As our summer term draws to a close it is time to reflect on the many events we have held in school. Our annual STEM day in June was well attended by parents who enjoyed taking part in activities alongside their children as they learnt about the solar system, coding and animation, the effect of bird’s wing span linked to paper aeroplanes and the distance travelled by cardboard mice when powered by wind. It was lovely to see the children engaging in the tasks, using things they have learnt at school but also leaning on the advice of their parents.

Our KS2 performance of the musical ‘Porridge’ was a resounding success. We were very proud of Cedars and Maples as they acted and sang songs, telling the story of a crime wave hitting Happy Valley and affecting well known story and rhyme characters. 

Although the weather didn’t do us many favours, we held our annual summer fete on Saturday 15th June. It was lovely to see so many familiar, but also new, faces come to the school to be a part of the day. Thank you to our Friends of the School team for arranging it and for all our past and present pupils and parents who helped us with running stalls on the day. 

This term, each class has enjoyed a range of curriculum enhancement opportunities. As part of their ‘Splash’ topic, Acorns had a fabulous day out, travelling by train as they visited the ‘beach’ at Frosts as well as enjoying painting ceramic fish in their pottery centre. Oaks finished off their ‘School Days’ topic with a Victorian day led by Historic Workshops. The children looked amazing in their Victorian costumes as they furthered their learning about life in Victorian times. Cedars also benefitted from a visit from an expert as they spent a day participating in an Egyptian Workshop, learning about mummification, Egyptian scribes, games and cities as well exploring a wide range of Egyptian artefacts. Not to be left out, Maples have this term, enjoyed weekly swimming lessons at Woughton Leisure Centre, practising and developing this important life skill.

Children across KS2 have taken part in various sporting events, including football tournaments, rounders matches and athletics events, competing against other schools. We have been very impressed with the commitment of our pupils to training as well as their performance in each event.

Finally, we are proud to report that following our Ofsted inspection which took place on 18th June, the inspecting team confirmed that Bow Brickhill CE Primary School continues to be a ‘Good’ school. The published report acknowledges the excellent behaviour of the children, the positive relationships between pupils and staff and our ambitious curriculum.  The report also contains many glowing comments which make us very proud of our school community and all who learn and work within it. It is fantastic to see that both pupils and staff are mentioned in an extremely positive manner within the first paragraph and that the school values of respect, responsibility and kindness were clear for the inspectors to see. The report also recognises the strong start our pupils have in Acorns and acknowledges that every pupil in school achieves well in reading, writing and mathematics. The inspectors met with school leaders, staff, pupils and governors as well as our Diocese advisor and a representative from the local authority. As ever we are proud of our pupils and a large proportion of them were involved in meetings with the inspectors, either sharing their views and experiences of the school or sharing their work. These children represented our school with pride and maturity so should be congratulated! We were also pleased that the parental survey, which contributed to our inspection, found that 100% of parents would recommend our school to others.

Easter time at Bow Brickhill is an exciting and busy time. Our Easter service at All Saint’s church on Maundy Thursday, the last day of term, was very well attended by parents and we were so proud of our year 6 pupils who confidently retold the Christian Easter story. Following this service the children headed back to school to take part in a ‘pasta hunt’, our school twist on an Easter egg hunt. The children love this tradition and threw themselves into the challenge of finding 50grams of pasta (the weight of a chocolate bunny) to see which children in each year group would win these chocolate treats - it was surprising how many children managed to collect 50g exactly! 

The children also took part in an Easter craft competition which was run by our Friends of the School Team. Children throughout the school created a range of crafts from decorated eggs, Easter baskets and of course there were some Easter bonnets too. The winners of these activities won a cuddly toy and of course more chocolate. A very busy but happy day for the children.

The weekend prior to Easter we took a small team of children to the Milton Keynes Schools Cross Country Championships, it was third time lucky for the event being run due to the unprecedented rain which we’ve had this year. Despite being the smallest school represented our children did us proud with all of the children completing the course, even though the wind was wild. Two children finished in the top 5 in their races receiving invitations to join Milton Keynes Athletics club and another two finished in the top 20. We are really proud of the whole team and are looking forward to doing even better next year.

Continuing with our sporting news, on the final day of term we took a team of Year 5/6 girls to a football tournament which was run by Premier Sport. The girls played five matches, scoring in each and winning two with their confidence growing in each match they played. For some of the girls it was the first time they had represented the school and they did fantastically well, showing good sportsmanship as well as great perseverance and teamwork. Next half term is the boys turn so we’ll see how well they do!

Lots of other exciting events have been happening in school and will be happening in the upcoming term.  Last term, Cedars were given the opportunity to learn to play the violin, which they thoroughly enjoyed and were able to put on a performance for parents before we broke up for the Easter holidays.  Maples have also started learning to play the ukulele and the children in Year 2 through to Year 6 have been given the opportunity to have peripatetic guitar or ukulele lessons.  Maples will also be starting their swimming lessons this term!

The second half of the autumn term has flown by and now Christmas is upon us. We are very proud of our EYFS children in Acorns and year 1 and 2 pupils in Oaks who worked so hard to get ready for their Christmas performance of ‘Baarmy Bethlehem’. Their songs have filled our corridors over the past few weeks as they rehearsed, culminating in two wonderful performances in front of family and friends.

A huge thank you goes to everyone who supported our Christmas Bazaar. With a good range of stalls, not to mention our ever popular Santa’s Grotto, everyone had a good time and got into the Christmas spirit. We raised a wonderful £464 which will make such a difference, helping to fund resources and learning activities for the children.

