June 2021 Newletter

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Our School Prayer

Our School Rules

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On Monday 1st March, we had an Easter Comparison afternoon. This was part of our work towards a Global Neighbours Award.

The Nursery bubble compared Easter traditions between the UK and Bermuda. The children found out that to celebrate Easter in Bermuda, Christians make kites and take part in egg and spoon races. The children also enjoyed a very popular tradition from the UK—hot cross buns!

The EYFS/KS1 bubble, compared Easter traditions in Spain and the UK. They discovered that the egg represents new life and in Spain, they decorate eggs and roll them down a hill. Also, in the USA they have egg and spoon competitions. The children and adults had an egg and spoon race as well as decorating eggs.

Sophie commented “In Spain, they put Ash on their foreheads like Christians in the UK on Ash Wednesdays before Easter. This is to ask Jesus for forgiveness.”

The KS2 bubble found out about how lots of different countries celebrate Easter. They discovered in Sweden, Easter is really important and they decorate houses (like Christmas in the UK but with Egg decorations.) The children had a go at using felt tips to decorate their own boiled eggs! We also found out that in Spain, strong people carry intricately decorated wooden boxes with depictions of the Easter story along the streets to commemorate Easter. For Christians in Spain, Easter is the most important celebration of the year.”

Great work everyone! What a fun way to try other countries’ Easter traditions!

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Welcome back Nursery!

This week, the children in Nursery have been super busy! They have practised actions to go with new songs, built incredible structures and were visited by Jack the Dog Puppet, when Miss Lewis came over to tell them a story!

Wow! What a week!

Well done Nursery!

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This week Miss Lewis read some more of the Christmas story and the wise men came to visit baby Jesus. The children really enjoy listening and learning during these sessions.

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This Thursday, East Hoathly school was joined by some Governors as we celebrated Christingle.

Each class sang a song from their Nativity and Reverend Phil led everyone in prayer. There were some Owl children who read prayers too. Christingle is a time for us all to reflect upon the life of Jesus and what his birth means for us.

The children enjoyed making their Christingle for the service and it was lovely to see Owl children helping their buddies in Hedgehog class!

It was lovely to see everybody on the screen for the service! Merry Christmas, all!

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This week, we began filming for the school’s Nativity. The children have been amazing at rehearsing their lines and practising their songs. We hope to be able to show you the final product soon! Thank you to Mrs Thatcher for filming and editing the play.

As we are now finishing the term on Thursday 17th December, the Christingle service will take place on Thursday morning at 9.30am—we look forward to be able to share photos of our service with you.

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All the children within school have created Christmas cards for the residents of Lydfords care home, helping to spread a bit of Christmas cheer to others.

Hedgehogs also created cards for the residents at Freshfield Nursing home in Seaford, where Miss Denney’s Mum is a nurse. The residents loved their cards with one resident being moved to happy tears!

On Thursday, Hedgehog class put on their coats and hi-vis jackets to take a walk down to Lydfords Care Home to deliver Christmas cards to the residents. Once the cards were delivered, the Hedgehogs continued their walk to the Post Office to post their letters to Santa.

Thank you to the parents who joined us for our first trip! Hedgehogs were very sensible walking along the road and were very excited to post their letters!

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This week, Miss Lewis took a photo of the church with its Christmas lights and it has been featured on Rev Phil’s Church page!

Open the Book have delivered new videos for the children to enjoy—the children can’t wait to see them! Thank you, Open the Book!

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We had the story about the Angel and Mary today.

What’s the angel called? “Gabriel” said Leo.

What did he say? “You’re going to have a baby.” said Paige.

What will the baby be called ? “Jesus.” said Edith.

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Thank you to Mr Martin Lawrence for creating this piece of artwork that reflects our school’s vision so beautifully.

The children had great fun spotting their class’ animals on the poster!

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We are starting to read our Christmas bible stories and this week we looked at Mary and Gabriel’s story. The children then tried to fly like angels.

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Hedgehogs

This week, the Hedgehogs learnt about Chrysanthemum, a character in a story who was having a difficult time at school because others were being unkind to her. The children learnt that unkind words and sad feelings have an affect on others, so they came up with lots of ideas to make others happy!

Squirrels

For anti-bullying we discussed what it meant to be a good friend.

Lily was a good friend to Delilah by helping her to tie her shoelaces.

Harry said he is a good friend to others by helping them when they need support.

Matilda said she was a good friend as she always shares with other people.

Theo said he is a good friend as sometimes he lets his sister use some of his craft materials.

Foxes

In Fox class we learnt about the different types of bullying that can occur.

First, we discussed how unkind words can impact on others’ wellbeing and what we must do if we witness it happening.

Next, the children created some drama sequences around why it is important to stand united against bullying in all its forms.

Owls

Jessica made a PowerPoint and Jack C made a poster about Anti Bullying online as they are digital leaders.

