Honilands Newsletter - 9th May
Summer
As we eagerly embrace the arrival of summer (despite its occasional reluctance to fully show itself), we're excited about the prospect of utilising more of our school's beautiful grounds, especially the inviting field during lunchtimes.
With hopes for warmer days ahead, it's crucial to ensure our students are prepared for the sun's rays. Please remember to equip your children with hats and remind them to bring along their water bottles, ensuring that they have your child’s name on them.
Please make sure your child has a reusable water bottle and that they are also of a reasonable size and shape. I know that Stanley cups are fashionable at the moment, but these are not appropriate for school as they are way too large.
Visitors and Trips
As always, staff are busy looking for further ways to engage our children and enhance their learning. Last week we had a farm based in the Upper Hall with a range of animals for our Early Years pupils to engage with. We’ve also had writing workshops with the Poet Neal Zetter, a Year 4 trip to the beach and the Royal Festival Hall amongst other various visits both in Enfield and further.
I would like to thank all of you who have supported these trips as volunteers. Without your support we would not be able to give the children these fantastic experiences.
My New Gallery
Parent Evening
It was warming to see how many of you attended parent evening at the end of the last half term. It is a lovely experience for us as staff as it gives us an opportunity to share how your child is progressing as well as to learn more about them from you.
If you were unable to attend or missed the booking, we are happy to make time for a ten-minute meet after school to give you an opportunity to support your child. If you would like to do this then please mention it to our staff at pick up after school and they will let you know when is most convenient. We know that children make the best progress when school and home work together to support them.
Summer Menu for School Dinners
All school dinners are now free to families, if you would like your child to enjoy one of our fantastic meals please contact the School Office. As you will see from our menus, we offer a range of meals daily and they are both tasty and healthy.
Smoking
A polite reminder to parents, please do not smoke on or around our school premises as we are a smoke free school. I have recently had complaints from some parents and carers about people smoking close to our school gates in the morning and at the end of the day. If you smoke or vape when bringing or collecting your child from school, for the comfort and health of other families, I would be grateful if you could stand away from the school entrance/school gates while you are smoking. Thank you for your co-operation.
Walkers After School Club @ Honilands
I would like to highlight to you again our after-school provision. Many of you asked me to source an after-school club for the school and we were very lucky to get Walkers to take us up. However, if you would like this provision to continue then it must get enough support from our community.
Costs per session are:
£10 for 3:15pm - 6:00pm
£5 for 3:15pm - 4:30pm
They also run a cooking club on Friday - this is £5 a session.
Walkers are also happy to arrange flexible times and bookings.
Our club is fantastic value and you also have the comfort of knowing it is OFSTED registered and is based in school where all safety checks are carried out on the premises.
If you need after-school care for your child, please use our school provision. For further details, you can visit the website - https://walkerchildrensclub.co.uk/ - where you can book. Or you can pop into the School Office, where our staff will be happy to help you.
Developing the school
We are continuing to look at improving our school site. Our Reception children were so happy with the new surfacing in Early Years and we are looking to raise money to buy some tricycles for the children to use in this area.
The Dining Hall has also had a makeover with a huge vinyl timeline added to the back wall. The children were so excited when they saw it and it contains all the areas of history that they will study while they are here at Honilands.
The next target is to secure funding to put some further play equipment in the playground for our children to use and to help them develop their gross motor skills.
Academisation
Thank you to those of you who fed back to the school during our consultation period on academisation. Your questions were answered and your kind words about the trust you have in the leaderships team and the school staff was much appreciated.
The consultation period ended on the 16th April and the Governing Body then met to receive feedback from the consultation and to make a formal decision on academising. The vote was in favour of academisation and so Honilands Primary School will now be moving forward in our plans to join the Children First Academy Trust. This process should take 4-5 months and so will formally happen in the autumn term of the next academic year.
SATs
Next week is SATs week for our pupils in Year 6. As has become our tradition, the school will be opening at 8am for our pupils in Year 6 so that they can come in and have breakfast together. Our children and teachers have been working incredibly hard in preparation for these tests. We are so proud of them and know that they will try their best. The plans for the week are:
Monday - Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling - Paper 1 and Paper 2
Tuesday - English Reading
Wednesday - Maths Paper 1 (arithmetic) and Maths Paper 2 (Reasoning)
Thursday - Maths Paper 3 (Reasoning)
Social Media
To find out about what is going on in school please remember to follow us on social media:
Twitter: @honilands
Instagram: HonilandsPrimaryschool
At the bottom of our school webpage, we have links to both of our pages - https://honilandsps.schoolzineplus.co.uk/
Whatsapp can be a fantastic tool for communication. However, for our children it can also be the cause of conflict outside of school. Please, if you are going to allow your child to have a mobile phone and use whatsapp and other social media apps, make sure that you are checking their phone and making sure that they are using these tools appropriately.
Term Dates for 2024-25 Academic Year
Quality Sleep
Please have a look at the attached guidance from the NHS on how to support your child to get quality sleep each night.