Our congratulations go to Chloe in year 6 who won a Christmas card competition organised by David Wilson Homes. Her beautiful festive design will be delivered to residents on the Eaton Leys estate which is now part of our catchment area. Well done Chloe, we are sure you will use your art set prize to create even more wonderful pieces!

As usual, our annual whole school trip to see Cinderella at Mk Theatre was enjoyed by everyone. The excitement of going on a coach and seeing a live performance was palpable in every child. 

The term has finished with our annual carol service at All Saints Church where year 6 shared readings telling the story of the Nativity, each class performed a Christmas song and staff, pupils and their families came together to sing traditional Christmas Carols. A lovely festive ending to a long and busy term! 

It has been a busy first half term at Bow Brickhill. Not only have we welcomed 26 new children across the school but we have also held numerous events. 

Science Day

Our Willy Wonka themed Science Day saw the children arriving at school dressed as scientists or as characters from the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. During the day, each class took part in different activities or conducted experiments to practise and develop their science knowledge and skills. 

Our EYFS children in Acorns started the day by finding out what a scientist is before having a fun packed day full of different investigations. They explored oobleck (which acts like a liquid when it is poured, but is like a solid when a force is placed on it). Next they looked at how materials change when they are heated and then cooled, baking bread and making chocolate lolly pops! Acorns also enjoyed exploring how they could use the colour from Skittles to paint rainbows as well as investigating floating and sinking. Some of their predictions about which sweets would float or sink were very good!

Oaks started their science day experimenting to find out which sweets dissolve in water. Next they conducted taste tests, investigating whether things tasted different when they were blind folded and had to rely only on their sense of smell and taste. Another activity to build candy towers was also very popular, challenging the children to work scientifically as they considered materials and tested the effectiveness of their towers.

Year 3/4 pupils in Cedars classified different types of sweets, sorting them into different groups. They also explored chromatography using Skittles to investigate the colours that came out when water was added, comparing their results with the colours which emerged from M & M’s. In the afternoon, Cedars took their learning to the playground to investigate the properties of materials that would make them suitable or unsuitable for a particular purpose – in this case to make a catapult to launch marshmallows! 

Maples were met with the challenge of working scientifically to invent a jaw breaker production line for gobstoppers to travel through. They also conducted an experiment to demonstrate that the dissolving and mixing of materials can cause changes of state that may or may not be reversible. They loved finding out about the effect of sugar water, salt water and normal water as well as temperature on Gummy Bears, learning about how some foods dissolve and how others expand in different conditions. 

We were very impressed with our young scientists who showed a genuine interest in each experiment as well as demonstrating key scientific skills such as asking questions, observing, fair testing, grouping and classifying.

Macmillan Coffee Morning

Our Macmillan coffee morning on the 29th September was a huge success with many parents and local residents joining us for a cup of coffee and a piece and cake.  Our charity reps worked extremely hard throughout the morning, serving tea, coffee and cake and supporting our FOTS team.  We raised a massive £311.99 and special thanks go to Zoe Griggs who helped raise some more money by selling our surplus cakes at her cafe on Saturday.  Thank you to everyone who donated cakes and came along to support the event.

National Poetry Day

We celebrated National Poetry Day on Thursday 5th October with lots of poetry based activities including the reading and writing of poems. Each class also recited their poem of the month. Later in the day, each class enjoyed a poetry session with the very popular Mrs Dervish who brings poetry to life for our children with actions and by encouraging everyone to join in. As usual there were lots of requests for the children’s favourites.

Harvest Festival

It was lovely to see so many parents and family members join us for our Harvest Festival service at All Saints Church. Together, we enjoyed watching the children perform harvest songs and poems before listening to children from Maples as they shared their prayers of thankfulness. The donations of food we collected for the MK food bank will go a long way to helping support families across Milton Keynes.

This term has flown by but we have managed to squeeze a lot in and have so much to celebrate!

Our STEM afternoon in June was well attended by parents who, despite it being one of the hottest days of the year, worked with the children to build weight bearing boats to float, created the tallest tower using a rationed range of materials, used programming and coding skills to allow robots to travel and created shapes from nets. It was great to see pupils and adults learning and working together.

A huge well done goes to Cedars and Maples for their production of ‘Shakespeare Rocks’. They did so well learning their scripts, songs and stage directions which resulted in two fabulous performances which were enjoyed by everyone in the audience.

Lots of trips have taken place including Acorns and Oaks trip to Hogshaw Farm and our year 6 residential to Caldecotte Xperience during which the children took part in a range of activities including paddle boarding, canoeing, orienteering, archery and climbing.

Last week, Maples took part Bikeability, learning to cycle safely on the roads in the local area. We were so pleased with the progress the children made not to mention the compliments they received from the instructors on their ability to listen and follow instructions ensuring everyone was safe and able to enjoy the training.

Thank you to everyone who supported or helped at our summer fete. Despite the unpredictable weather on the day, it was well attended and has raised valuable funds for FOTS which will be used for the benefit of all the children in our school.  

Finally, we are so proud of our wonderful year 6 pupils who have worked hard all year to achieve fantastic KS2 SATs results most of which are above national percentages as follows;

Reading 88% (National 2022 74% / National 2023 73%)

Writing 65% (National 2022 69% / National 2023 71%)

Mathematics 76% (National 2022 71% / National 2023 73%)

SPAG 82% (National 2022 72% / National 2023 72%)

Science 82% (National 2022 79% / National 2023 80%)

Well done to year 6! We wish them lots of luck and happiness as they prepare to leave Bow Brickhill Primary to move on to the next stage of their education at secondary school. We are sure they are going to achieve great things!