We did a session about the theme of this year and wore odd socks on Friday to show that we are all equal but different.

Our new Anti Bullying display will be put up in the corridor.

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Last Friday, the children learnt all about how their donations can help other children. The children also enjoyed wearing their pyjamas to school—what a novelty! Each class had to decorate their class animal in coins.

With the donations from the children and staff, we managed to raise a very impressive £157! Well done everyone!

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This week, we watched the first open the book assembly today and Owls really enjoyed it – lovely to see the costumes and backdrops and especially the appearance of a dog and a cat!

They also really enjoyed seeing Esther doing a dance! The children said they had learnt from the story that ‘God loves us whatever we do so we can be forgiven.’

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We have been looking at the story of Noah’s Ark. The children have been busy making paints of the story.

The children are really enjoying learning about Noah’s Ark through the stories of the Bible!

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This week, the children looked into the Bible stories associated with our new school values.

Hedgehog Class learnt about the value of love through The Parable of the Good Samaritan.

The Squirrels learnt about the value of truth through The Annunciation—where the angel brought a ‘true’ message to Mary of events that would happen in the future.

Fox Class learnt about the value of wisdom through the story of Solomon asking God for wisdom.

The Owls learnt about the value of strength through the story of Ruth—who showed great strength in character when helping others.

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On Sunday 8th November, Spencer and Mrs Thompson, along with other members of their family took part in a sponsored walk to raise money for the poppy appeal. They walked 5k from the Chiddingly War memorial all the way to East Hoathly War memorial.

Spencer and his family have very strong ties to the poppy appeal, as they had family who were in the Royal British Legion—who helped raise money for the poppy appeal—and they had relatives who fought in the war.

With the current pandemic, raising money has been a challenge, however, Spencer and his family have certainly risen to the occasion. The family hoped to raise around £100, like they would have done if they were selling their poppies, but they have completely smashed their target and have raised an incredible £590 from their walk! We will be able to give a final total once the proceeds from the poppy boxes have been counted. Well done Spencer and Mrs Thompson!

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This term, our collective worship theme is generosity.

Also this week, Miss Lewis spent some time in Nursery talking to the children about our school value of Love.

She read the parable of The Good Samaritan from the Bible and the children could see how the Samaritan showed Love in the story. The children thought about
how they could show Love in Nursery and at home.

Jack said “I show love to my baby sister so she can grow up.”

Edith said “If Paige hurts herself, I will help her.”

Lucas said “If Leo falls over in the garden, I will help him.”

Paige said “If someone is crying at Nursery, I will give them a cuddle.”

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This term, our collective worship theme is generosity.

Also this week, Miss Lewis spent some time in Nursery talking to the children about our school value of Love. She read the parable of The Good Samaritan from the Bible and the children could see how the Samaritan showed Love in the  story. The children thought about how they could show Love in Nursery and at home.

Jack said “I show love to my baby sister so she can grow up.”

Edith said “If Paige hurts herself, I will help her.”

Lucas said “If Leo falls over in the garden, I will help him.”

Paige said “If someone is crying at Nursery, I will give them a cuddle.”

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We reviewed friendship as our theme and discussed how ‘love thy neighbour’ means caring for everyone around us and always trying to be a good friend.

The theme of friendship links to our new vision value to ‘LOVE’.

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Miss Lewis sat in the Nursery garden with the children to read the next part of the story of Adam and Eve.

We found out that Adam and Eve broke the rules that God had given them and did not make good choices.

We talked about what the rules were in nursery and Leo, Paige and Lucas remembered that our rules are “Love, Strength, Wisdom and Truth.”

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On Tuesday, the Hedgehogs were treated to a story from the Bible, read by Reverend Phil.

Ezra said “In the story, the man couldn’t walk and they had to dig a hole to help Jesus get to him and help him.”

Reverend Phil and the children talked about the theme of friendship—which is our topic for the term!

Albie said “Friends help each other.”

Chloe said “Everybody is important, we should help them.”

Sorrel said “God wants us to be safe and good to our friends.”

What incredible lessons to take away from such a lovely story!

Thank you for sharing

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This week, Miss Lewis popped into the Nursery to read the children a story from the bible.

On Friday, Miss Lewis read the story of Adam and Eve.

The children enjoyed listening to the story and talking about the characters.

When asked about the characters and who was in the story. Leo said “Adam and Eve,” and Jack said “God.”

When we asked the children what the book was called that Miss Lewis was reading from. Sami said “It’s the bible.”

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This week, Miss Lewis popped into the Nursery to read the children a story from the bible. On Friday, Miss Lewis read the story of Adam and Eve.

The children enjoyed listening to the story and talking about the characters. When asked about the characters and who was in the story. Leo said “Adam and Eve,” and
Jack said “God.”

