Friends of Windmill Hill

❗️ Youth Club starts Tues 6th 2026
ℹ️ Details in pictures
🌟 Hosted by Always an Alternative
❤️ Link below
https://alwaysanalternative.org.uk/?fbclid=IwdGRjcAPDPk9jbGNrA8M-Q2V4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHo1_3vvx16YveV-IZ9Ji55UugmsO47OFr9QaqXmVzAYcC3IBamYsUcbDYIhk_aem_mtpXns04fbvtnr3Z1i7Gdg

❗️Friday 9th January 2026
🍎 Fruit, Veg, Eggs and more
🕗 8am to 1.30pm

❗️Saturday Market Reopens
🌟 Saturday 17th January 2026
🕙 10am to 3.30pm

🎄 Newton Hall Christmas Fair 🎄

We are here and (almost!) set up at Chapeltown’s Christmas Fair at Newton Hall.

Come along and support us, the PTA, and also Mrs Pape and the Year 6 fundraising.

The fair is open 11am to 4pm at Newton Hall. We would love to see you.

What a heartwarming feeling to read these letters of appreciation following our purchase of a visualiser for each classroom. We were particularly pleased to heard that Year 5 have promised to take such good care of them.

Thank you to everyone who continues to support our fundraising efforts and helps us to make valuable investments like this.

Attached are a selection of some of the letters we received.

Is it too early to mention Christmas? There is a lot of information to share so we are adding it all to this one post in the hope that this makes it easier to keep track 🤞🏻

🎄Newton Hall Christmas Fair - Saturday 6th December

We will once again be attending Newton Hall Christmas Fair on Saturday 6th December so please come along and support us. We will be selling Christmas themed books along with some other festive themed items.

🎅🏻Christmas Fair - Friday 12th December

We are delighted to bring back our Christmas Fair which was so successful last year. We see the return of our popular Lucky Dip Christmas Tree, our cakes and bakes and children's crafts as well as a number of new stalls this year. Although it will be dependent upon volunteer numbers we are hoping to have stalls like Deal or Noel Deal, Snowball Scavenge and Penguin P***o. We have also received confirmation from the main man, Santa, and he has confirmed he can attend. We are very excited!

Bookings to see Santa in his Grotto will open next week and details will be shared on ClassDojo. Advance bookings are recommended to guarantee you get to see Santa. There may be some availability on the day but this is not guaranteed.

🎫 Christmas Hamper Raffle - Monday 15th December

Another successful fundraiser for us, our Christmas Hampers will also be returning. Raffle tickets will be sent home next week and we would love for your support selling these to family and friends. Some of our hampers this year will also have gift vouchers inside making them that extra bit special. All tickets and money should be returned by Friday 12th December - this can be handed to class teachers and we will collect from classrooms.

🙌🏻 Support Needed

To put on so many events in close proximity takes an extraordinary amount of time and whilst our Christmas events are always so successful fundraisers that doesn't happen with the efforts of the PTA alone. We need your support. There are lots of ways you can help us:

Sponsorship Opportunities - do you own a local business or work for one? Can you consider sponsoring our fair with a cash donation or donating a prize or gift voucher? We will promote your business on our page as a thank you, which will raise your profile within the local community.

Hampers - as well as selling the tickets we are looking for donations of new and unused items to use in our hampers. All donations can be brought into classrooms where we will collect them but if you are donating alcohol or items containing alcohol please take these to the school office.

Cakes and bakes - we will share more information nearer the time but we will be looking for donations of cakes and bakes for our fair on 12th December. These can be home made or shop bought. We saw an amazing amount of donations for our Wear it Pink Bake Sale and we would love to repeat this.

Other donations - if you have any good quality but unloved cuddly toys or Christmas clothing we would love for you to donate them to us so we can sell them at our fair. Again these donations can be brought into classrooms and we will collect from there.

Volunteers - we are looking for volunteers to help at the Newton Hall Fair and our own fair. If you can help us please complete the form on ClassDojo or email us at [email protected]

Phew! We think that is everything. If you have any questions please do get in touch.

Wow! There’s no other word to describe how all the children and their families embraced our Wear It Pink and Bake Sale Day.

