Reaching high for the best for your child

 Year One have had an exciting start back to the school term with their new topic 'Treasure Island.' The children came back to find their classrooms transformed to contain an exciting pirate ship leading to Treasure Island in Chestnut Class and Hook's Cave: a dark and dangerous cave where legend has it that treasure is buried in Cherry Class.

The children have had a wonderful time becoming pirates and engaging in role play from their imagination and from books they have read. The children have been fully interacting in role play taking hostages, collecting ransoms and generally becoming pirates in our fully equipped role play areas. The topic is full of all things exciting and piratey including working with maps, making a parrot to be a shipmate, conducting floating and sinking experiments and training to use their sword correctly at 'Sword School.' Feel free to send in any items that may help with our topic. Please do not be alarmed if your child begins to speak in pirate lingo!

To see more pictures of our wonderful role play, click here!

As you know, we have an INSET day on the 26th of April, and then we are back for two days only on the 27th & 28th, before we are off again to celebrate the Royal Wedding long weekend.

Make sure you come to school on those two days though - because we will be spending them doing a special ROYALS mini-topic!!

Everyone will be able to come to school dressed in patriotic red, white and blue for the two days! The whole school will be then sorted into big groups with children from every year group so that the older children can help the little ones. Then we have lots of exciting activities planned! These include making Union Jack iced biscuits, drawing Royal Portraits, making a London skyline and preparing for a whole-school street party lunch on the Thursday. Each child will also be making a Royal Wedding Souvenir Fridge Magnet, which they will be able to take home and keep!

More information is coming out in a Curriculum Information Booklet later this week - or download it from here!

On Wednesday, we are sending home our annual Parent Survey. This is a really important source of information for us, so please make sure that you complete the survey and return it to school through your child, before 25th March.

We will give you feedback on the outcomes of the survey after the easter break.

Don't forget you can always drop us an email to let us know about something - or feel free to make an appointment through the school office to see the relevant member of staff.

Last week, Year 3 & 4 had a fantastic Superhero Day! As part of their Superheroes topic this half term, the children have been making Superheroes merchandise; writing adventure stories about the fight between good and evil; creating comic strips on the laptops; finding out about real-life heroes; exploring how our idea of what is heroic changes over time; and investigating forces that Superheroes use to move objects! What a fun and interesting way to learn!

You can read more about the story in this week's Comet - a snippet of the article is hereas well.

Next week, we will be sending out copies of our Home-School-Child Agreement  to all families who have not yet signed it. This is an important piece of paper - it is a basic agreement about what it means to be part of the school community at Fairlands. Please make sure you read it through carefully with your child, sign it and return promptly!

The picture above is a 'wordle' of all the text it contains... click here for a bigger version! These are great fun - go to www.wordle.net to make your own!

There is still time to respond to the public consultation regarding the proposed expansion of Fairlands to three forms of entry. The consultation closes on 21st February 2011.

Please see the news article below for links to online forms, or pop into the school office for a paper copy.