Dear parents,

Well done for managing a week’s worth of learning at home. I bet it’s had its challenges, but also some fun bits too – I have four boys of my own at home, so I know only too well how hard it can be!

We’re about to head into the school’s ‘Easter Break,’ but it’s not going to feel much like a break since we’re in this period of lock-down, social distancing and just staying indoors. With this in mind, we have decided to continue to support our families over the break by offering you some structure to the two week ‘holiday.’ After all, getting back to work, to school or to an attempt of a structured day after two weeks ‘off’, is going to be extremely hard on everyone’s mental health!

We’ve uploaded a sheet of suggested activities that could help you, all based around themes of ‘Being Academic’, ‘Being Creative’, ‘Being Technological’ and ‘Being Active.’ We’ve also placed on our website a suggested outline for a day at home with children, and we have further pages and links for things that can keep your children busy.

Class 1 … Class 2 … Class 3 … Class 4

All these resources can be found under the Closure Tab at the top of our website and are being populated and continually modified by many of the school staff.

We’re also getting Google Classrooms up and ready. We moved over to cloud-based working a little while ago and have many functions available to us through Google’s suite of software. We’ll blog again with instructions of how your child can log in, find their Classroom and locate any work or suggestions that’s on there. This is a safe environment for your child to work in, as it’s locked for only those at Georgeham. We may even arrange a Google Hangout meeting so we can say Hi and chat!

There are three teams working at school at the moment. Our teams provide childcare at school and have to abide by the social distancing guidance as best as possible; which is very hard to do. Miss Hill and Mandy explained that they were, “Just playing,” during their time last week as Team 1, but this is what ‘school’ is about at the present time. We encourage our families to step back from attempting to teach fractions, time, subjunctive verbs or any form of ‘school work,’ as we’re not doing much of it either! We’re playing, making dens, colouring in and sharing games with each other, with only a little bit of what you could formally call ‘learning’ taking place. Please look after your own mental health too – join in and just colour in!

Thanks very much to Miss Hill, Mandy and Jo for this week… Team 2 will take over next week with Miss Smale and Mrs Cooper.

We’ve enjoyed hearing about what you’ve been up to over the week, so do please email some photos of the things you’re doing. I wonder… who can make the best den?

Hope you’re all keeping well!
Julian

Don’t forget

Stay in… only leaving for certain reasons:

  • Shopping for basic necessities, and as infrequently as possible.
  • One form of exercise a day – a run, walk, or cycle, alone or with members of your household.
  • Any medical needs that you have, or to help someone vulnerable.
  • Travelling to and from work, but only if this cannot be done from home.