South Marston School News – May 2012

May 4, 2012 by Leave a comment

On Saturday 2nd June the School will be taking part in the village Jubilee celebrations. The street party and entertainment will run from 2pm until 4pm and promises to be great fun for all the family, with everyone being encouraged to bring their own picnic to share. The School will be contributing towards the entertainment and are also running a royal fancy dress competition for all the children on the day, encouraging them to come dressed as their favourite member of the Royal Family past or present. We look forward to seeing you there!

Official logo

On Friday 23rd March we took part in the Sport Relief Mile. All of the children were invited to wear their sports clothes for the day and donate £1 to Sport Relief. We also ran around the Recreation field towards the end of the day and were joined by many parents and grandparents running with their children. Well done to everyone who took part! We would also like to thank Sainsbury’s of Stratton for sponsoring the event with drinks for the children and even providing some fantastic mascots!

Last term Class 1 had a great time visiting the Science exploration centre of @Bristol to conclude their topic all about Space. They visited the planetarium where they learnt about a bear’s journey into Space and all the stars and planets he saw. They then journeyed into the jungle, learnt about fossils in the desert and even took turns to drive a giant water wheel.

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Advertiser – School makes pleas for help after thefts

April 23, 2012 by 1 Comment

Swindon Advertiser ran an article (complete with picture) this weekend regarding the theft last week from South Marston School:

A PRIMARY school has called on the community to be its eyes and ears after thieves stole both of its lightning conductors.

Staff at South Marston C of E School were dismayed on Wednesday after finding the school had been targeted overnight. The thieves smashed security lights and used cutters to gain access to the conductors before ripping off the metal. The school prides itself on being a part of the village and has never needed security fencing or CCTV cameras.

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South Marston School News – April 2012

April 3, 2012 by Leave a comment

On Friday 3rd March the MP for North Swindon, Justin Tomlinson came to visit. The school council met with Justin and spoke about the school and the improvements and projects they are working on at the moment. He asked them about the election process they had been through and spoke to them about his election experiences. Justin was very impressed with our children and with the tea and cakes! In fact he stayed longer than was planned in order to have a delicious school lunch. More can be seen about his time with us on his website.

Our School Eco team have been very busy organising a campaign to support ‘reduce waste week’. This involved running an experiment by collecting all of the rubbish from lunchboxes each day, taking out what can be recycled or composted and then weighing the remainder of the rubbish. There is usually very little waste which the children take home and so we already are very Eco friendly but we wanted to see how we could do even better! As a reward for all children, Niall Tucker entered our school into a competition and won a ‘trash pack’ for everyone. This consisted of a little plastic trash can and a ‘bug’ toy inside.

On Saturday 2nd June the School will be taking part in the village Jubilee celebrations. The street party and entertainment will run from 2pm until 4pm and promises to be great fun for all the family, with everyone being encouraged to bring their own picnic to share.

The School will be contributing towards the entertainment and are also running a royal fancy dress competition for all the children on the day, encouraging them to come dressed as their favourite member of the Royal Family past or present. We look forward to seeing you there!

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South Marston School: Church Videos

March 19, 2012 by Leave a comment

Here are some super videos created by Class 3 children about the South Marston Church, which they did as part of a recent school project.

Rhiannon and her friends put together this video to explain what happens during a Christian Wedding service and afterwards

Alfie and Hailey produced this video detailing some of the features of the Church.

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South Marston School News – March 2012

February 28, 2012 by 1 Comment

The BBC were in school on 24th January filming the children in Victorian clothing. They all looked fantastic. The filming was for a TV programme to advertise the Alfred Williams musical which will take place in March at New College in Swindon. The children enjoyed playing Victorian playground games. Four of our children recited some of Alfred Williams’ poetry where he makes reference to South Marston Primary school. Thank you to all of the parents who provided costumes for the children and to Mrs New for doing her wonderful work on the girls’ pinafores.

On 30th January Diccon Dadey, the metal artist, came into school to install our wonderful metal sculpture. The children worked with Dadey a few months ago to design the sculpture. They had the task of thinking about what was important to them about the school. The sculpture has the school outline, a cross and children. The bands of metal surrounding the school have the values that we hold most dear. They are Trust, Truth, Compassion, Forgiveness, Love, Friendship and Thankfulness. We hope everyone will enjoy seeing the sculpture by our school entrance.

St. George and the dragon

Our school is having a big focus on Art this year and as part of this we had a whole school ‘Learn to Learn’ day based around George and the Dragon last term. We were visited by an artist and the children produced a variety of art work including a large scale tapestry of the famous painting, saltdough model dragons, stained glass pictures, watercolour paintings and even a giant collaged dragon. The art work can be seen in our main school corridor.

