November 2023

18 Buckden Roundabout November 2023 School & Pre - School The last few weeks have been great fun as we have continued to learn all about our new starters—and the new skills and interests developed by our returning children. Playdoh in a variety of col- ours and scents has given them not just a sensory experience, but also encouraged development of their hand muscles and descrip- tive language. Following their interests, in the last month we have set up a baby care section with dolls, nappies, bottles, bowls and spoons in the home corner, and a Jurassic World with a host of friendly dino- saurs. Farms, farm animals and wild animals have proved to be enduring interests, so every week, we've provided different activi- ties around this theme alongside small world toys. They have in- cluded: • Animal footprint mark - making with paint and playdoh, which encouraged talk about shape, number, texture and colour. • Animal and farm puzzles of different sizes to develop prob- lem - solving skills and coordination. • An animal matching game to encourage thinking skills and alphabet recognition. • A sensory animal tray with natural resources. • An outdoor animal washing station with toothbrushes. This is not only great fun, but also helps the children develop the hand muscles necessary for writing. It also benefits the staff, as it's much less messy than the children deciding to 'give the animals a wash' under the bathroom taps! • Themed books to enjoy indoors and outdoors, and rele- vant Book of the Week choices, including Eric Carle's 'Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?' and 'The Hungry Donkey' from Usborne's Farmyard Tales series. Plans are in place to start a preschool/home reading scheme, and we also found time to enter the Buckden Scarecrow Festival 2023 competition. Our entry was displayed in Manor Gardens and fea- tured members of the Potato Head family! Passers - by could vote for their favourite Potato character with pebbles. We hope you had the chance to see it. JOB VACANCIES We are seeking: • A qualified Early Years Practitioner to join our amazing team on a part - time basis. - A part - time cleaner, who will work outside school hours. For more information on these roles, or on becoming a com- mittee member, please contact buckdenpreschoolcommittee@gmail.com. Our Chairperson, Hel- en, or our Treasurer, Debs, will get back to you. To arrange a visit or apply for a place, please call 01480 810600 or email buckdenpreschool@yahoo.co.uk. For more information, visit www.buckdenpreschool.co.uk or read our updates on https:// www.facebook.com/www.buckdenpreschool.co.uk/ BUCKDEN CHURCH OF ENGLAND PRIMARY ACADEMY October 2023 We are fast approaching October half term, with less than two weeks to go. All our Recep- tion and new children that started with us in September have settled into the school routines with ease and look as if they ’ ve been here for much longer than they actually have!! With such a lovely warm October that we have been enjoy- ing, we are continuing to use the school field for our break/lunch times, PE lessons and the children ’ s daily walk. One of the highlights during the first few weeks of the term is the Harvest Festival Service at the church. All the children enjoyed the walk up to St Mary ’ s Church for Father David to conduct the ser- vice. The children brought gifts of non - perishable foods which were donated to the Godmanchester Community Foodbank. We collected just over 200Kg of food, which is fantastic, so a very big thank you to our parents for their generous donations. We have recently been awarded a PSQM Gilt award. This award recognises how the whole school has worked together to demon- strate a significant commitment to science leadership, teaching and learning, which has made the profile and quality of science at Buckden extremely high. As a school, we are very proud of this achievement. At the beginning of October, it was Dyslexia Awareness Week and at Buckden we love to celebrate learning in a fun way. The chil- dren took part in lots of learning activities and had a homework task of working out a fun puzzle with letters. As part of Dyslexia awareness week the British Dyslexia Association, had some free webinars available for parents of both primary and secondary school children. The webinars talk about the dyslexia journey for children, for further details please visit the British Dyslexia Associa- tion website. We are very proud to say that Buckden Primary has been awarded a Dyslexic friendly classrooms recognition mark! Our Gardening club have been really enjoying harvesting at the allotment this half term and were pleased to bring back three pumpkins and a harvest of potatoes too. Our lovely ladies in the school kitchen made a delicious pumpkin soup for the children to try, it was very tasty! At the end of September, we welcomed Ste- ve and Tash from ID Image Development, from St Neots to take our school photographs of our children once again. After having to initially cancel one day and re - arrange, due to heavy rain we even- tually had two days of sunshine for having the children ’ s photos taken outside. The photographs look fabulous and we hope our parents are very pleased with them. If your child was born between 1 st September 2019 and 31 st August 2020 you need to apply for a Reception place for September 2024, this can be done through Primary School Admissions at Cambridge- shire County Council online, the deadline for applications is the 15th January 2024. If you are considering Buckden Primary as one of your choices to apply for, we are very pleased to invite prospec- tive parents to visit our school for an Open Evening on Tuesday 7 th November at 6.00pm, there is no need to book just turn up and we look forward to seeing you. Unfortunately, we have received complaints from local residents regarding the unsafe parking of parent ’ s cars during school drop off and pick up times, specifically along Greenway/School Lane Junction and Aragon Close. We kindly ask parents to be mindful of resident ’ s driveways and making sure there is enough room on the road for cars to get by safely. Thank you for your co - operation.