As we enter our third full week of having the children all in school with us the sun continues to shine and the children continue to dazzle us with their positive and engaged attitude towards all aspects of school life. We have been very pleased with how all of the school community have engaged with the return to school. With the slightest of tweaks all of our new systems appear to be working and we don’t plan to either change anything dramatically at the moment. One careful step at the time appears to be working well for us.

We do have two ‘new’ elements of school life that we would like to share with you. The first is an online course for parents which some of you might find of interest. The second is advance notice of our Foodbank Friday which, this year, will replace our Harvest Festival celebrations.

ONLINE LEARNING OPPORTUNITY FOR PARENTS

The children are back at school, we are regaining a bit of normality and that work-life balance is becoming, once again, a bit of a juggling act! Each of us will have had different experiences over lockdown and some of us will have faced many challenges. Although we are all in the same storm, we are each travelling through it in our own individual way – no one experience is the same as another with each of us on our own journey, with its own challenges and its own joys.

Last academic year, we offered a 4 week evening class in association with ESH Consultancy and Training Ltd (who work in partnership with Family Learning with Lincolnshire County Council) called ‘Taking Time to Stop Understand and Move On.’ This course is designed for any parent, guardian, carer or grandparent who wanted to explore new ways to help children (or grandchildren) navigate through this rollercoaster called ‘life.’ This year, due to the current situation this course cannot, unfortunately, happen ‘live,’ but as a school we still wanted to be able to offer it out to our community. Sarah and Ed Hollamby, of ESH Consultancy & Training Ltd have adapted the course and created an online version.

The course takes the principles from the Sunday Times Bestseller book ‘SUMO’ by Paul McGee, and provides tips and tools that anyone can take away and apply. Children are often asked to bring a pencil case to school with specific ‘tools’ and equipment for them to use and access in different lessons. This course will provide a, just as important, ‘toolkit’ to help manage the big emotions and challenges that come our way in life. Each session will contain practical tips and tools and resources for you to use.

The course covers key principles such as: exploring what wellbeing is and how to achieve it in family life; exploring how we as humans think and how we can have helpful and healthy thinking patterns, rather than unhelpful and unhealthy thinking patterns; exploring perspectives and how to learn to see other peoples perspectives; to understand that sometimes its ok not to be ok and how we can manage that, as well as learning how to set goals and face challenges.

The online version of the course is split into 7 short sessions, each session has a video and accompanying resources to help you make notes and record your thinking. The advantage of it being online is that you are able to access it at a time which is convenient to you and your family life (no childcare required) – the disadvantage of the online course is no live banter with Ed and Sarah or free cake! This course is completely free (fully funded by Lincolnshire County Council) and well worth completing for any parent, guardian, grandparent or carer.

If you feel that this course would be of interest to you please email Sarah.Hollamby@nettleham-junior.lincs.sch.uk and she will send you the link to the enrolment form (for LCC purposes) and the course.                                                 

                                                    Foodbank Friday is back for Harvest                            

For the last 7 years now Nettleham Church of England Aided Junior School has supported Foodbank by holding monthly collections and as a school we would like to continue to support this fantastic work, particularly during these uncertain times!  Also, given that we will be unable to hold our Annual Harvest festival this year, this allows us to give thanks to God in a compassionate and thoughtful way.

The hard facts:

• Food banks expect to give out 6 emergency food parcels every minute this winter!
• The Trussell Trust forecasts a 61% increase in parcels needed that usual this winter
• So far during the pandemic around half of the people who used a food bank had never needed to use one before demonstrating how widely families have been affected.

We feel that as a school this it is really important that we play our part and continue to support the fantastic work that is already happening in Lincoln through various charities who are seeking to ensure that no-one goes hungry.

We would like everyone to bring an item of non-perishable, in-date food into school to donate to foodbank. This will be collected and taken to a local foodbank distribution warehouse. If every child brings in one item, we would have 240 contributions – this goes a long way to help people in our city!

Our first ‘FOODBANK FRIDAY’ this year will be held on Friday 2^nd October 2020 and will be held on the first Friday of every month from then on. Due to our ‘bubble’ system in school at the moment. The children will just bring their donation to school and place it in their ‘foodbank bag’ in their classroom, rather than a central point in the hall as we have done before. Mrs Hollamby will collect the donations from the classrooms after school and deliver to our Local Foodbank.

If you would like to look in a little more detail at the work of ‘Foodbank’ then please have look at the following website: www.trusselltrust.org/foodbank-projects