Calverley News #12 (26.4.24) | Calverley CE Primary School

Reception class have been learning all about the life cycle of a frog. Since the Easter holidays the tadpoles have hatched and are enjoying their new home in the garden pond. We have learnt some facts about common and red eye tree frogs too. In our classroom we have a minibeast café and there is so much interest in role playing cafes that next week we are going on a local visit to the Little Coffee House in Calverley to learn more about running a café. We will be designing and writing our own menus and makings some delicious sweet treats to serve. Yummy!

Year 2 have been ‘budding’ scientists, learning about plants, seeds, bulbs and growth (apologies for the pun...) . They have observed and described how seeds and bulbs grow into mature plants. They have found out and described how plants need water, light and a suitable temperature to grow and stay healthy. We have germinated broad beans in hydroponic bags, and grown our own cress heads. The children have even made a model of a germinating broad bean and labelled it!

Year 3 Church Visit

On Wednesday, Year 3 visited St Wilfrid’s Church to take part in a workshop linked to their current topic of ‘What kind of world did Jesus want?’ They considered what the world is like and how Jesus would feel about this. They acted out stories from The Bible, including The Good Samaritan and Zacchaeus the Tax Collector, and took part in some fun activities. Thank you to Brenda and Sandra for inviting us into church and helping with our learning.

Nell Bank

On Friday the 19^th, year 4 and 5 went on a trip to Nell Bank where they spent all day completing activities by using hard work and a lot of teamwork. The children engaged very well in the activities and where kind and respectful to the workers at Nell Bank. They completed a large variety of activities including den building, information gathering. And overall we had a wonderful trip to Nell Bank.

One of the main highlights of the year for Year 6 took place just before Easter, when we set off for our adventure at Robinwood. The children fully embraced an action-packed few days taking part in lots of exciting activities such as climbing, the trapeze, canoeing, quests and even escaping the deadly piranhas! We were extremely impressed with the children’s attitude to taking part in all of the challenges and their behaviour was excellent. The group instructors all commented on how friendly and kind the children were and were impressed with the encouragement they showed towards each other. A fantastic experience, and one the staff thoroughly enjoyed sharing with the children.

Green Team Fundraising

A huge thank you to everyone who took part in our Green Team Fundraising. The silver coin dragonfly pond looked brilliant. The chidlren really enjoyed learning from Mr Harkins more about pond life and how caring for these ecosystems help our planet. The final total raised was £400. A brilliant achievement. Some of the funds have already been put to use by purchasing some bird box kits from Outdoor Classrooms in Calverley. Each year group will be involved in building and decorating a bird box and then they will be put up around the school grounds. Well done everyone and thank you for your fundraising efforts. All of those little silver coins will make a big difference!

WOW! What a great start to our Walk to School Campaign. Led by our Eco Monitors pictured here, we have been promoting the benefits of walking to school and have noticed a significant change in the amount of traffic on Thornhill Drive in particular this week. Standing out there all week has really underlined how dangerous it can be with cars coming in and out of the same narrow entrance and turning out of and into fast moving traffic so it has been great to visibly witness a reduction in this risk. For children to earn their badges these need to be long term changes not just for a week so keep up the good work! Even if it is wet, a coat and an umbrella make it bearable. We hope you are finding it a great chance to have a chat with your children as well as getting the blood pumping and reducing traffic.

We are aware that a walking journey from the Calverley Arms to school is not without its risks and have been in contact with local councillor and school governor, Peter Cahill about this. He has made a request through the highways team to ask:

For the location to be added to the annual pedestrian crossing review
For an assessment to be taken of what options there would be to widen the footpath on the south side of Towngate
If there is any additional support the road safety team could offer in this location

London Marathon –Mr Bayly

The School Council would like to say huge congratulations to Mr Bayly who ran the London Marathon last weekend to raise money for 4 of the school’s charities chosen by the School Council at the start of the school year. Generous donations from our school community have meant that over £1,300 was raised and will be split evenly between Zarach, RSPCA, Make a Wish Foundation and Cancer Research UK. Thank you, Mr Bayly for your incredible fundraising efforts to support the important work that each of these charities do!

These were donated to school by Annie and Lotte Piper's mum, who works for the games company Asmodee. School would like to thank you so much for your donation.