It has been a busy few months in school and we are certainly welcoming the arrival of spring with a smile and sense of optimism as we see the days getting longer and more warmth and sunshine. Having said this, we had lots of fun last week playing in the snow on the two March snow days! Reception children all enjoyed playing on the field and building snowmen and snow balls, then going indoors for a warming hot chocolate drink! 

Reception children have also loved having eggs in school in an incubator, seven of which hatched into little chicks which they children are loving watching grow and develop each day. The incubator is always surrounded by children carefully monitoring the chicks’ development and progress. This has been a lovely way for our children to learn about life-cycles, as well as being able to demonstrate our school values of Kindness and Respect to their newfound, temporary pets! The chicks will go and live on a farm once they become too big for their incubator and the children will remain as their penpals! 

We commemorated World Book Day on 2^nd March with every class spending the day focussed on a love of reading and books. Children were invited to bring their favourite book and a comfy cushion in to enjoy a relaxing and cost reading day. Our “Buddy Classes” also got together with older and younger children sharing their favourite stories together. Reception “Buddy” with Pied Piper pre-school and are starting to build relationships with the younger children there which is lovely to see. 

Thanks to the mammoth fundraising efforts of our PTA, every class in school was able to enjoy a recent professional acting company visit and perform “The Jungle Book” to our children. This performance then inspired work in art and writing which was of a very high quality and is now displayed around the school. Our PTA also recently purchased an outdoor science classroom for the whole school to use and enjoy. We made great use of this in our recent STEM week and this new space is helping us fulfil our science principal of learning outdoors. 

We have also recently participated in “Children’s Mental Health Week” following the national theme of “Connections”. Every class participated in mental health activities daily and thought of how they could connect with themselves, their classmates, their buddy class and the community. One of the Year Five activities was to produce willow wind-catchers which have been distributed around the community to various organsiations and businesses in Earls Barton. We hope you enjoy seeing these naturally-made works of art around the village. 

Following two years of covid isolation and “bubbles”, our school House Teams lost momentum and there were not many opportunities for children to get together with others in their House for competitions or events. We have therefore decided our House system needed a re-launch and have handed over to the children for their ideas as to what our four houses should be called. I hope by next month’s Barton Today article to be able to reveal the results! 

Finally, the detailed design drawings for our school extension are nearly complete and should be submitted to the planning authority very soon. As soon as the planning application goes in, the drawings will be available on the planning portal and we will make a display in school and in EB library for you to view. I can only apologise for the delays to this which are out of our control; the timeline for the entire project is controlled by North Northamptonshire Council. 

Marie Lally 

Headteacher, on behalf of the EBPS community.