When we asked the children what the book was called that Miss Lewis was reading from, Sami said “It’s the bible.”

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In Forest School this week, children in Year 5 and 6 chose to re-create the school’s 4 new values on the Forest floor. They recalled the 4 values – Love, Strength, Wisdom and Truth – and created designs using the symbols we associate with them.

It was great to see the children engaging with the new school values in such a creative way!

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Achievement for all, Learning together, Learning for life, Under God’s Rule

On Friday 2nd October, Miss Lewis met with each class bubble to talk to the children about the new school vision and values. We used the quotes from the Bible to help us understand each value and talked about what these would look like in practice in our daily lives. We tried to think about how the vision and values could be used to create our new school rules and had a go at creating actions to help us to remember them.

Here are some of the things the children had to say:

Vision

Sophie Y2 ‘the vision of school tells us how we should behave’

Love

Catherine Y4 ‘being part of a team’
Myla Y3 ‘being kind and respectful’
Orlaith Y4 ‘showing respect for all’
Lily Y2 ‘caring for and helping other people’
Scarlett Y2 ‘helping people if they are hurt’
Emily YR ‘Sharing with my friends’
Ezra YR ‘I give hugs to people I love’
Lotte Y6 ‘always showing respect’
Jess Y5 ‘love yourself’
Jack Y5 ‘having caring friendships’
Paige, Nursery: ‘I say Daddy I love you’
Jack, Nursery: ‘I like to play with my best friend really much’

Strength

Jake Y4 ‘being brave and standing up to people’
Sara Y4 ‘using our 6Bs’
Sophie Y3 ‘trying our hardest at all times’
Delilah Y2 ‘being confident’
Matilda Y1 ‘being brave’
Jacob Y1 ‘never give up’
Koko YR ‘thinking lots’
India Y5 ‘believing in yourself’
Darcy Y6 ‘be the best that you can be’

Wisdom

Samuel Y4 ‘Making good choices’
Hugo Y4 ‘wise friends help each other’
Grace Y2 ‘You are clever’
Matilda Y1 ‘learning new things’
Louis YR ‘my granny is wise – she helps people’
Emily YR ‘I am wise at playing’
Koko YR ‘I am clever at thinking’
Alfie Y6 ‘having faith in your abilities’
Abbie Y6 ‘setting yourself targets and goals’
Leo, Nursery: ‘I use my brain to be clever’
Riley, Nursery: ‘I’m clever at playing’
Leo, Nursery: ‘I’m clever at doing the harvest festival’

Truth

Max Y3 ‘Not telling lies
Jake Y4 ‘Honesty’
Orlaith Y4 ‘not holding on to secrets’
Oliver Y1 ‘don’t tell lies’
Sophie Y2 ‘telling people what you think’
Koko YR ‘not being a liar’
Freya Y5 ‘being true to yourself’
Jess Y5 ‘treating others as you would like to be treated’
Paige, Nursery: ‘mums and dads will be happy if we tell the truth’

We look forward to using some stories from the Bible to help us to explore the vision and values further later in the term.

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September 2020: We are currently renewing and revising our school vision and the values that lead and support policy and ethos within the school.

On 12th September 2020, our school Ethos Committee met to discuss the vision and values and how we can ensure they are clear, succinct and fully endorse the ethos of East Hoathly school. Our Ethos Committee consist of Miss Lewis (Head of School), Mrs Healy (RE Lead and Assistant Head), Reverend Phil, Lindsay Wiggens (Governor), Jan Gough (Governor and experienced SIAMs inspector), Mandy Watson (Governor and Senior School Improvement Advisor for the Diocese of Chichester) and the role of the committee is to promote the Ethos vision and values of the school.

During the meeting, the committee agreed on the teaching from the Bible that we wanted to capture in order to create new values for the school, and then defined these using quotes from the Bible:

From this point, SLT within the school began to consider the wording of the federation. For this, we considered what was most important for us to ensure is clear about the vision for our school. We used some wording from the current vision and took inspiration from the Church of England’s vision for education. The vision for East Hoathly then became:

In our Church school, we learn through our values of Love, Strength, Wisdom and Truth. We aim for the highest standards and believe that by building a strong community, we can take care of everyone’s wellbeing, achieving fullness of life.

“With God all things are possible” Matthew 19:26

On Tuesday 29th September 2020, Mrs Healy introduced the new draft vision and values to the parents. Parents were invited to comment on how well the vision and values support the ethos of the school, how they thought the vision and values could be introduced to children, and how they thought links to the Bible could be further explored.

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This week we all did our bit to create a Harvest festival video – each class did a song and Nursery talked about the Harvest and shared their paintings as well as doing some acting. There were prayers and readings too. Reverend Phil’s story was about a son who had a car on the condition he shared his car. He forgot about this so the story was about remembering to share. Thank you for all of your donations for Uckfield Food Bank!

