Head teacher blog October 13th 2017
Speaking with head teacher colleagues earlier this week, I commented that I was working hard on, and a bit worried about plans for, Harvest Festival. My concerns were met with incredulous looks; Harvest Festival is clearly a much bigger event at Farfield than in most schools. And so it should be: food, cooking and growing are important to us and a big part of our ‘healthy’ offer. The junior hall looked great this morning – many thanks to families for the donations of food, to Mr Catto for setting up the display and to Mrs Hawkhead and others for setting up the rest of the hall. There was perhaps a little less freshly grown fruit on display this year, but that is largely because we have sold so much of it on our stalls every week. We can honestly say that every child from Year 1 – 6 has been involved in working on the farm and Ms Howells has commented many times on what terrific effort the children put in. Everyone can be terrifically proud of what we achieve on the farm. Well done and thank you!
We had a guest appearance from Cabbage Comedian: the children were, frankly, a bit mean to him! A harsh audience…
Nursery children were selling little pumpkin buns that they had made as parents came into Harvest Festival: their entrepreneurial idea raised nearly £13! This is an example of our new approach to Early Year education: planning ‘In the Moment’, taking children’s ideas and interests and building on them. This approach can bring huge benefits in terms of engagement, and this was very evident when I visited nursery earlier this week: every child was engaged in purposeful playing for a sustained period of time. This is a very clear sign of fantastic early years provision.
Earlier in the week, Year 1 spent days at Denso Nature Reserve in Shipley and Year 3 had an enjoyable Stone Age Day, including more time den-making. They really have loved this topic! Year 4 have been making switches and quizzes as part of their electricity topic and Year 5 have been engrossed in a topic about Ancient Greeks.
