Dates for your Diary
8-12th January 2018 
 

Mon 8th January	Parents handwriting workshop 8.30am  Clubs begin
Tues 9th	Parents EYFS workshop 8.30am
Wed 10th	Governors standards @ 8am
Thur 11th
Fri 12th	FSA meeting @Fox 9am

Children's clubs start this Monday.
Due to the lack on interest for parents fitness and table tennis, we are not going to run these clubs. The few parents that have booked onto these will be re-imbursed by the school. 

We have decided to move the talent shows to the last week of term, enabling the children to have more time to rehearse and to ensure that the shows do not clash with clubs. The new talent show dates are as follows:
Phase B talent show - Tuesday 27th March
Phase C talent show - Wednesday 28th March  

To link into our morning club start time, we will be starting breakfast club from 8.45am from Monday 8th January. Please ensure that you continue to book in through the School Gateway app. If you need any guidance with using this app, please pop into the school office.  

Today's assembly focused on what the school and the community can do to reduce the amount of plastic consumed. As a school, we are looking at glass milk bottles in the staffroom, staff not buying take away coffee cups, banning plastic throw away water bottles (installing a soda stream with metal bottles), ensuring our fruit, vegetables and meat do not come packaged in plastic etc. 

We have asked the children not to bring in disposable plastic water bottles to drink from. If they have a bottle that they have been previously using, they can continue bringing this into school. . However, if they are using disposable bottles, they can either, not have a bottle and drink from the water fountains or at lunch, or buy a new  metal water bottle.   

• Over the last ten years we have produced more plastic than during the whole of the last century.
• 50 percent of the plastic we use, we use just once and throw away.
• Enough plastic is thrown away each year to circle the earth four times.
• We currently recover only five percent of the plastics we produce
• The production of plastic uses around eight percent of the world's oil production (bioplastics are not a good solution as they require food source crops).
• Americans throw away 35 billion plastic water bottles every year (source: Brita)
• Plastic in the ocean breaks down into such small segments that pieces of plastic from a one liter bottlecould end up on every mile of beach throughout the world.
• Annually approximately 500 billion plastic bags are used worldwide. More than one million bags are used every minute.
• It takes 500-1,000 years for plastic to degrade.
• Billions of pounds of plastic can be found in swirling convergences in the oceans making up about 40 percent of the world's ocean surfaces. 80 percent of pollution enters the ocean from the land.
• The Great Pacific Garbage Patch is located in the North Pacific Gyre off the coast of California and is the largest ocean garbage site in the world. This floating mass of plastic is twice the size of Texas, with plastic pieces outnumbering sea life six to one.
• Plastic constitutes approximately 90 percent of all trash floating on the ocean's surface, with 46,000 pieces of plastic per square mile.
• One million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals are killed annually from plastic in our oceans.
• Virtually every piece of plastic that was ever made still exists in some shape or form (with the exception of the small amount that has been incinerated).
• Plastic chemicals can be absorbed by the body—93 percent of Americans age six or older test positive for BPA (a plastic chemical).

However we think that the school community can have a bigger influence by asking  parents to BUY LESS PLASTIC whenever possible. 

Term Dates 2018-2019

These are in line with Holland Park and the Local Authority. I'm sure you are delighted with the 8th January start for children.

Autumn Term  2018 
Tuesday 4th September - Friday 19th October
School holiday Monday 22nd October - Friday 26th October 
Tuesday 30th October - Friday 21st December 
School holiday Monday 24th December - Friday 4th January 

Spring Term 2019 
Tuesday 8th January - Friday 15th February 
School holiday Monday 18th February - Friday 22nd February
Monday 25th February - Friday 5th April
School holiday Monday 8th April - Monday 22nd April
(Easter weekend 19-22nd April)

Summer term 2019 
Tuesday 23rd April - Friday 24th May
School holiday Monday 27th May-Friday 31st May 2019
Monday 3rd June - Friday 19th July 

I have recently discovered the newish Ottoline miniseries.  They are written and illustrated by Chris Riddell, who was the children’s laureate from 2015-2017, known for his work both as illustrator and author, as well as being a political cartoonist for the Observer.     Whilst I would place the Ottoline books in the ‘short chapter book’ range – the abundance of detailed, complex and humorous illustrations really creates a category of its own.  Miss Ottoline Brown is an exceptionally inquisitive and eccentric young woman, living alone at home, in her stylish apartment in an unspecified big city, whilst her parents explore the world.   She is alone, that is, apart from her trust friend, and partner in crime, Mr Munroe, ‘small and hairy, from a bog in Norway’.  Together, they solve mysteries.  My family and I have enjoyed poring over the black and white illustrations, flicking backwards and forwards through the book, to look for clues we had previously missed. 
The plot of each book is moderately complex, which combined with the sophisticated humour, and great attention to detail, would appeal to pupils from Y1 up to Year 5, either to be read with or read alone.