A year ahead to celebrate!

Welcome back to all of our children and families for the new academic year, with a special welcome to all of our new children and their parents or carers.

In November, our school celebrates 40 years since its move from its old site in West Looe to its current beautiful site on East Looe hill. 

To make this a year to remember, as well as welcoming all of our new pupils to school, we will be celebrating all things family.  We will start the proceedings with our '40 Years of Looe Primary Academy' celebration event.  An afternoon of fund-raising, song, music, performance, fun, food and games and stalls run by the children and a variety of local enterprises.  Our fund-raising effort this year is to provide new significant play equipment for both or our playgrounds.  We have been overwhelmed by the generosity and promise of funding from some of our local organisations and with grants as well as money already raised, we are well on the way to more than £20,000 to support this project already.  This event is open to all of our local community and all are very welcome - we pray for good weather!

Our aim this year is also to provide more and more opportunities for parents and families to join us at school to have fun and to learn together.  Towards the end of the Autumn Term we will begin to provide a number of learning opportunities for parents, both with and without their children and we hope that we will be able to welcome more and more people to join us in our learning and activities throughout the year.  A lot of these activities will be in partnership with local providers and the local authority, so please do join us as often as you can.

We cannot wait to throw open our doors to all who wish to join us as we mark this special time for this amazing school.  We are a happy bunch - why not come and see for yourself?

The residential and day trip season has well and truly arrived at Looe Primary!  Our Year 6 pupils enjoyed 3 nights and 4 days at Hendra near Newquay last week, supported by Kernow Sports and Leisure, one of our sports providers.  As you can see, they got up to all sorts of activities, including segway, body boarding, adventure challenges and a day trip to Camel Creek.  Even the staff got in on the act at the silent disco with evidence of Mrs Higgins dancing away with the instructors!  The staff were very proud of the children and hopefully they will have some lovely memories of their last few weeks at Looe Primary School.

Our Year 5 children will enjoy their residential this week and the Year 4 children recently enjoyed a visit to Longleat for 2 nights and a trip to Cheddar Gorge on the way home.  For the other year groups it has been a season of some wonderful visits to local venues, including the beaches in and around Looe, Plymouth University, the Sardine Factory/Heritage Centre etc.

We are now all eagerly anticipating the Year 6 drama production in the next few weeks - before we know it, it will be the end of the school year.  Where did all that time go?

We were so excited today for so many reasons.  We have got Children's University back up and running at school.  This is an opportunity for children to log all of the additional activity that they take part in beyond the daily school timetable.  They have a 'passport' to record their activities and once they reach a certain number of entries in their passport they become 'graduates' and are invited to attend a graduation ceremony at Plymouth University.  This hopefully helps them to understand that universities and further education are accessible for all.

Today we were delighted to welcome David Lawrence Jones back to school.  David is a Chancellor at Plymouth University but he is also an author and has written a number of children's books, and has made an animated film.  David is a great friend to the school and he has written a new book about Cub, the Children's University Bear and the children had met Cub not long ago when the Children's University Ambassadors came to visit.  This time though Cub had been on his travels and the children were finding out all about his adventures.

The children then worked with David to write a new adventure for Cub as he travelled around Devon and Cornwall.  Cub went to Exeter, Home Park in Plymouth, the Eden Project,  The Box, Bodmin Jail and Land's End.  They worked hard and even managed to finish their story!  The story will arrive back in school soon, so we will be able to share it soon.  Cub was so impressed with the work of the children that he arrived to congratulate them.

There was just one thing wrong with today.  Our own housework bear had been on his travels around the world recently, but we thought he was back to stay.  However, we couldn't find him anywhere and we now think he may have been so excited about Cub's travels that he has gone on his own travels again.  There is a chance he may just be being a mischief maker and that he may be hiding in your house.  If you find him, can you please send him back - we miss him when he is not here!

