Grange First Weekly News Autumn 2 Week 5 - 5.12.25

Mrs Kidd-Scannell and I are furious today! Elfred has been in our office and has jumped on our table and snapped a candy cane that we use for OPAL play AND I was in the room the whole time and didn't see him! Please help us to find him so we can send him back!

Church Visit

Reception and Year 1 walked to St Hugh’s Church on Thursday for a special Christmas visit. The children sang Christmas songs beautifully and listened to a lovely message from Andrew, the vicar. Thank you to all the parents and grandparents who came along to help.

Wreath Making

Karen, our PTFA Chair and a fabulous florist, ran a wreath-making workshop in school on Wednesday evening -WOW, what an evening it was! Parents and children created the most stunning evergreen wreaths decorated with cones, dried citrus, candy canes and baubles. Karen generously donated all profits to the PTFA, raising an amazing £260. A huge thank you to Karen and to everyone who took part. I’ll definitely be signing up next year!

Santa Run

Running Club enjoyed our annual Santa Hat Run this week, followed by a festive Christmas breakfast. This marks the end of Running Club for now. We’ll start up again in March/April when the weather is a little warmer (and hopefully a bit drier!). Children with good attendance at the club this term will be invited to continue, and any spare places will be offered to other KS2 pupils. We do have a long waiting list, and priority is usually given to Year 4 as it’s their last opportunity to join before moving on to middle school.

Christmas Dinner and Sparkle Day

Yum yum!  What a delicious Christmas dinner we all enjoyed! The children looked fantastic in their Christmas jumpers and sparkles too. A huge thank you to our incredible lunchtime team, who cooked and served over 300 Christmas dinners!

Raffle

There is still time to buy tickets for our Christmas PTFA raffle. There are some fabulous prizes to be won! Here are some of them: More than 20 hampers Book tokens Etto voucher Tickets to a show at Gosforth Civic Centre Gosforth Elite Valets- a voucher for an exterior valet worth £55 Jesmond Beauty voucher Twirly Pearly Balloons voucher for a single number stack balloon up to the value of £40 £30 voucher for Twenty Twenty £30 voucher for Moku £100 voucher for a private dinning Chef Brad Experience

Cut Your Carbon Challenge

In assemblies this week, we learned about global warming and explored how carbon dioxide acts a bit like a warm blanket wrapped around our world. We need this blanket to stop Earth from freezing, but we don’t want it to get too thick. We talked about how, if everyone does their little bit, we can help reduce carbon emissions and keep our blanket just the right size. We also discussed how global warming is already melting the polar ice caps and causing droughts and floods in different parts of the world.

Please complete the six challenges at home with your family in December. When we come back to school in January, we’ll count up how many of you joined in, add up the estimated carbon saved, and celebrate your amazing efforts! Let’s help our planet -one small step at a time!

A reminder about parties next week:

Monday 15th Dec Year 4 Cherry- savoury Maple- sweet Tuesday 16th Dec Year 3 Willow- sweet Sycamore- savoury Wednesday 17th Dec Nursery, Reception, Year 2 Nursery- choose sweet or savoury Oak- sweet Beech- savoury Hazel- sweet Juniper- savoury Friday 19th Dec Year 1 Silver Birch- sweet Hawthorn- savoury

Children will have their water bottle at their party so please make sure this is in school on that day- party games are thirsty work!

PTFA- Christmas Performances

The PTFA will be selling refreshments for adults attending the Christmas performances next week. Please bring along some cash if you would like to buy a drink and a festive sweet treat.

Golden Welly Award

This week, we had our very first whole class Welly Nomination. This has never happened before! Well done to Juniper Class- you were all nominated by Mrs Nicholson who said, "Juniper Class are always so helpful at tidy up time!"