Keep up to date with all the latest news happening in school at the moment.
This half term our Eco Council have been out promoting our two Park and Stride locations at The Orpen Hall and The White Hart. Our Park and Stride initiative is designed to increase the number of children who walk to school and reduce the number of cars on New Church Road each morning. We hope all families and members of our community will support their great work!
KS2 were fortunate to be visited by local conservationist, Dan Abbott in our assembly this week. Dan has travelled the world learning, swimming and educating people about sharks. It was fascinating to hear about which sharks are local to the UK, which can be found across the world and what we can do to protect them. There was also time at the end for lots of questions.
Years 5 and 6 had an exciting start to term by taking part in a VR workshop. The year six pupils were whisked away to the city of Chichen Itza to learn about the significant sites of this city and what they now look like today. Whilst year 5 pupils were taken in a rocket into space, exploring the different planets that make up our solar system. A lot of enjoyment could be heard from each session and it was inspiring to see this technology being used in education.
From exploring the different ages, to preparing food, to even finding out how tools were made! Year 3 had an amazing time exploring life in the Stone Age this week!
On Thursday, Danielle from the Young Carers team, delivered an engaging and informative assembly to Years 1-6. The children learnt about what it means to be a young carer, the roles of Younger Carers in family life, and what support there is for Young Carers.
The Heathlands children showed Respect and Kindness throughout, as well as Courage asking some difficult questions. Our own school Young Carers club will be starting soon!
This half term out Core Values Art competition focuses on Respect and the medium is Photography! Any entries should be sent to admin@heathlands.essex.sch.uk by Friday 2nd February! Good luck everyone!
There is still time to complete the Essex Library Services Winter Reading challenge - make sure any books you enjoy you add a review to our school Reading Tablet!
If you haven't seen our Twitter account, this Advent calendar is a great way of showing our school's core value of Kindness every day during this special season of Advent. Lots of children are already taking part in school!
On Monday 20th November, we celebrated World Children’s Day.
World Children’s Day is UNICEF’s annual day of action for children, by children, marking the adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
This week Brian Butcher and Harry Stone met with the Heathlands school council to discuss their roles with the parish council and answer the children's questions. This helped them understand more about democracy in West Bergholt and the importance of their roles as school councillors. Harry and Brian also asked our children about what they liked about West Bergholt and what they thought could be improved.
On Friday, we held a Remembrance service at Heathlands to teach children about the importance of Remembrance Day. All classes created wreaths from poppies they had made in class and members of the school council laid the wreaths at the Orpen Hall where we said a prayer for those who had been, and still are, affected by wars around the world.
Dear Families,
It was a very difficult decision to cancel the Heathlands Fireworks Display. We have been monitoring ground conditions and the wretched weather for the past week but the safety risks and disruption to school operations became too high to allow us to proceed.
The Heathlands Fireworks Display is a great school tradition and it brings the local community together. We really appreciate the messages of support received since the announcement was made.
Since the decision to cancel was made we have been contacting suppliers, sponsors and advertisers to inform them and mitigate the financial impact. We have received significant gestures of Goodwill which will help to limit the impact. As the majority of tickets have been sold online we have been working out how the online sales platform can deal with ticket refunds and we will contact people who have bought tickets as soon as possible. Again, we appreciate the offer made by some to donate the ticket price to the PTA but we also understand in this current economic climate that the price of tickets for a family is not insignificant and we will communicate refund options as soon as possible.
It takes a massive team of people to organise and deliver the Heathlands Fireworks Display. We would like to thank all the volunteers and school staff who have offered to help this year.
Next year will be the 30th Anniversary of the Heathlands Fireworks Display and after this year's disappointment we would want to make it the best event ever. It is always hard work to organise but the money raised for the children and the bringing together of the local community make it all worthwhile. The Fireworks Team is a mix of both mum's and dad's and we have members stepping down year. If you would like to join the Fireworks Team for future HFD events please contact chair@heathlandsfireworks.co.uk and we can provide more details.
Kind Regards,
The Heathlands PTA Fireworks Team