St Winifred's Catholic Primary School

In conclusion Michael, in Year 4, is glad to be English! England football team Bukayo Saka

Today we crowned Our Lady. Despite the weather cancelling the outdoor celebration, St Mary class and the Year 5 prayer leaders led us all in a wonderful assembly in the main hall. Thank you to all the children and teachers involved event!

Just a reminder that we have two events this week:
1. Become a parent governor. Come and meet the governors at this week's coffee morning on Thursday at 8:45am.
2. Join the Friends of St Winifred's. Come to the committee meeting this Friday at 2pm.

Today, St Winifred's, 10 other local schools, GPs and Community groups attended an assembly at Rushey Green Primary with two mayoral candidates Brenda Dacres and Michael Herron. All the schools and community organisations introduced themselves and explained why housing was such a priority for their community. Heaven-Leigh from Year 6 represented our school community and spoke to the whole assembly. During the assembly we asked the mayoral candidates to make promises for their term of office.
1. To declare a housing crisis in Lewisham.
2. To agree to work with Citizens UK and the organisations in attendance, within the first 30 days of their term.
3. To ensure all children in temporary accommodation had access to the internet.
After the assembly, we all marched to Lewisham Town Hall in Catford, displaying the posters the children had made for the campaign and making as much noise as possible. Once at the Council offices, we submitted our open letter, signed by 11 Lewisham Headteachers.

It's that time of year again. Next week we will be celebrating World Book Day! The children can come to school dressed as their favourite book characters.

From Nursery to Year 6, all the children produced art work for our Shape and Form exhibition! We hope that you enjoyed looking at your child’s piece. A huge congratulations to all the children and the teaching teams for producing such a wonderful event.

On Tuesday, seven members of the school council travelled to the Horniman museum to attend a special climate event. Organised by Lewisham Council cil and hosted by the museum, nine primary schools gathered together to learn about different ways to cut climate emissions.
In the morning, children attended sessions on composting, aquatic habitats and communications through drama. Equipped with these skills and knowledge, the children would take this back to school to help improve the local and wider environment.
After lunch, the children entered the Dragon’s Den! Each school was pitching an idea for funding from the dragons, just like off the TV. These were Councillor Krupski – cabinet lead for environment and climate change, Councillor Barnham – cabinet lead for children and young people, Jentai Gen-One – Lewisham Young Mayor and Sefkan Altuntop - Senior Air Quality Officer, Lewisham Council.
The children had thought of a project to create a board game to teach about climate change and making the right choices, but in a fun way! The game could be made from junk materials and so they wanted to create an instruction booklet. They stood in front of the dragons explaining this, telling how and when they would make it and how much they wanted. The dragons gave them £300 to print it and then offered another £100. Bernice Awoyale suggested they could buy plants to green the school grounds. The dragons agreed!
The children can now go ahead and design and make the game. They will be testing it out on the rest of the school, so look out for it being set as class homework in the summer term!

Are you looking for a Nursery place for September 2024? Contact the office and book onto one of our tours. Come and see our fantastic Nursery, meet the staff and explore the Early Years setting!

This morning, St Mary's class went to Manor Park to take park in the RSPB's Big Garden Birdwatch. The sun was beaming, everyone was happy and the birds were tweeting as they flew. The children completed their tally charts and as a challenge, counted dogs and squirrels. It was such a fun day and as there was time to spare, they spent playtime in the swing area. Members of the public commented on how polite and kind the children were to others in the play area. Well done for following the St Winifred's way.

Thank you to all those, who helped us to raise £560 in rewards, by purchasing books at the Scholastic UK Book Fair last term. The books have arrived! We were able to buy a lovely range of brand-new books. Most will go into our school library with some books going to each of the classroom book areas. Happy reading everyone! Thank you to Mrs Foster-Lewis, our Reading Leader, who organised this for us.

Just before the Christmas holidays, Karen McLaren Virtual Executive Support (one of our parent governors) and in partnership with Sci4Us, used our school to prepare 168 festive hamper bags. On the day the goods were delivered to school, there were so many items that two vans were needed and we had to enlist the Year 6 children to help us move it all from the reception area!

This initiative aims to address period poverty and dental health, and encourage enthusiasm for Science by providing children STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) kits to use at home. They also included some football boots, clothes, hats, and bags to enrich these hampers further. These additions, together with the essential food items, reflected the collaborative effort of all their partners. 30 of these hampers were given to St Winifred’s to distribute them to families from the school. The other bags were shared at local schools, reaching the wider community in Lewisham and in neighbouring boroughs.