The classrooms were a sea of pink and we’ve never seen anything like it at our Bake Sale - the hall was so busy and it felt like we were working on the trading floor at the London Stock Exchange! Everyone who visited us was so patient in waiting their turn and we sold out of all the cakes and bakes that were donated.

Thank you to everyone who…

🩷 donated to wear something pink
🧁 donated something for the Bake Sale
🙌🏼 volunteered during the Bake Sale (especially our School Councillors who were amazing)
💷 bought something from the Bake Sale

We have raised a phenomenal £531 for Breast Cancer Now and there is still time to donate. If you wish to add your donation you can do so on our JustGiving page:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/windmillhillprimary

After the half term break our attention turns to Christmas but in the meantime we hope you all have a wonderful time with your family.

A little bit of something different from us this week, as we are working with school to host a Wear It Pink day on Friday, followed by a Bake Sale after school.

All the proceeds from Friday will go to Breast Cancer Now.

Please check Dojo for more information.

To make a donation you can do so here:
www.justgiving.com/page/windmillhillprimary

We look forward to seeing a sea of pink on Friday, and enjoying some delicious cake!

Who has seen us in Look Local? Reliving an amazing morning for the children and all at Windmill Hill 🙌🏼

Oh my goodness….what a phenomenal morning!

We welcomed Zack George, aka Steel to the Steel City, and to Windmill Hill this morning. Zack, from BBC1’s Gladiators visited us to deliver his Zactiv workshop.

The whole school attended an assembly where Zack spoke about confidence, eating a balanced diet, staying hydrated and keeping active. Did you know that despite having multiple allergies and being asthmatic he still became the UK’s fittest man before going on to become a Gladiator? Zack also talked to the children about mindset - it’s not what you look like, but how you feel and we should all have confidence in ourselves and belief that we can achieve anything. He also let us into a secret….that a balanced diet is about allowing yourself the occasional treat, which for him is a Saturday night pizza.

The children practised some mindful breathing, because even Gladiators get nervous, and they practiced being confident through body language. Zack also had them giving their biggest smiles to experience how good that made them feel through something so simple. Before closing the presentation, Zack introduced us to "glimmers", those small moments of comfort and joy that that help to make us feel positive and give us hope. Each of the children were challenged to think of a glimmer from the last couple of days, write this down and add this to Zack's glimmer jar. Zack explained he uses a glimmer jar with his own family, sitting down to read through the glimmers on a regular basis and encouraged us all to do the same.

After the presentation Zack visited each classroom where he collected those glimmers for his jar, had photographs and signed photographs for every child to take home. During his classroom visits he answered every single question the children had for him from how old are you, to is Viper mean in real life and what would you be if you weren’t a gladiator to would you rather fight a duck sized tiger or a tiger sized duck?

Today’s visit was part of our commitment to fully fund a Wonderous Occasion at Windmill every year and we certainly delivered on that today. Although we fund these WOW days this would not be possible without the support and donations from our parents and carers and the individuals and businesses in our community so we would like to say a huge “thank you” to you all.

And of course, thank you to Zack, and your Zactiv sessions. Truly a memorable event for everyone today.

It’s the 2025/2026 academic year and we are starting on a high! We are super excited by this one 😁

Earlier this year we shared our commitment to fund a Wonderous Occasion at Windmill (WOW) event each year. These events would not happen without full financial support from the PTA, and we could not give this commitment without support from you - our parents, our carers and the local community who support us and donate to our fundraising events, so thank you! We just know the children are going to love this one….

We have invited a real-life Gladiator to school! Zack George, also known as Steel in BBC 1's Gladiators, will be visiting us later this month.

During his visit, Zack delivers his Zactiv presentation to the whole school, promoting healthy eating, hydration, exercise and mindset. He then visits each classroom, answering any questions and having photos. We have designed and printed postcards to commemorate the visit, and Zack will sign one for each child to bring home. Each child will also receive a bottle of water from Zack, with his tagline “anything is possible”.

The reviews of Zack’s visits are phenomenal and he is so popular that there are now only limited dates left for 2026. We are very lucky to have him come and visit Windmill.

We are truly excited about this WOW day and hope the children are too!