Category: Gwenfo Primary School

  Gwenfo School News – December Notes

Christmas Celebrated In Style

What a busy end of term it has been! We have celebrated Christmas in style, with total of 10 Christmas concert performances across our three progression steps. All of our children, from Nursery to Year 6, did an incredible job singing, dancing and acting to get us all well and truly in a festive spirit. Huge thank you to all our staff involved in the preparation and organisation of all those performances, and as always a big thank you to all our families for providing costumes, helping learn lines, and for coming along to support the children. We are so very proud! Thanks also go to those who attended, for the generous donations that will be split between the five charities that staff and pupils chose to support at our concerts; The Big Wrap Collection at St Mary’s, the Food Bank, The Huggard Centre, Marie Curie Cancer Care and Christian Aid’s Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal.

Thanks and well done to all of our children who were involved in the unveiling of our school Advent Window, and those who took part in the Carol Service recently. It was a great pleasure to be involved.

We had a wonderful time on Christmas Jumper Day, enjoying a delicious Christmas dinner together with Santa hats and festive placemats.

We are so grateful for a wonderful term together and look forward to a relaxing break before coming back together in the New Year. On behalf of us all at Gwenfo, we wish you a very Merry Christmas.

  Gwenfo School News – November Notes

It’s been another lovely month at Gwenfo. Our current value is compassion, and we have seen so many of our children living this value in school and at home. Many of our pupils attended the Remembrance Service at St Mary’s, representing both school and the Scouts, and we were so proud of how well our Head Boy and Head Girl did with their readings. We are so grateful for the ongoing generosity of our school family in their dedication to the charities we support, including recently supporting the Food Bank at Harvest and Children in Need. We are also grateful to the Book Council for a recent donation of books that the children have been able to take home.

Year 6 had an amazing time on their residential trip before half term, taking part in activities such as climbing and bushcraft. They hugely enjoyed their trip and were very tired when they returned to school! Huge thanks to the staff who took them for giving them such an amazing experience.

It was so lovely to have a visit from Vicar Lyndon and his wife Chris in assembly recently; we loved showing them our school and are so excited to be a part of their new adventure in Wales.

We continue to have wonderful sessions from Wild Thymes Forest School, Cardiff City Foundation and Forces Fitness, as well as weekly visits from Baxter the dog, from The Baxter Project, which all work to support our children’s well-being.

We are in the throes of our Christmas Concert practise and can’t wait to share the children’s hard work with their families. The song practise already sounds wonderful, and we are sure the children will do an incredible job. Across the school we are looking forward to our Christmas trips to the theatre which will take place at the end of November and in December.

When passing the school have a look out for our brand-new signage reminding people to park safely and respectfully on the roads around our school. We hope this will not only keep our children safe but also make driving past school easier, especially at busy times.

  Gwenfo School News – October Notes

We can hardly believe that at time of writing we are approaching the end of our first half term back at Gwenfo. It has been a busy and enjoyable half term full of new and exciting experiences. The children have settled in so well and we extend a very warm welcome to all our new children and their families as well as a warm welcome back to our wonderful school family. As we look forward to our half term break, we look back with gratitude on everything we have learnt in the last eight weeks.

The recent lovely weather has meant some great playtimes together on the field. We are enjoying being back together in the hall for assemblies and sharing our worship as a school. Our first value of the year is Generosity and we will be exploring how God shows generosity and how we can be generous to each other.

At the beginning of term, we spent time reflecting on the loss of Her Majesty Elizabeth II, thanking God for her long-devoted reign, and celebrating her life. We are so proud of the thoughtful responses our children had in our time of national mourning.

Years 4, 5 and 6 recently had an exciting trip to see Opus Pocus Live. They loved experiencing live mu-sic back in a theatre hall. We are now really looking forward to our Christmas trips! Year 5 successfully kicked off a year of class assemblies with an amazing assembly about Generosity. We loved the singing and dancing! Year 4 will be up next with Harvest and we know they will do us proud. At time of writing Year 6 are preparing to head off on their residential. We will be sure to ask them to feed back about it next month.

We would like to extend our thanks to all our families who supported our Wear Yellow for Mental Health Day. We have raised almost £200 for Young Minds. We are so grateful for the continued generosity of our school community.

We would like to welcome to our school community our new PGCE students who have just begun their first placements with us. We hope they feel a part of our school family and enjoy their time with us.

  Gwenfo School News May Notes

It has been a wonderful year here at Gwenfo. As we begin our summer holidays we say goodbye to some much loved members of staff. Reception class teacher Mrs Leach and LSA Mrs Edwards have begun their retirements. They have been fantastic educators and supporters in their time with us as part of our Gwenfo family. They will be sorely missed but we wish them well on their new adventures. We also say goodbye to Miss Sheanon who is returning to Ireland and to Miss Vowels as she works to get her PGCE. We are so grateful for all they have done for our school and the children in their time with us. Good luck both! Mrs Maunder begins her maternity leave and we wish her and her family well in this special time. We can’t wait to meet the new baby.
Our last month has been very busy. Year 6 have celebrated the end of their primary education with a wonderful Leavers assembly for their parents, a celebration service at Llandaff Cathedral with other faith schools and a fun packed day at Cosmeston. We know they will do us proud at their new schools in September and are excited to see what the future holds for them.
As a school we participated in Race for Life. Every class took part and they did an amazing job. Thank you to all parents who made a donation for Cancer Research. We celebrated our fantastic children with our end of year talent show. It was wonderful to see all the amazing talents our children have. Thank you to our Year 6 children and staff for organising and running the show. Years 2 and 6 have worked with Mr Rogers from the Local Authority, Year 2 completing road safety lessons and Year 6 taking part in cycling proficiency. Years 1 and 2 had a fantastic messy morning in the last week of term for the end of their Muck, Mess and Mixtures topic.
It’s been a lovely year, the children have learnt and grown and we are so proud of them. We hope all our Gwenfo family have a restful and enjoyable break.

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!