A huge thank you to Karen McLaren and her colleagues for including us in this initiative. We were able to distribute all the hampers and they were very gratefully received.

Children in the school council were excited to receive a certificate for the efforts the school community has made to be active travellers to school. Transport for London run the Transport for Life programme that recognises how much effort schools are making to encourage journeys that improve air quality, raise fitness and make our streets safer. Based on activities happening in class and around the school, such as Dr Bike, the school has been awarded Gold. The school council is made up of children from Year 1 classes up to Year 6. They run activities to make the school a better place

Christmas is now over and the Posada bags have all been returning to school. What do you think of some of the children's entries? Thank you to everyone who looked after the travelling crib during the season of Advent.

Don't forget, come in for a drink, a biscuit and a chat tomorrow in the small hall.

Today, when we returned from Mass, there was a very special visitor waiting for us! The children have all been to the special grotto and met with Father Christmas!! We hope the children have had an enjoyable last day of term! A huge thank you to Father Christmas for visiting the children, we know how busy he is at this time of year!!! We wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year! See you all in 2024!!

Don't forget tomorrow's Community Conversation, at 3:30pm in the main school hall. This is open to all members of our school community.

Today Janet Daby MP visited the school. She led a KS2 assembly, where she encouraged the children to be ambitious, to work hard and to not be put off by obstacles in their way! The children were given the opportunity to ask her lots of questions about her life and role as MP. The questions were very tough, it felt very much like Question Time! Janet then met with the School Council and had a tour of the school. Thank you to Janet for giving up her time to come and meet with the children.

St Mary's class have spent time this week using a variety of media to create poppies in memory of those who died in the wars. Chalk, clay, paper, tissue and paints were all used. To end the week, we created a poppy on a biscuit and the best part was eating it! Well done to everyone.

We are so excited to be hosting a book fair in school. There will be hundreds of books to choose from, with prices starting from just £2.99. The book fair will be in the main hall from 3.15pm to 4.00pm on 24th November to 29th November. Children will also get to browse the books during school time.
The school earns free books when you purchase. Come along and support our school!

Children from the School Council rolled up their sleeves this week to clear up the kitchen garden. Located behind the shelter, next to the playground, fourteen raised beds had produced a harvest of kale, squash, courgettes, butter beans, tomatoes, chard and radishes over the season. The children's task was to clear the beds, put away the bean poles and tidy the area ready for winter. They also learnt how composting works, filling a second bin in the process. The last of the courgettes were harvested and the children tasted nasturtium leaves, which they thought were very peppery.

The kitchen garden was built by parents three years ago, with funding from School Food Matters. It has been used by classes to learn about how to grow vegetables and some have had cookery lessons too. The next step is to continue growing vegetables in the spring to donate to a foodbank for local refugee charity, AFRIL.

Two police officers from the Metropolitan Police came in to run a session with our Year 6 children on the 31st October. As part of black history month, they engaged the children with an exciting quiz about Stormzy. The children then asked questions about the police, their role and responsibilities. The children were brimming with questions and thoroughly enjoyed the session.

As a means of developing understanding, we hope that this is the beginning of forging a relationship with the police and our community.

Thank you to Minerva and Susana, two of our Mexican parents, who created this lovely Day of the Dead display and altar. If you have a festival/celebration/ special day from your culture you’d like to share with the children at any point during the year, we would love to hear from you.

Thank you to all of our Reception parents who came to the coffee morning today! We hope that you enjoyed the opportunity to see what the children have been doing whilst getting to know the Early Years staff and other parents.

Happy half term everyone! St Winifred's Day is in our first week back! Put it in your diaries.

Children attended the annual Young Marketeers project in Borough Market yesterday, selling vegetables to raise money for a charity distributing food to fight hunger.

In April, the children had received training from the charity School Food Matters on how to grow vegetables in the kitchen garden. Throughout the summer term, they had been tending and watering the young plants. Finally, the children from Years 5 & 6 were able to sell their wares and raised an estimated £70 in the process! This will be donated to The Felix Project , which helps school children make sure they have a proper meal so they can focus on their learning.

The school kitchen garden raised beds were built by parents in the summer of 2021 and it has been used by classes ever since.

Come and see our fantastic Reception classes! Book yourself onto one of our tours by calling our school office.

Today, St Mary's class made bread rolls and garlic butter. They were delicious. The garlic was our very own that we grew in the reception garden. As you can see, everyone ate them and all went home full.

Next week is Sports Week! Don't forget PE Kits every day. Weather permitting, sports day will be on Thursday!