We had tried to visit Truro Cathedral on many occasions, but sadly the pandemic and staff absence had prevented this.  We were therefore delighted to finally be able to make the visit.  As you can see from the pic-collage, the children had a wonderful experience, including to play the organ!  We really enjoy it when our school is able to celebrate it's Church of England heritage and we learn a great deal when visitors come.  We have been very pleased to welcome our new rector, Reverend Ben Morgan-Lundie and two of our pupils had the honour of being present at his licensing service held during half-term.  It becomes even more special when the children can experience the cathedral and begin to understand why a cathedral is built like it is and who all of the various people are who serve God as part of their work.  An very inspiring and spiritual day that has given us lots to think about back in school. 

The children at Trenode made a great job of acting as the waves while our two RNLI visitors helped to rescue two of the children in distress on their body boards!  We are really enjoying having visitors into school again and now that the weather is improving and a few of the children have at least dipped their toes into the sea, this was a very timely visit. 

The talk was very interactive and the children were helped to understand how floating can help them if they are in distress and how to call for help using their voice and hands at the same time.  They also learned about the dangerous rip tide currents that could take them out to sea, with some great advice on how to make sure this doesn't happen.  Finally they were reminded how to use 999 or 112 if they see someone in distress.  

Living in this beautiful part of the country is a privilege but it is also so important that the children learn how to repsect where they live and to understand the dangers of the sea, at the same time as using it as an amazing playground and adventure opportunity.

I have no doubt that we will be seeing some of these children wearing those yellow shirts on the beach one day, helping others and doing their bit to be courageous advocates; serving the community in which they live.

We are a little 'late to the party' on this, but we had a wonderful World Book day again this year.  We started the day with a reading breakfast in the school hall.  Parents joined us for the event and we read together while eating toast and drinking juice.

The theme for the day this year was words, so everyone was encouraged to come dressed as a 'word'.  It was interesting that so many of the children chose a sleep themed word, including Mrs David, who was many sleep and comfort themed words throughout the day!  The word of the day went to Mrs Burrows, one of our lovely TAs, who came as 'MAGNARA'.  Can you guess who she was?

... ANAGRAM of course!  We also celebrated the fact that World Book day is 25 years old this year and we reflected on the theme for the year based on reading for joy.

We love to sing at Trenode, but we think we might like reading just that little bit more!

We were very pleased that the Safter Internet Day this year celebrates 'Respect and Relationships' as it fits into so many of our Church school values.  Our act of worship today looked at respect for others on the internet in particular, and it helped to remind us all that it is so important to be respectful, thankful, kind and caring in the way in which we communicate with others online.

We know that over 48% of children will have been contacted by someone they do not know online, but it was reassuring that the children could tell us why it was so important not to respond.  One of the children shared one of their house rules at home, which is never to talk to someone online who you do not know as a friend, or if you do not have permission from your parents to chat or game with them.

We read the fabulous story of 'Digi-duck and The Magic Castle' which helped us all to understand that when you are gaming, if you share your password, others can then use it to spend money on games and other things.  We enjoyed listening to the adventures of Cool.com and Shy_sheep too!

We will spend more than a day looking at online safety this year as the topic is so important for our young children.  They do know what is right and wrong but we found out that they worry about peer pressure to join in with things harder to deal with; this will be a big topic of conversation as a result.

As I write on my laptop, having used my phone to find infomation and play music to concentrate as I write, we cannot ignore the amazing positive influence of the internet on our lives and we need to celebrate its value as well as taking care to be safe and careful in all that we do.  We would like to share our prayer for the day:  


Dear God,
We thank you for the amazing advances in technology
Thank you for the wonderful resource of the internet
We ask that you help us to use it wisely - to broaden our minds and not to harm others.
Amen

We were delighted this morning to welcome parents to the first Reading Breakfast at Trenode Primary.  Parents were invited in to school by Mrs Pike half an hour early to join us for breakfast and to read a favourite  book with their child.  It was a beautiful sunrise over the valley as everyone was arriving and the atmosphere was wonderful as the children settled in the warmth of the school hall to read.  There was toast and orange juice in abundance and families were joined by other children as they arrived for the start of the school day.  We finished it off with a whole school act of worship.  Our focus this week is on well-being and today, we talked about the simple things in life that make us happy (like a beautiful sunrise) and how showing happiness, even when we might be feeling a little down, helps to lift us all.  The perfect start to a school day and one of many more we hope!

