Easter has well and truly arrived!

What a busy day it was here at Looe Primary Academy yesterday!  We were inundated with entries for our annual Easter egg competition and with a new family category this year, there were even more entries.  You can see just four of them here, but they were all fantastic.  You can also see one of the entries made by one of our Year 6 pupils.  She has been taught how to use a lathe by her dad and then made this beautiful wooden egg, inset with very colourful green and sparkly resin.  This egg got a special mention because it helped us all to realise that we can be inspired to achieve new skills by so many different things.  With winners in all year groups and the family entries, there were chocolate Easter eggs everywhere.  Huge thanks too, to the parent who donated the winning Easter eggs to award as the prizes.  We are a very lucky school indeed!

Once we had judged the entries in the library, it then turned into a learning space again to welcome members of staff from all of our Bridge Trust Schools  to a session to moderate the Year 6 work that all Year 6 children across the Trust have been completing.  These sessions are great, because it always helps to compare and then check that we are all marking the work at the same level.  We are very proud of the work that our Year 6 children have been producing, so it was lovely to be able to showcase it with other colleagues as they also shared their work with pride and enthusiasm.

As if that was not enough, we then welcomed the parents and families of our Foundation age children to attend an Easter party in the school hall for the afternoon.  There were crafts and activities for all, some stories and some wonderful games, including with a parachute.  The atmosphere was amazing and full of fun.

We had so many people enter through the doors yesterday, it was a very special and busy day.  I am always proud to be the headteacher of this school, but yesterday was one of those days when I was even more proud than ever to put our amazing school in the spotlight with so many people.

Happy Easter everyone.

This is Mrs Higgins.  She is a much loved and respected member of staff and she has worked at Looe Primary Academy for a long time now.  We have been celebrating St. Piran's Day at Looe Primary on the day and since then and we have been considering what it means to be Cornish.  One of the questions was whether you need to have been born in Cornwall to be, or to feel Cornish? Those of you who know Mrs Higgins will know that she was obviously born in Liverpool, but Mrs Higgins has spent many years in Cornwall and she is very proud of the fact that she lives and works in Cornwall and that her own family have grown up here.  We also talked about what being Cornish means and what that might look like.  Mr Smith, our Assistant Headteacher, was born and raised in Cornwall and although he has travelled the world and speaks a number of languages, Cornwall is where his heart lies.  For Mr Smith, Cornwall meant the beautiful peninsula coastline, his scouting tradition, certain types of food, including pasties of course, and his love of singing some of the Cornish songs and sea shanties.  There were lots of things that helped different children to feel Cornish, not least ice cream and being able to go to the beach, but when we sang the Looe version of 'Cornwall is my home', we all agreed that it is amazing and wonderful to feel Cornish, even if you were not born here!  

We were delighted last Friday evening to join the Looe Town Lantern Parade down to the Quayside in Looe where the Looe May Queen and a pupil at Looe Primary had the honour of turning on the town Christmas lights.  So many children turned up to join in the procession and the lanterns that Mrs Gregory and Mrs Brewer are holding were some of many including polar bears, penguins, santas, robins and stars to name but a few!  Once we were down at the Quayside, Reverend Ben lead the sing-a-long and we had a wonderful time.  The choir sang Starry Night on their own and joined in with all of the other carols and songs.  It was a cold, crisp, evening; all were in good voice and the atmosphere was perfect.  What a lovely place to live and to come to school!  It was a great way to start our Christmas celebrations here at school.

We have been enjoying getting our school back to all of the things that we used to enjoy. One of the most exciting parts of our week is to find out who has been awarded one of our celebration certificates.  These happen every Friday and each teacher awards two certificates to children who they feel has had an exceptional week for any reason.  This can be for high quality work, being brave enough to try something new, or accepting a challenge, for great behaviour and helping others etc.  This week we had certificates for quite a few children who had been working very hard and who had shown very positive learning attitudes, which was very encouraging.

Parents join us for our celebration assemblies and the children receiving certificates can share in their pride at the end of the assemblies.  It is one of our favourite activities of the week to find out who has been rewarded for being a great pupil.  It was made even better last week as it was World Smile Day; making all of our smiles extra special! I wonder who will get a certificate next week?

Woody and Sophie are to pay a visit

We are very excited because we have two very special visitors coming to our school next week and we hope that they will become regular visitors.  Meet Woody. He is owned by Mrs Willars who is the PA to Mr Yalden, the Headteacher at Looe Community Academy.  Woody and his friend Sophie, a labrador, are highly trained dogs and Mrs Willars has trained Woody and Sophie to work in school; in fact they have become regular members of the school community at Looe Community Academy.

