Dear Parents,
December is nearly here, and it’s one of the most activity-packed months of the school calendar as we share in the excitement for the countdown to Christmas. We thought we would include a quick-reference calendar to pin-up at home (paper copies will be sent out of this today), together with this letter to help you keep on top of what’s going on.
Apologies in advance for the length of this letter, but we have a lot to tell you about!
Friday 2nd December – Christingle
With the help of Mr Barclay, we will be making our Christingle oranges for the service held at St Mary’s Church in the afternoon. Christingle marks the Advent and symbolises Jesus’ light, bringing hope. The orange symbolises the world, the red ribbon Jesus’ love, the sweets God’s creations and the candle Jesus’ light. Please could all children bring a normal-sizedorangeto school on the morning of 2nd December.
Class 5 will be leading the Service at Church, and their parents are warmly invited to attend there from 2:30pm.
Wednesday 7th December – KS1 Christmas Crafts Afternoon
Classes R, 1 and 2 will be busy making lovely keepsake Christmas crafts in the afternoon. We would be grateful if Class R, 1, and 2 parents make a contribution to the cost of the craft materials of £2.50, payable by Parentpay from today (21st November).
Wednesday 7th December – Hook Parish Council Village Carols Around the Christmas Tree
Children are invited to sing carols around the Christmas tree at Hook Memorial Hall from 6pm. This is such a wonderful community event organised by Hook Parish Council and we hope you
can make it. There will be festive stalls, a raffle, lucky dip, refreshments and a visit from Father Christmas! Donations will go to St Mary’s Church.
Friday 9th December – PTFA Grandparents Afternoon Tea
As mentioned in our previous email, the PTFA are holding an extra special event in order that Grandparents have an opportunity to share some of the Christmas magic with the children in school. There will be a delicious afternoon tea provided by The Sandwich Shop at Carlton, a raffle draw and bingo. All the children will then join the grandparents in the hall for a collection of carols and Christmas songs.
We were all taken by surprise when this event sold out completely within a few hours, and the PTFA would like to extend their thanks for your incredible support. We are sorry that not everyone managed to secure tickets, however we hope some of the other events will be of interest to celebrate the Christmas season with grandparents.
The PTFA are planning a special grandparents’ event for the Springtime as they realise some Class 6 children and families may have missed getting Afternoon Tea tickets, and with it being their child’s last year at Hook we hope that will go a little way to ease the disappointment.
Monday 12 December – Christmas Production Dress Rehearsal Week
Details of your child’s role and costume in the Christmas Production will be sent out by paper copy, so please keep an eye out for this. We kindly ask that all costumes be in school by Monday 12th December at the latest for our dress rehearsals.
We would like to stress that we do not wish you to go to great expense in purchasing costumes. We appreciate that this year particularly there is incredible pressure on budgets and would encourage you to be creative with items you already have or can borrow. One of our mums has thought about parents getting together to sew some costumes and, if this is of interest, please let us know as soon as possible so we can try to arrange something with plenty of time.
Tuesday 13 December – Christmas Jumper Day
We would love the children to wear their Christmas jumpers to school as we have a packed day of Christmas celebration! As with previous years, we would like to make this a school fundraising event, with a suggested donation of £1 payable by Parentpay from today
(21st November).
Tuesday 13 December – Festive Concert
We will be welcoming a traditional orchestra into school to let the children experience some wonderful big band Christmas songs. This has been really magical in previous years when the orchestra have been able to come into school, and we are hoping this year will be no exception.
Tuesday 13 December – Father Christmas Afternoon
We are hoping to have a special guest visit school to say hello to all the children! He can also leave a little gift for children who write him a special letter – as with previous years, this is available to purchase through Parentpay from today (21st November) at £3.50 per letter.
Sunday 18th December – St Mary’s Church Carols by Candlelight
St Mary’s will be holding their beautiful Carols by Candlelight service from 4pm. There will be a special video presentation of our Class R children performing a traditional Nativity Tableau. All
are welcome to attend this wonderful event.
Monday 19th & Tuesday 20th – Christmas Production ‘A Midwife Crisis’
For the first time in 2 years, we are welcoming back our families to watch the children perform their Christmas Production, ‘A Midwife Crisis’. We are so excited to have you all back in
school. It is a ticketed event limited to 110 places per performance. A link will be emailed out this evening (21st November) to complete the Google form to request tickets. We will do our
very best to ensure you can have the performance you want, but please wait for confirmation by receipt of paper tickets. If we can’t meet your first choice, we will contact you immediately with alternatives.
As previously, tickets are limited to 3 per family or 2 per parent in the case of separated families, with any spares being offered on a first-come, first-served waiting list basis. The morning performances will start at 9:30am, and the afternoon performance at 2:00pm.
Wednesday 21 December – Last Day of School! Christmas Party & Christmas Dinner Day
Children are invited to come to school in their party clothes for a fun day of party games and activities.
Other News & Dates
Class 3 Assembly – 5th December
Class 3 will be presenting their work in an assembly on 5th December at 9:30am and we would like to invite Class 3 parents to come along to watch.
Class 4 Pedestrian Training – 6th December
We would like to remind Class 4 parents that Pedestrian Training will take place on Tuesday 6th December. This will take place even in the event of inclement weather, so it is important that your child is adequately dressed for spending plenty of time outdoors! If you haven’t already, please could you return the consent slip.
Class R’s Pantomime Visit – 15th December
We have booked an exciting visit to the pantomime at the Junction in Goole for Class R children! A letter will be out this week with full details.
Midnight Communion at St Mary’s Church – 24th December
St Mary’s will be holding midnight communion from 11:30pm on Christmas Eve. All welcome to attend.
Hook School Journalists
We would like to be more active in updating you with what’s been going on in school, and some of the activities we have been taking part in. More regular updates will be made to our Twitter account – https://twitter.com/HookCEPrimary – and our websitewww.hookprimary.co.uk. We are excited to announce that we will be having School Journalists producing video reports too, so keep an eye out for those coming your way.
Parking
We realise that parking at school is a problem. However, we have noticed and had complaints that things are slipping and we really need you all to be conscious of how and where you park and travel for school and apply common sense.
The main issues are:-
• Cars parked improperly around the school gates and mini roundabout causing line of sight obstruction for children trying to safely cross the road (don’t forget their height prevents
them from seeing over cars!)
Cars parked improperly causing congestion and obstructions at junctions, on the mini
roundabout and on the road
Cars travelling too fast (please stick to 20mph maximum. Less severe injuries occur in
road traffic accidents with lower speeds)
There is a 15-minute window for dropping off and collecting children from school and we would strongly encourage you to fully utilise that timeframe to try and ease traffic and find parking spots more easily. We always encourage walking, scooting and biking to school where possible.
Please see a map below, hatched in yellow, where parking is strictly prohibited between 8:45am and 9:15am; and between 3:15pm and 3:45pm (this time frame may be moved to reflect our earlier collection time). This applies to everyone, whether they have children at school, blue badge disability parking permit, commercial vehicle or not. If you have family members who collect children for you, we would appreciate you passing on this information as it is very important for the safety of our children.
Cashless School & Parentpay
We would like to remind everyone that for security purposes and difficulty in physically taking cash to the bank, we are now a cashless school. This means we would appreciate all parents now using Parentpay for payments to school. If you have difficulties with this, the School Office Team are more than happy to help you make payments online through Parentpay within school.
Finally, if you have any queries about any of the above, please don’t hesitate to let us know and we will do our best to help.
Kind regards
Mrs C M Ainley Headteacher