We were excited to say 'hello' to our RNLI lifeguard friends this week.  We know that we live in a beautiful place, but it is important that we remember how to stay safe in and around the water.  We learned and remembered that floating if you are in difficulty is the best way to stay alive if you are in difficulty, but we also heard how we can have a lot of fun as long as we remember where we are and play safely.  We got to wear the lifeguard helmets and understand all of the equipment that they use every day in their work.  A big thank you to the RNLI for helping us out.  I wonder how many of our children will become lifeguards in the future?

We had the most fantastic day at Looe Primary today.  We hosted an Alternative Sports Day for all of our Trust schools.  We had nearly 80 children attend the day and a range of exciting activities were delivered by Kernow Sports and Leisure who work with the children at Looe every week.  The children participated in mini segway, ultimate frisbee, street surfing and fencing which they enjoyed very much.  The street surfing was very hard, but they enjoyed it a lot!  It was great too because they could not really succeed without the help of a partner. The day ended with a large dodgeball competition.  All of the children represented their schools fantastically well, and both behaviour and engagement were excellent.  Well done to Wadebridge, Blisland and Trenode, who won 1st, 2nd and 3rd places for scoring the most points for their overall skill, technique and application in each event.  We are very much hoping that this can become an annual event.

I was invited to attend the official opening of the Looe Police Station Enquiry Office and I was delighted to be able to take one of our Year 6 pupils with me.  We met Alison Hernandez who is the Police Crime Commissioner for Devon and Cornwall and the Acting Chief Constable, Jim Colwell as well as many of the police officers and local councillors and people who give their time and skills to make Looe the wonderful place that it is.  Our pupil was asked if she would like to cut the ribbon and she was delighted to be asked.  It is a very proud moment when one of our pupils is able to talk so well and enjoy the company of people who are important to our lives and who welcomed her as a very valued member of our community.  It was a lovely event!

We love to fundraise here at Looe Primary and when we can link it to learning we like it even more!  Before Christmas, we took part in the Children's Hospice South West Santa's on the Run Fun Run.  We were delighted to raise £444.10 on that day and it was such a good afternoon with an elf in attendance and also some snow to slow everyone down as they were running.  it was a lovely way to head into the festive period and thank you to all of the parents and family members who joined in too.  The hospice will use the money to continue to support children, young people and their families living with life-limiting health conditions. 

On Friday, we took part in the NSPCC Number Day.  This year it was linked to our multiplication app TTRockstars, so we invited staff and pupils to dress as rockstars for the day.  We had some of the most amazing outfits and I am sure you will agree, they all looked fantastic.  We think Mrs Davies should come to school dressed like that every day.  Thanks to Mrs Davies' organisation, we raised £140 on the day and the children were delighted.  This money will help the NSPCC to continue running their Speak Out, Stay Safe Programme.  The children spent the day applying their maths skills to every day situations.  

We always enjoy an opportunity to dress up and have fun and these events show just how good we have become.  Thank you to everyone for their support and donations to these worthy causes.

As this week is Children's Mental Health Week and Online Safety Day takes place tomorrow, 6th February, we will enjoy more opportunities to consider our own lives and the lives of others, both in school, locally and in the wider world. 

We love playing sport at Looe Primary!  Dodgeball is one of our after school clubs this term, so we were delighted to take part in the growing number of competitive sports opportunities being provided by our Bridge Trust Schools.  This time, we were invited to Callywith College to join one of our coaches, Bobby from Pro20 to compete in teams of 6 with all 14 of the Bridge Trust schools.  Mr Bowden took the team and said that they played with great energy and enthusiasm.
We needed our skills of enthusiasm, excellence, creativity and determination to make this one work and whilst we did not come in the top 3, we are left looking forward to the next event in the spring.  Dodgeball is here to stay at Looe Primary.


Thank you to Mr O'Dwyer at Wadebridge Academy and Bobby of Pro20 for organising the event.