Huge thanks to our HSA for hosting the discos this week.  We had a great time – I hope that everyone has recovered from the excitement! Well done to the children who attended – it was a lovely atmosphere and I was very impressed by some of the dance moves!  I will be sending out a list of all other planned HSA events, next week.  There are already lots of great activities planned for this school year.

Our Sports Ambassadors have had a very busy week.  After some training with our sports coach, Matt, the children have been leading lots of games and activities.  These have included basket ball, netball, hurdles, skipping, balancing games and penalty shoot outs.  It has been brilliant to see the Ambassadors leading the other children in activities and challenges.  Thank you, Sports Ambassadors – you are doing a great job!

Mrs Peters launched our OPAL project with the children, this week.  We are very much looking forward to creating the first of our playground zones, after half term.  Thank you very much for the kind donations.  We are very grateful to have received toys, storage and monetary donations.  Your support with improving our social times is very much appreciated.

This week, we have been considering how sometimes being proud of achievements might turn into boasting.  We explored this idea through the story of The Tall Tower.  Once people had settled from the floods, they lived peacefully and happily together for some time.  However, they then started to compete with each other to see who could build the tallest towers.  Instead of concentrating on living a good life, people started to focus on showing off and boasting.  The children gave some great responses as to how it feels when people boast and whether it helps or hinders friendships.  When God responded to the selfishness and boastfulness by creating lots of new languages so people could no longer communicate, this caused huge confusion.  We considered how difficult this must have made life and how the people must have thought hard about how they were behaving.

In Thursday’s assembly, Mrs Peters and Mrs Birad introduced the children to our OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) curriculum and explained how playtimes and lunchtimes will be changing, following the half term holiday.  The children responded very positively and are looking forward to having an increased variety of resources and activities for social times.

We are delighted to be continuing our collaborative work with Wall Heath in Bloom.  There are a couple of exciting projects that we would love to get involved with, as a school.  Children and families have been invited to contribute to the Remembrance Day service by creating either crocheted or knitted red poppies for a central display in the church grounds. If you would like to contribute any poppies, we are happy to accept the donations at school.  We will also be inviting children to design a Christmas Card competition. I have shared this with children today in assembly, and look forward to seeing their competition entries.

Music lessons with Dudley Performing Arts have resumed for those children learning to play an instrument, in school.  If you would like your child to have lessons with Dudley Performing Arts, please follow this link – Music lessons in school | Dudley Council

Year 3 thoroughly enjoyed their opportunity to visit church this week for the Experience Harvest event.  Children listened carefully and interacted thoughtfully in all of the activities.  I look forward to seeing how well the seeds of radishes, carrots and lettuces grow.

Lunchtimes have been full of new activities, this week, thanks to our Sports Ambassadors.  They have been working closely with ACE coaching to lead some really great games and activities.  It has been lovely to see the children playing so creatively, although I have discovered that I need to work on my penalty taking skills.

Thank you to all of those at church who supported and hosted us.  Thank you also to our amazing Worship Committee who have worked closely with Mrs Moore and Mrs Austin to lead very thought provoking and interactive services for our key stage 1 and 2 children.  I thoroughly enjoyed the services and I know that the children did too.

Many thanks for all of the generous Harvest donations that we have received for the Foodbank. We will ensure it’s safe delivery to The Black Country Foodbank next week.

We are looking forward to  our first school discos of the year, which will be taking place on Thursday 8th October.

This week, we started thinking about the people of God.  We explored the story of Noah and the ark.  We considered what qualities Noah held that meant that God considered him trustworthy which such a big mission.  God made Noah a promise and Noah trusted in God – we thought about what that means about the relationship that God had with Noah.  At the end of the story, there was a rainbow that signified that the storm had passed.  We all agreed that we love rainbows and how they represent hope and brighter things.  The children made some very thoughtful contributions about the importance of promises and why they are sometimes quite difficult to keep.

