel Class Stay & Play

On the same afternoon we invited our parents and grandparents of Squirrel class to take part in some fantastic science activities. We made bubbling potions, transformed balls of clay into pumpkins and investigated the density of water. We also made a hypothesis about which object would float and sink, observed the change over the day to the water beads and painted Autumn trees using icing sugar. Stay and Play wouldn’t be complete without baking and the children transformed some amazing ice cream cakes.

Harvest Festival

On Tuesday we had our Harvest Service lead by Rev Lloyd. It was lovely to see so many parents, family members and friends from the Church at the service.  Many thanks to everyone who sent in donations for the hampers, and bought raffle tickets.  We raised £70 from the raffle and refreshments which will be given to the Senior Citizen Christmas Party at Woodland Village Hall.

Halloween Lunch & Disco

Karen our school cook prepared us a delicious Halloween lunch that included witches hats for dessert, and on the same night we had a fun disco with games, hot dogs and a pumpkin competition.

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On Wednesday Nurses from the County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust Bill, Tracy and Melissa came in to school to demonstrate how to restart the heart.  The Owl class children all took part in how to deal with a casualty (Resuscitation Annie), from making sure the area is safe to doing chest compression’s.  The nurses also brought along a training defibrillator and demonstrated how one is used.  They all learnt the steps to deal with a choking incident and dressed up in medial clothing.

A special thank you to Bill, Tracey and Melissa for coming out to school to teach the children such valuable life skills.

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Well done to our newly elected School Councillors, they all produced an excellent presentation to there classes on why people should vote for them.

On Thursday the children enjoyed a ‘Mad Scientist Lunch’ prepared my our fabulous cook Karen.  The children had sausages and colour changing mash, and delicious buns with fun toppings.  Our next themed lunch is our Halloween Lunch on 22nd October, we are all looking forward to a ‘Spooktacular Lunch’

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We enjoyed a fantastic trip to the Bowes Museum. We took part in some exciting some workshops and also completed the lego trail. The children in KS2  spent time in the Lego exhibition building some brilliant models.  In their workshop they then made models which were  programmed to move using  Lego Wedo  and the ipads. They made cars which they raced in the picture gallery. The children in KS1 also enjoyed the lego exhibition and trail as well as finding out more about the illustrator Nick Sharratt in the Pirates, Pants and Wellyphants exhibition. They took part in a storytelling and arts and crafts workshop where they made some amazing pirate hats.  No visit to the Bowes Museum would be complete without seeing the Silver Swan. We returned to school having thoroughly enjoyed our day.

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