We were delighted when Mrs Willars said that she would like to bring Woody and Sophie to school as part of her outreach work.  They are going to help small groups of children or individual children by listening to them read.  They will also help if some of our children need just that bit of emotional and well-being support.

We have sent letters to all parents today via email and if we would like one of your children to benefit from meeting Woody and Sophie in the first group we trial, we will be in touch.

As a dog owner mysef, I can clearly understand the benfit that Woody and Sophie will bring to our school, so we are very much looking forward to welcoming them next week with Mrs Willars.  We will report back on the fun and reading that they all manage in between the cuddles!

It is with great sadness that we have learned of the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.  All at Looe Primary Academy are saddened by this news.  We held an assembly this morning where we gave thanks and prayed for the Queen.

We would like to express our condolences and our thoughts are with her family at this difficult time. 

During the period of mourning, we will participate in appropriate aspects of learning with time to reflect.  We may also decide to postpone some events and activities during this time and we will keep you informed of any changes if they are to happen.

We will be reducing our social media content to only essential information for the mourning period and we anticipate that there will be a bank hoilday announced for Her Majesty's state funeral.  We will notify you if this is confirmed.

The Queen was passionate about children and I leave you with a quote from a speech that she made as a 14 year-old princess to the children of the Commonwealth in October 1940;

"... and when peace comes, remember it will be for us, the children of today, to make the world of tomorrow a better and happier place."

Without doubt, Her Majesty worked tirelessly to achieve her pledge and she will continue to inspire us for years to come.

We embrace a number of religions within our religious education activities at school, but at this time of year, all of the talk of chocolate and eggs needs to be connected to the real meaning of Easter for both staff and pupils.  Most of the classes have been looking at the Easter story and have been working to understand the relevance and importance of Holy Week at this time.  One of the children has depicted elements of the story very well in this picture.

The story reminds us that Jesus was the bearer of all of our sins, and that he took the burden for all of us, so that we do not need to carry it any further.  In his resurrection, we learn that there is light and hope in the eternal life of Jesus, and that he is with us every step of the way and loving us no matter what and giving us the encouragement that we need when times are hard.

Whether we beilieve in the Easter story or not there are certainly lessons to be learnt to guide us in life.  We wish you all a very happy Easter.

 

Did you know that World Book Day is 25 years old today and that this year's theme is, 'you are a reader'.

It has been lovely today at Looe Primary as we have been able to have one of our first key stage assemblies together since lockdown, so the children could see the outfits in other classes for real rather than on a screen.

We tried a different idea this year and asked children and staff to come to school dressed as a word instead of a book or a book character.  We have been amazed by some of the ideas and you can see some of them in the photograph.  We had: 'spectacular'; 'archaic'; 'royal'; 'euphoria'; 'invertebrate'; 'onomatapoeia'; 'camouflage'; 'trapped'; 'enthusiastic'; 'athletic'; 'sporty'; 'sleepy' and perhaps my favourite for Mrs Juleff in the office - 'indispensable' because of course, what would we do without her?

We are having a wonderful day that started with a reading breakfast and the children are now working hard to aim to know what all of the words in their class mean by the time they go home.  As for me?  Well I came as 'me' of course - another word for 'I'.  I thought it might help the younger chldren but when I saw the quality of their words, I had set my sights way too low!  It is always our favourite day of the year and this year has set a new high - well done everyone!

There is a powerpoint presentation in amongst the many wonderful resources we have available for Safer Internet Day that remind us of the plethora of devices we have at our fingertips every day to access the internet and the wider world around us.  It is interesting that by far the majority of the children have access to nearly all of the devices available to us!


We are very pleased for the theme of 'Exploring Respect and Relationships' this year and respect for others is one of our school rules.  Another aspect that we will look at is the growing new language that children use everyday online.  Do you know what a 'sweaty' is, or a Nerf'?  (not a hot sweaty person or a fun to play with foam gun)!  We didn't know either, so the adults are working hard to catch up with the children.

Although Safer Internet Day is today, we will be taking some time to cover the topic with the children and parents have been sent some links to resources that can be used at home to help conversation and safe practice.  We will celebrate all that is good about the access that the internet gives us to the whole wide world, but we will also be taking care to learn and understand that respect, kindness and safety online make sure that we do not put ourselves or others at risk whatever we do when surfing, gaming, chatting etc. online.