Big Bad Wolf

Our youngest children in preschool and class 1 really enjoyed their topic of ‘Fairytale Forest’ which ended in a woodland walk with the children, parents and grandparents round St Julian’s wood, where we found all sorts of fairytale clues. All involved really enjoyed exploring this jewel in our local area as well as discovering where the Big Bad Wolf was hiding!

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South Marston School News – Feb 2012

January 26, 2012 by 1 Comment

We would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!

Portrait of Roald Dahl,1954 Apr. 20

Roald Dahl Image via Wikipedia

The children are enjoying their new topics. The older children are even having a topic all about chocolate, learning about how it was invented and the famous Roald Dahl story of ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’. They are especially looking forward to trying some unusual chocolate recipes!

A sub-group of the governing body are in the process of looking into school travel arrangements. The school travel plan was written in 2009 and the sub-group would like to update the travel information that we have and then use this to formulate an action plan and prioritise improvements. Parents and pupils have been asked to complete a survey which has been developed in conjunction with the school travel advisor for Swindon Borough Council.

As a school, we are having a focus on The Arts and are looking forward to having extra visitors in and activities based around Music, Drama and other arts. Our whole school learn to learn day will be based around ‘George and the Dragon’ this term and we are all excited to see the creative ideas shown by the children. We are also looking forward to having our school sculpture completed which the children were involved with designing last year. The sculpture has been developed by local artist Diccon Dadey. Keep an eye out for it arriving in our school entrance soon!

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South Marston School News – Dec 2011

November 29, 2011 by Leave a comment

We have been as busy as ever here at our village school.

Built in 1924, and now in steam at the Swindon...

This term our Year 1 & 2 children really enjoyed a visit to the Swindon and Cricklade Railway. The children, staff and parent helpers really enjoyed having a journey on the train and even got to see the controls in the driver’s cab. We would like to thank the staff for their very warm welcome.

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South Marston School News – Nov 2011

November 1, 2011 by 1 Comment

Cover of "The Cat in the Hat"

We have been as busy as ever this term. The new Reception children are settling in well, many of whom are from our village. They are enjoying their welly walks already and have been finding out lots about how to keep healthy in their ‘Cat in the Hat’ Dr Seuss topic.

On 29th September, Class 3 & 4 spent the afternoon at the official opening of St Julian’s Close woods. The afternoon was hosted by Wiltshire Wildlife Trust, supported by Hills developers who built the houses at St Julian’s and have worked alongside WWT to create a small woodland area. The sun was shining and the children enjoyed many activities including nature big art, clay tile making, fire making, conker playing, a walk in the woods and delicious cupcakes with homemade apple juice.

The final part of the afternoon saw the unveiling of a mosaic, which the children helped to design a few months ago with artist Anita and the second unveiling of a leaf inspired metal bench. We had a wonderful time and we would encourage all parents/grandparents to go down to the woods one day and you’ll be sure of a big surprise!

The children, staff and many parents enjoyed a lovely service at our village Church to celebrate Harvest. The singing, storytelling and poetry recitals were fantastic and we are very proud of the children. Thank you for the wonderful donations to the Swindon Food Bank. We filled 7 boxes with donations from parents and the church. If anyone else would like to donate please send into school and we will ensure that we pass it on.

We would also like to announce our Christmas performance dates in South Marston Church for parents:

Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1 performances:

Monday 5th December at 1.30pm

Tuesday 6th December at 6.30pm

Key Stage 2 performances:

Wednesday 7th December at 6.30pm

Thursday 8th December at 6.30pm

Nativity play dress rehearsals in South Marston Church which are open to all members of the public with a ticket from the main school office:

- Foundation Stage & Key Stage 1: Thursday 1st December at 1.30pm

- Key Stage 2: Tuesday 6th December at 1.30p

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School Update – Oct 2011

October 3, 2011 by Leave a comment

A great big welcome to all our new Reception children and families at our school this term, many of whom are from the village. The new children have settled in well; making friends and learning about their new topic of ‘The Cat in the Hat’ in Class 1.

Also a huge welcome back to all our existing children and families. We are looking forward to many exciting events coming up, including the St Julians opening celebrations and International Day.

We would also like to thank the PTA and preschool committee for their wonderful fundraising last year which funded the brilliant playground markings which the children are really enjoying!

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South Marston Preschool – 2011

September 6, 2011 by Leave a comment

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