Issue 23 - 15th March 2024
Dear Families,
What a busy week we have had this week celebrating 'British Science Week!'
Children across the school have taken part in 'The Great Biscuit Investigation' to see which biscuit makes the 'best dunker.' Year 3 investigated a range of different biscuits; Year 4 observed whether the type of liquid the biscuit was being dunked in made a difference; Year 5 thought about whether the temperature affected 'the dunk' and Year 6 compared different brands of the same biscuit.
Yesterday, we held our 'Science Morning' and saw children (and parents) get their hands dirty with lots of hands-on science experiments. Children investigated what happens when cornflour is mixed with water. They also marvelled at the reaction that takes place when vinegar is added to bicarbonate soda. Finally, some children managed to 'grow a rainbow.'
We had more than 120 parents attend the morning and It was so lovely to be able to share this with you so thank you for joining us and fully embracing the morning.
We took on board the feedback from the previous DT afternoon and made some adjustments to this event (changing it to the morning for example) and would love to ask you for your feedback again. Please leave a comment below – positive feedback or constructive criticism – we plan these events for you to enjoy so it is important we hear your views.
Have a good weekend.
Emma Fordham
Headteacher
Key Messages
External After School Clubs
We have lots of wonderful staff here that are always keen to volunteer their time to run after school clubs for our children. We offer these clubs free of charge as we never want cost to be a barrier for accessing extra-curricular activities. However, parents will understand that staff have huge amounts of other commitments at the end of the school day so we can’t always offer as many as we would like. To increase our offer, we have begun introducing external clubs which are paid for by parents. We currently host a dance club on a Wednesday afternoon and will be introducing a Performing Arts club on a Friday and a football club on a Monday and Tuesday. We agreed for these clubs to use our space with the proviso that there were some (limited) funded spaces available for our children. If you feel that cost is a barrier for your child accessing these clubs, please email admin@almondhill.herts.sch.uk FAO Mrs Fordham. All emails will be treated confidentially and I really want to build up a list of children who can benefit from these extra opportunities who might not otherwise be able to. Please do get in touch.
Year 5 Cycling
We were pleasantly surprised to see so many people interested in the cycling proficiency this year so much so we had to book an additional slot. Last year, we struggled to fill a slot of 16 spaces! We know, despite adding the additional spaces, there are still people who missed out and we have been in contact with the company to see if we can increase this further. Watch this space...
In future, we will endeavour to give advanced notice of booking systems opening to allow parents to plan for this. If possible, we will also offer some spaces to the current Year 5s next year should there be space available.
Arbor Parent Portal
Please remember, we have moved onto Arbor for communications so all messages will be sent via Arbor not School Gateway so if you haven’t already, please ensure you download the app to continue to receive important information from us. We will continue using Gateway for payments. School Grid and School Cloud have not been affected by this change.
Attendance
As much as it was lovely to see such a high attendance percentage on Tuesday for school photo day (96.4%), please remember education is more important than school photos and it would be even better to see this level of attendance every day.
Coming to School Before 8.45am
Children are not supervised on the playground before 8.45 so should not be arriving without an adult before this time as it is not safe. Bagels are available after 8.30am.
e-Scooters in School
Further to the information shared on last week’s newsletter, please can I remind parents that e-Scooters are not allowed on the school site.
Last Day of Term
The last day of term is on Thursday 28th March and we finish at 12.30pm. Please note, there will be cold lunch options only on this day (cheese and ham). Please help us by clearing any dinner money debt by the end of term. Thank you.