25th March 2020

Dear Parents/ Carers

I wanted to write out to you all at this very challenging time in our lives.

As a school we have had to make some very difficult decisions over the last week.  You have all been incredibly supportive of our actions and I wanted to personally thank you all.  We will continue to do our best to support our school community in whatever way we are allowed and will continue to follow all the advice we are given from the Government, Public Health and our Local Authority.  As a school we are running on a skeleton staff and we continue to be available to you over the phone if you need us.  The teaching staff will be staying in contact with you and your children and you can expect regular check-in calls from school to see if there is anything else you need from us.  I also wanted to publicly thank all our team at school.  They have all risen to the challenge of supporting our children and families whilst managing their own lives at home.

I am mindful of our Y6 children who may be wondering about leaving us at Summer and whether we will be back at school anytime soon.  Unfortunately, I don’t have the answers to that, but I can promise that as soon as we are back together as a school community we will find some way to celebrate our Y6 children’s achievements at Willow Grove.

I wanted to offer some thoughts around being at home with your children and the expectation that you are ‘home schooling’. Please do not feel the pressure of having to organise daily classes for your children.  Home life can be hectic and busy enough without having to try to ‘teach’ in a formal way.

The work we send home is to offer activities that can be dipped into when you choose.  Obviously your little one is missing a lot of schooling at the moment, but there is an awful lot of things you can be doing every day that will keep learning going as much as possible during this time. 

Here are a few suggestions:

• Count with your child and use numbers at every opportunity
• Read to them at least daily and listen to them reading as often as you can
• Encourage them to write stories, poems and to do puzzles such as hangman that asks them to use letters and sentences
• Encourage listening to the radio and talk about different types of music.
• Pick different topics to talk about each day with your child – The Queen, Britain, The World we live in, gardening, travel.
• Take regular exercises – go out into the garden with them and play ball or running games – there are lots of exercise videos on offer on the television at the moment.
• Encourage them to colour and draw – use the internet to visit museum websites that are now free to look at
• Play board games as a family

Most of all, have as many good times together as you can.  Being active will help you to stay mentally strong whilst we all get used to living our lives differently.  Enjoy learning as much as you can and remember we are here if you need us.

Stay safe and take care of each other.

Yours sincerely

Joanna Murphy

Headteacher