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.

It has been wonderful to begin to return to an routine that is almost the same as we enjoyed prior to the pandemic. Two periods of school closure were hard to bear and although we had amazing online learning experiences, it was not the same as being all together.  When we did return to school we had to work as bubbles, so we missed all of those opportunties to be together as a school family.

This term is different.  We can be together, we can work, worship and play together and we are definitely enjoying the chance to begin to do all of the things that make this school so special.  We have especially been enjoying our outdoor environement with the beautiful weather we have experienced.



We have started the term by welcoming three new pupils and we have also said goodbye to a few too.  We have also been thinking together about how we can flourish as a community and honour our new school motto, 'flourishing through faith, hope and aspiration'.  Linked to this we will continue to consider how our school parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke), helps us to flourish and our school value for this half term is friendship.  We have been praying for Mrs Burrows, who is not able to be with us at the moment and we have given thanks for Mrs Askew who has been able to help in her absence.  Everyone has come back to school, or started their new school experience in a happy and positve way and we are very excited for all that is to come.

It was a searing 28 degrees, but just look at the effort the children put in to having their sports day.  Hot, hot, hot and no shade.  Practice in the morning was much shorter than normal and the children were encouraged to drink lots and store all of their energy for later.

There were the usual traditional track and field events and a few alternative activities available so that all children could participate.  We were very sad that parents could not come along, but there were plenty of pictures and a few videos to send home.  

We are very much hoping that next year will be the big event with lots of extra things to enjoy.

Well done Cardinham and Kilminorth.  Pupils took part in 3 teams, Seaton (yellow), Looe (blue) and Fowey (green).  At the end of the day, Fowey were the worthy winners.  Not to worry though as all of the children were happy when they were given their much deserved ice pops to enjoy after all of their efforts.