 

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See our Harvest Festival in the local press:

• uckfieldnews.com/east-hoathly-pupils-hold-virtual-harvest-festival
• www.uckfieldfm.co.uk/2020/local-news/primary-school-celebrate-harvest-festival-virtually

Watch our video:

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This week, some children in Owl Class performed in their own ‘Open the Book’ assembly for their class mates!

Before the pandemic, all of the children in the school looked forward to Wednesday assemblies as they were invited to watch and take part in a dramatised Bible story every week. It is lovely to see the children still taking part in acting out the stories for each other—even if the circumstances are a little different!

The children acted out the story of ‘‘A Favourite Son becomes a slave’ while focussing on the theme of friendship. The children discussed who was a friend to Joseph in the story. Owl Class said “We’ve learnt from the story to be kind and try and be happy for people around you and support them, rather than be jealous.” The children then discussed how the story could impact their lives and how the story could help them to be better friends.

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This term we are learning about the Christian Value of ‘Friendship’. We had a virtual assembly welcoming everyone back to school and have added to our spiritual journals by reflecting on what makes a good friend. Some of the ideas included supportive, kind, caring, understanding, fun and helpful!

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This term’s Christian Value was courage and through collective worship and RE lessons, we ask the children how they have shown these values throughout the week.

Sara-Maria in Year 1 said “I will be brave doing the running race.”

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Our Easter Service on Friday 5th April was really great. Reverend Phil asked the children about the feelings of people at different times during the Easter story. Each class did a wonderful depiction of each part of the Easter story. Thank you to the families who came to join our service.

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This week, the school was visited by Karen Bye, our Diocese School Improvement Partner, who looked around the school and through the children’s RE books.

She was happy to see a lot of high quality work and fantastic learning in the books. She also enjoyed seeing our displays developing.

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Come and see our new Values display! It links the values of our School Vision to verses and stories from the Bible.

Thank you to Miss Pitt for donating cushions and Mr and Dr Rattray for donating a sofa for the inside reflection space.

Mr Herdman will be painting it soon. We cannot wait to share the new space with you!

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Watch out for a new display coming soon that will tell you more about the Bible links to our School Vision.

Thank you to people who have donated unwanted furniture to our Reflection space! We are looking forward to putting a photo of the completed area in the newsletter soon!

If you have unwanted blankets, cushions or any other knick-knacks that you would like to donate, please speak to Miss Purcell.

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We have moved our outdoor prayer space so that it is now round the side of the theatre. This is so that this can be a calm place to go for reflection and prayer.

Following Open the Book collective worship this week, Isabella said “We learnt about when John baptised Jesus and others. Open the Book always bring the Bible stories alive and I love singing the songs.”

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Our new Christian Value that we are exploring this term is ‘Compassion’.

Summer says “This means being really kind and thinking of others before yourself.” We will explore different aspects of this.

Each class has a spiritual journal. In these the children write how the Christian values have impacted on their lives.

All are welcome to have a look at the one that is on the Collective Worship display.

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On Thursday 14th February, we had an assembly presented by Mark from the Charity ‘Christian Aid.’ We want to learn more about global Christianity so he was able to share this with us.

Mark shared that in the Gospels in the Bible, the second most important thing Jesus talked about was giving help and freedom to the poor. Mark explained that Christian Aid believe that Jesus wants  everyone to help those less fortunate than ourselves.

They aim to: stop poverty, help people and challenge things that hurt the poor. ‘Christian aid’ do this by creating projects that provide clean water by filtering and pumping water to villages. They help people after a crisis like an earthquake or hurricane to rebuild their houses. They also challenge people in power e.g. to use solar and wind power.

The reason they do this is to keep people safe and help them to survive. They want to follow Jesus’  example and believe that they should follow the Gospels and help the poor. This way the values of Christianity can spread around the globe.

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The children enjoyed Open the Book this week! The children saw a rendition of “Daniel in the Lion’s Den” and Zach in Year 5 said “my favourite part was when God sent angels to protect him.”

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Following on from our Vision afternoon, we have put quotes from the children and photos up as part of our updated Christian Values tree. You are welcome to come and have a look!

The RE Council are working with Miss Purcell to create a prayer space in the library where children can go in for quiet reflection, writing prayers and having some calm time. If you have any spare fabric or cushions to add to this space, it would be much appreciated.

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Next week, we will be looking forward to our Christingle Service.

While making their Christingles, the children will be learning about what each part of it means.

The service will be on Wednesday 19th December in the Church from 2pm.

We hope to see you there!

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Karen Bye from the Diocese visited our school this week. As a result of her visit, she said “the RE Council are good advocates for the school and are able to articulate the School’s vision and the Christian distinctiveness of the school and how it impacts on their lives. The children are keen to be more involved with worship and enjoy the ‘Open the Book’ session.”

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