Category: Kids

Gwenfo School News June Notes

It has been another wonderful month for us at Gwenfo. Our current value is Truthfulness, We have been talking about why we tell the truth, and what it means to be truthful to God.

We have been so delighted to welcome parents in to share in our Jubilee fun, as well as for our Share Our Learning sessions where children could show their parents the amazing work they have in their books. It has been so lovely to open our school and grounds back up. Thank you to all who have come and sup-ported their children. Our Jubilee celebrations culminated in a wonderful concert and picnic. Each class performed a song from a different decade of the Queen’s reign from Nursery singing ‘We don’t talk about Bruno’ to Year 6 performing a song and dance to Elvis’ Jailhouse Rock. We are so proud of our children; they were amazing! Huge thanks to staff for organising and choreographing.

As we move into the final weeks of this year we look forward to a host of exciting events including Sports Day, our talent show, and the Year 6 leavers assembly. Everyone is working hard and practising to make these special days so fantastic. We are grateful for this wonderful weather allowing us to get outside and enjoy wonderful break times together on the field. We continue to enjoy our fortnightly visits to the library and extend our thanks to the fantastic volunteers at the Hub for making it possible.

  Gwenfo School News May Notes

It has been a short but busy half term here at Gwenfo. Years 4, 5 and 6 thoroughly enjoyed our two weeks of swimming lessons at Barry Leisure Centre. Everyone has learnt something new or challenged themselves. We are so proud of them! Year 6 had a great trip to Crucial Crew where they had talks from essential services such as National Rail, Western Power, and the Fire Service. They learnt key ways to keep themselves safe in a variety of situations. In Years 5 and 6 we had two wonderful art afternoons where parents came, created art with their children and got to see art the classes had been creating over the half term. Thank you to all parents to came to support.

As a school we have begun our trips to the new library. We all had an introductory talk to explain how the library works and what we can do there. Since then, we have all had the chance to go and choose a book that we can keep for three weeks! Thank you to all at the library for helping our children discover and learn. They really enjoy choosing their books and experiencing the library.

As we go into our final half term, we say a fond farewell and thank you to our PGCE students. They have made a huge contribution to our school community, and we are so grateful for all they have done for our children and our school.

  Gwenfo School News April Notes

We had a lovely end to the Spring term, celebrating Easter in style with the return of our Easter bonnet parade. Thanks to all parents and children for taking part and creating some fantastic headwear!

With restrictions easing we’ve been delighted to have a few Family Friday playtimes. The children have loved playing with other year groups, especially getting to see their siblings!

Key Stage Two had a wonderful morning before the holidays engaging in an Easter rotation, making Easter nests, Easter lilies, Palm crosses and Easter cards.

In our Action for Happiness work we have been looking at emotions. We have been encouraging children to recognise their and others emotions, and have explored how to deal with big emotions like anger and how to focus on and look for the good around us to help us feel more positive emotions. We have been practising gratitude and saying thank you for all the things and people in our lives that help us feel happy. Our next action is Acceptance, and learning to be happy with who we are.

Our value for the half term was Justice, and we have talked about what that means for us. We have thought about how all of our needs are different, and sometimes we can’t always have the same things as others for things to be fair. We talked about how we use rules both in school and in our country to ensure that we are all treated justly.

THANK YOU

FROM GWENFO SCHOOL

We would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to all in our community who, over a very short period, filled the school with donations to be taken to Poland for families fleeing Ukraine. We were overwhelmed by the generosity of our community who contributed towards over 250 boxes of donations collected over just 3 days which have now begun their onward journey to Poland. Thank you to all the staff and pupils who have been involved in sorting donations, especially Mrs Barbara Sliwinska who works in our Nursery for organising everything!

  Gwenfo School News March Notes

This month we are celebrating the huge generosity of our school community. With just a short deadline our wonderful families and wider community donated over 200 boxes worth of clothing, food and medical supplies to send out to Ukrainians who have fled to Poland. We are so grateful to all who made donations and showed their support. Thank you to members of our staff and some of our Year 6 pupils for sorting out all the donations into the boxes to be sent to Poland. We have been so impressed by the empathy and kindness that our children have shown.

At the beginning of March, we celebrated our Eisteddfod. We had a wonderful time sharing the fantastic art, poetry, stories and handwriting that our children have worked so hard on. Parents had the opportunity to buy their child’s framed artwork, the proceeds from which are going to our Criw Cymraeg to support the learning of Welsh in school. The children also enjoyed our carousel of Welsh themed activities, including Welsh folk dancing and making Welsh cakes or Welsh rarebit.

Years 3 and 4 have been creating art out of fruit and vegetables inspired by Giuseppe Arcimboldo’s Vertumnus, for their topic Sow, Grow and Farm. Years 5 and 6 have been busy exploring their new topic Gallery Rebels. They are researching art styles and artists, using a variety of media to create their own art and reading the Frank Cotterell Boyce novel ‘Framed.’ Years 4, 5 and 6 had a wonderful time with an online codalong session with Code Club.

Staff had a lovely visit after school to the newly refurbished Gwenfo Library and we are all looking forward to the prospect of returning to the library for a variety of activities. Whilst we will be celebrating World Book Day later in the year, we were delighted to welcome Mel from Griffin Books in Penarth who brought some books for the children to choose from and spend their World Book Day vouchers on.

  Gwenfo School News February Notes

We have had a lovely half term at Gwenfo exploring our topics and learning a lot. Our action for happiness for February was Direction. We have been learning how to set achievable goals, challenging ourselves to do something a bit difficult. This has fitted in well with our value of Perseverance.

We have welcomed our new set of student teachers this month. We are so glad to have them and hope they enjoy their time with us.

For Children’s Mental Health Week, we had a virtual visit from Matt Lewis and Luke. They helped us think about all the ways we can look after our mental health, from exercise to being present. Across Key Stage 2 we have been thinking about being kind to each other. We used the example of a heart which we crumpled up. No matter how much we smooth it out, the heart is never going to be the same. Just as saying sorry does not fix unkind words or actions.

Years 3 and 4 had a fantastic engagement day for their topic. They planted seeds, made scarecrows, and wrote spring poetry. Year 6 went for a walk around the village to look for examples of positive and negative human behaviour. They were delighted to see the new library building open.

After our half term break, we look forward to celebrating Eisteddfod. Each class is currently preparing a song and working on stories, artwork, and poems to celebrate the best of Wales. For the week of St Da-vid’s Day, we will be doing carousels of activities such as sewing and cooking.