We have certainly had an exciting week in school with lots of visitors. Our first visit was from Sian Stanton on Tuesday who came to take an assembly with the children to talk about the new ‘Walk to School’ initiative. As you know, because of the letter you received, this project has been developed to encourage the children to walk to school at least once a week and if they fulfil this they will be awarded a badge each month with a picture of a famous scene or landmark from around the world. Our launch day was yesterday and I would like to thank everyone for the brilliant response we had to it. The parent support was amazing and we have never had so many people here so early - walking at least part of the way obviously took less time than people thought. I hope that we can sustain this momentum and continue to be committed to the project in such a great way.


Martin Collins from Brookmans Park Rotary Club came into school on Thursday to take an assembly about the shoeboxes which are sent to children who live in orphanages in Eastern Europe. We have already had a good response to this campaign (as we always do) and after his visit all the children seem really eager to bring in their shoeboxes. They need to be in school by the 30th November to ensure they can be delivered on time to all the children. I made a slight mistake on the newsletter when I gave the date for them to be in because I said it was a Wednesday when in fact the 30th of November is on a Friday. Martin has said that he is going to try and e-mail me some sheets with a little bit of background information about the shoeboxes and also some extra suggestions of how to fill them. When I receive his e-mail I will forward these sheets to you.

Year 6 also had some visitors in on Thursday. These were some children’s nurse students studying for their degree at Hertfordshire University. As part of their course work they had to put together presentations about how to keep healthy and then present them to the Year 6 in the form of a health exhibition. The Year 6 had to visit all the stands which they found both informative and enjoyable and then write an evaluation about how the students performed. The general consensus seemed to be that all the students did very well. The students were also very complementary of the Year 6 finding them engaging, enthusiastic, motivated and well behaved.

We started today with the Year 4 assembly on Forces. It was a great start to the day and I could tell that a lot of effort has gone into putting this presentation together so I would like to thank Mrs Heinson, Mrs Onley and all the Year 4 pupils for their efforts –everyone who watched it was certainly impressed. Today is also ‘Children in Need ‘day or ‘Pudsey Day’ as one child referred to it and we have held a non-uniform day to help support this cause. Although we think that this charity does a lot of good we do not make a big thing of it in our school as we have already asked you to do a lot this term and we will be asking for your support again later this term for our own Christmas Fayre. However the children hear a lot about it on television and like to feel involved so I do thank all the parents who have supported this and made a contribution to the appeal. As ever the generosity of the Little Heath parents has impressed me – particularly in these difficult times.