Spring/Summer term menu
The new school dinner menu, from our school meals provider, Catering Leeds, will be introduced after half term and this will continue for the rest of the school year.
As well as on our website, the three week cyclical menu is also displayed on our dining room window for you to discuss with your child/children. Have a look for the weeks ahead to make your child aware of what the daily meals are. If you would like a printed copy, please ask at the office.
School meals continue to be free for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. If your child is in Key Stage 2, please check for eligibility for free school meals. (It’s important to check for eligibility for younger children, too, because school receives additional funding for each child who is eligible for a free meal, even when they’re free in Reception and Year 1 and Year 2!)
If your child would like to start having school dinners, please inform the office. A combination of packed lunches and school dinners is also available.
Children are consulted on school meals through our regular School Council meetings. Feedback may also be given by speaking to an adult in school or completing a suggestions/comments slip and posting it in their class SEAL box.
Thank you to parents who also raise questions and give feedback. We can then ensure this is passed on to the kitchen staff.
Be Food Smart
Be Food Smart is the latest health campaign from Change4life. Our everyday food and drink can contain surprisingly high amounts of sugar, saturated fat and salt, meaning most of us are eating more than we realise. National Child Measurement Programme data shows that one fifth of Reception and one third of Year 6 children are overweight or obese.
Public Health England has launched a free app, which families can use together to uncover how healthy their food choices are. The Be Food Smart app allows you to easily scan the bar codes of branded products, as well as supermarket favourites, to see how much sugar, saturated fat and salt is lurking inside.
This week, on a Good to be me theme, one of our parents spoke at a whole school assembly. She talked about changes she made to her diet and physical activity levels to become healthier.
One change she made was to have a healthy breakfast. We need this to give us a good start to the day.
Breakfast can have surprising amounts of sugar, saturated fat and salt. In fact, research has shown that children are eating nearly half their maximum daily amount of sugar before they get to school. See how sugar stacks up at breakfast time.
Having read this research, one family in school have recently made a change from sugary cereals to low sugar alternatives such as porridge and shredded wheat. Interestingly, at this same time, I commented to the parent that the particular child had become more focused in lessons.
Change4life provides lots of ideas for eating well and getting active, including ideas for packed lunches. The new lunchbox section has lots of simple, tasty and healthy tips for hassle-free lunches.
School Saving Club
The next School Saving Club paying in date is 02 February 2017 at 3.15-3.45pm.
If you are unable to attend in person, please hand in any money to be paid in, to the office in a sealed envelope addressed to Miss Hale.
For your information the paying in dates for the rest of the year are:
- 23 March 2017 3.15-3.45pm
- 18 May 2017 3.15-3.45pm
- 13 July 2017 3.15-3.45pm
If your child would like to open account, please ask at the office.
Creative Science homework
My usually up-to-date posts on Year 6’s consistently fantastic Creative homework has slipped since the Christmas break and I can only apologise. Better late than never, here’s a sneaky peek into our ‘Science is all around’ homework from a couple of weeks ago. I couldn’t possibly not post it as I was even more amazed that usual.
Can’t wait for our next instalment! As always, we looked at everyone’s work and then took a closer work at one person’s in particular to comment on their work individually.
Entertainment through the ages
We kicked off our new Big Topic last week: Time Travel – Entertainment. We began by thinking about some key periods in history and wondering about what sort of entertainment was around at the time.
Then, working together, we used our knowledge of dates to put key time periods in chronological order, matching major forms of entertainment as we went.
Here’s our final piece of work to go on our topic wall for us to refer to as we for the next eight weeks.
Netballers
Well done to children who participated in the Leeds North East High 5 Netball Come and Try Festival tonight at Carr Manor School. They played a few games against local schools in a friendly, relaxed setting with some coaching as they played.
Half term pop-up sports
New themed menus
Catering Leeds, our school meal provider, will be running a special Australia Day themed menu on Tuesday 24 January. This themed menu has recently been selected by our school councillors.
Please contact the office, by 12 January, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
Another themed menu selected by our school councillors is for Shrove Tuesday, 28 February.
Please contact the office, by 09 February, if your child would like a school dinner on this day.
What’s the Matter?
We love working scientifically in Year 6 and loved experiencing reversible and irreversible changes first hand. It really helped us to understand these words as we could see it happening in front of us.
Thinking about our next Big Topic
In preparation for our upcoming Big Topic, we put our heads together to think about what we’d like to learn and do. The next Big Topic will be Time Travel and Year 5 and 6 will be exploring entertainment through the ages.
There were hundreds of great ideas which Mr Catherall and I now need to seive through but here are a few to give you a taster:
- create a marble run using woodwork skills
- learn some ballroom dancing
- create our games using our computing skills
- write a promotional text for a game
- work out the costing and profit for putting on a theatre production
We look forward to starting this topic in the week beginning 16 January and will keep you updated on what we’re doing.