Well done Eden, Jayden and Jasmine who represented the school on Sunday’s Remembrance Service at St Peter and St Paul’s Church and afterwards at the War Memorial. The children comported themselves with the dignity befitting the solemnity of the occasion as they each fulfilled their different roles: Jasmine lit a candle of hope midway through the service at the church, whilst Eden and Jayden laid a wreath at the War Memorial. The children at school also paused on Monday at 11am to mark the moment the guns fell silent on the Western Front and to remember and give thanks to all those who fought and, especially, those who lost their lives during that and subsequent wars. Well done, children, and thank you.

The children of Zambezi and Amazon Classes joined hundreds of other children from schools across the area for the first round of this year’s Cross Country competition. The afternoon started with an enormous warm-up with stretches and jogging on the spot, before the Fun Runners set off on a slightly shorter route across the common. However, don’t be fooled, even the shorter route disappears out of sight of the onlookers as the children head out across the Common. Following this, the competitive races began, with children split by gender and year group.

We were immensely proud of all our children for taking part – simply completing the course is an enormous achievement, as was evident from the red faces and total exhaustion of all those crossing the finish line. Special mention must be made of five children who finished in the top 5 in their heat, thereby qualifying for the next round later in the year. So, well done Ernie and Daniel, who finished fifth, Isaac, who finished fourth, Archie, who finished third, and Amy who won the Year 5 girls’ race. Epic!

Thank you so much for supporting our first Apple Day. We had such a good time. The festivities started after the Harvest Festival in the Baptist Chapel as we split into our house groups to prepare the food we would need for the evening’s events. Columba spent the morning chopping vegetables from Mrs Tooley’s garden to make a delicious chunky vegetable stew. Cygnus were set the task of preparing sweet potatoes and butternut squash to make a fiery, bright orange soup that was delicious with a dollop of crème fraiche and parsley. Apus’ job was to prepare the dough for our bread rolls. They kneaded four kilograms of flour to make over 70 super tasty rolls. Meanwhile, Aquila’s job was to cut up several hundred apples so they could be pulped and then squeezed to make apple juice. This was a hugely sticky affair and the wasps were quickly interested in our efforts, but the results were several litres of really appley, slightly tart but absolutely delicious juice that everyone who tasted it really enjoyed.

The evening was delightful: it was lovely to invite our families back to school to taste all the things we had prepared. The atmosphere in the hall was lovely and the children were really proud of their efforts. Having eaten our fill, we made our way out to the Forest School to admire the pumpkins in the competition, play on the field, then settle down around Miss Adamson’s fire to enjoy some baked apples with crushed biscuit crumble and some campfire songs. It was great fun.

The pumpkin competition was hotly contested and there were some brilliantly carved offerings, including toadstools, vegetables and farmers. Our winners were, in second place, Layla’s wonderful owl and, in first place, Dexter’s brilliant combine harvester.

Thank you to all our volunteers for your support in the morning and the afternoon.