Once again the weather has impacted our sports day! A very well done to our year 4,5 and 6 pupils who competed so successfully, this morning in the events that we were able to fit in before it rained. It was great to see so many of you taking part and enjoying the morning.

We have had a lovely afternoon, concluding our work on the whole school text, Scarecrows Wedding.  It has been amazing to see so many creative and crafty ideas coming together to represent the story.  Please visit the class pages for photos of the afternoon’s activities.

Thank you to all of those who were able to attend our HSA AGM, on Tuesday.  It was lovely to be able to welcome some new members. Our sincere thanks go to Gemma and Ryan for all of their support and dedication in their roles as Chair and Treasurer – we are very grateful for all of your hard work and look forward to continuing to work with you as members of the association. Thank you also to Tash and Lee who have kindly volunteered to take up these roles for the coming school year.  Thank you also to Sarah who has agreed to maintain the role of Secretary.

Well done to all of our pupils who have volunteered and been elected to represent their classes in our various pupil voice groups. Our Sports Ambassadors are working really hard to learn new sports and games to play on our playgrounds.  Our School Council representatives met this week to think about our Harvest Festival Collection and have written to you separately regarding contributions.

This week, we listened to the story of The Fall. We thought about how the relationship between God and people changes in Genesis 3, when Adam and Eve disobey God’s instruction. We explored the Christian value of forgiveness and talked about other places in the Bible where we think about the theme of forgiveness.  The children gave some very thoughtful and insightful responses to how we can repair a relationship that has been broken or disrupted.

We have had another busy and productive week, at school. It was great to see so many of you who were able to attend the ‘Meet the Teacher’ meetings.

A polite request – please could adults collecting the children not stand on the grass opposite the school office, when collecting from the year 4,5,6 exits.  We ask the children not to stand or walk on this grass in an effort to preserve it, now that the grass has regrown following such a dry summer.

The Home School Association, AGM will now be taking place on Tuesday 22nd September at 8pm and will be online.  If you would like to receive the link for the meeting, please request from info@chur-ascen.edlt.org.uk New members are very welcome to attend. We look forward to planning events and activities for the coming year.

Thank you all very much for your support in ensuring that all of our children are kept safe by ensuring the snacks and lunches do not contain any nuts.

This week, we started our “Bible in a Year” journey.  We started at the beginning – a very good place to start.  In our Collective Worship, we explored Genesis 1-2 – the story of Creation. We explored the 7 creation events and how everything that was created was ‘good’ until God created humans, which was ‘very good’. Christians believe that this shows the importance of God’s relationship with us.  We looked at pictures representing the story of Creation and thought about ways in which we can be good stewards of God’s wonderful world.

What a great couple of weeks we have had!  It has been so lovely to see all of the children, after the holidays and to welcome our lovely new reception classes to our school.  It has been great to see how quickly the children have settled to their new classrooms and teachers and how incredibly brave our reception have been starting school for the first time.

We have particularly enjoyed welcoming Ruth Blaney to school, who will be helping us to get started with our OPAL (Outdoor Play and Learning) project.  We are very excited to be working with OPAL to improve our play offer.  Ruth joined us in school and accurately identified what fantastically polite and respectful children we have here.  We look forward to inviting you into school soon, to hear all about our plans.

As a reminder to those sending in snacks and packed lunches – please ensure that no products that contain nuts, including chocolate and nut based spreads such as Nutella, are brought in to school.  Many thanks for your support with keeping all of our school community safe.

The school photographer will be in school on Tuesday 15th September – further details about timings will be sent separately.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend.

This week, we have focused on the big question, “what is the Bible”?  Over the course of the school year, we will be getting to know the Bible and what its contents mean to Christians.  We have already learnt all sorts of interesting facts about the Bible, including where it was written and how long it took.  We all recognised that it is a very complex text but we are looking forward to exploring its contents and what we can learn from it.