It was one of those, 'can we, should we?' mornings with the atrocious weather we had overnight, but we decided to brave it anyway and take a trip to Looe with Kilminorth class.  We split into two groups to do a traffic survey and a survey of the types of buildings and business in town and used our tally sheets to add them all up.  We drew lots of interest from the people in town and we were able to say a quick 'hello' to Mr Toms, who was putting up the town Christmas tree and braving a very high ladder!   As you can see we made a special stop at the Musuem and we bought some postcards in one of the gift shops.

After a quick snack by the beach and an impromtu RNLI lesson on how to float to save yourself in the water, we headed back to school in the minibus to warm up and count our tallies! 

Children In Need is a special day at Trenode Primary and the School Council are raring to go.  They have made posters, written a letter to parents and planned the cakes they are going to make along with how they are going to sell them, with the challenge of parents not being allowed into the building at the moment.  

We work hard at Trenode Primary to be 'courageous advocates'.  This means that we help and serve our community and the wider world, but at the same time we understand the impact of the service we provide and the difference that our actions make.  The Children In Need appeal does a very good job of helping the children to understand that no matter how big or small their contribution, whatever they do will make a difference to someone.


The children have chosen to come to school in their pyjamas and they are holding a bake sale at the end of the day.  We are hoping for lots of contributions of cake.  It is going to be a fun day!

It is with much frustration this week that we have had to postpone the Harvest Festival planned for this Friday.  The children were very excited to plan the worship session as it was to be the first time that their parents were to be able to come into their classrooms.  Given the current situation again with Covid-19, we decided that we would postpone until after half term, when hopefully, we can try again.

Mrs Butlin, our music teacher has helped the children to learn some new Harvest songs and along with the songs we love, we have enjoyed singling loudly and in rounds - a delight that we will be able to share.

Our School Council is up and running again now and we have met a few times now this term.  Much of our focus this half term has been about Harvest and the plans and preparations for the worship session.  One of the things the children achieved was a prayer for worship.  I would like to share it here:

Dear Lord,
Thank you for the harvest. 
Thank you for the farmers.
Thank you for the crops in the fields.
Help us to help others who have less than us.
Help us to be thankful for the food we have.
Thank you for the family who prepare our meals.
Let us pray for families who do not have any food to eat or water to drink.
Amen

We have decided that Harvest is helping us to flourish at the same time as enabling us to be courageous advocates.

Happy half term everyone.

As we continue to investigate all of the ways that we can flourish at school and in our lives, we looked at our wider curriculum with the children.  Topic work and the wider curriculum is investigated through our 'big questions'.  This half term in Cardinham we are asking, 'Why we went to war' and in Kilminorth, we are investigating, 'Why Paddington Bear didn't come to Looe!' 

In this picture, the children from both classes are talking about each of the wider curriculum areas such as music, design technology, history etc. to think about how these subjects can help them to flourish.  It was a wonderful conversation and the children came up with some very inspiring thoughts.  This included the idea that music helps us to reflect and enjoy, that geography helps us to learn about the wider world and to encourage us to explore etc.

We then carried on this theme in worship, by understanding the power of music or silence to help us to remember that quiet can be a very important part of helping us to flourish and thrive.  We reflected that we often do not take time to stop and do nothing more than sit and think, or listen to the sounds around us.  Everyone in the room agreed that it was something that we like to do and that we would like to do more, at school, as well as at home.  The overwhelming response was that the piano music we listened to was beautiful and helped us to relax more than the silence that we also tried.  What amazing thinkers we are!

We have been working very hard to think about how we can help each other to 'flourish' over the last week.  We have been continuing to think about our full motto:  'Growing in faith; flourishing through hope and aspiration; reaching out in love and community.'

Our everyday phrase to help to remember is 'flourishing through faith, hope and aspiration.'  Today, through worship, we realised that although you can flourish as an individual and there are times when working indepenedently are important, the majortity of things we achieve at school and in life are far better when we receive nad accept help.  Today we imagined that mint sweets were people and thought about what would happen if just one 'person' (sweet) was put in a bottle of coke.  We got a great reaction with one sweet (person), but when we put lots of sweets (people) in the bottle, the result was amazing!  It was like a volcano errupting!

The children were great at thinking of their own examples of times when they have flourished with the help of others and times when they have helped others to flourish.  Mrs David has been running two miles per day through September and she shared that although she was running alone, she could not have done it without the support of her family and some help to look after her children when she was running.  We celebrated this achievement with Mrs David.

In our refection we gave thanks for the community in which we live and our wonderful school community.  Our prayer asked for support in helping us to grow and to flourish in every way.  We are very proud of our school motto and its link to our parable, The Good Samaritan.