It has been so lovely to welcome everyone back to a new school term but also a whole new calendar year! We hope that everyone had an amazing Christmas break and have had a super start to their New Year.

We have only been back together for 3 days but they have proved to be just as exciting, happy and busy as our 5 day weeks normally are!

We started the week with a 'welcome back' assembly where Mrs. Welson was able to share our first 'pup-date' from the Guide Dogs sponsorship which we started just before the holidays. We have had pictures of Custard and Jack and a lovely letter telling us all about their first experiences as they start their training. 

We also began to think about our new value for January which is 'Hope' and shared ideas about what we thought this value meant and how it can be shown. We will continue to explore this new value in Monday's assembly.

This week's headteacher stickers were awarded for a variety of fabulous reasons, as normal, but this week included settling well into our school, starting the new term in a really positive way, showing great effort when working on challenging learning and supporting their friends in a very kind and caring way. We were all very impressed that in just 3 days these qualities had been able to be spotted. We also welcomed our new lovely student teacher Ms. Shipley who has been working with our fantastic Year 5 class for a couple of days and has enjoyed the start of her placement with us.

It has been such a chilly start to our new term but everyone has been so sensible wrapping up warm and being patient about playtimes and lunchtimes which have needed to change a little this week - thank you everyone.

We hope that you all have a great weekend and look forward to seeing you all on Monday.

We have had such a special week in school with the opportunity to all share both the KS1 and Early Years Christmas performances. Everyone who has been lucky enough to be in the audience for these special events have been excited to hear such beautiful singing, see the wonderful acting, narration and dancing from our younger children. This has been a truly magical start to our Christmas celebrations, thank you to all of our brilliant staff who have supported our children to share such fantastic performances. We look forward to sharing our KS2 Christmas Concert with our families, next Tuesday 6pm at St. Mary's.

This week has also been an opportunity for strengthening more community links with a group of enthusiastic singers entertaining residents of Marwick Close which was a lovely experience.

Years 5 and 6 had an exciting trip to Birmingham Botanical Gardens to learn more about the natural world and biomes in particular. Everyone had a fabulous time and enjoyed the chance to explore and discover new things about places and the animals which live in them.

Our headteacher stickers this week were awarded in our classrooms and reasons given were as varied and wonderful as they always are! This week children were chosen for showing our school values at all times, conquering fears to take part in performances and new experiences, showing superb knowledge and understanding on the trip, consistently being a positive role model and for showing determination to keep doing their best especially at this very busy time of the term. Congratulations to all.

We are looking forward to a really exciting last week of term next week, which will include KS2's Christmas performance, Christmas lunch day, Year 6 stalls, class party day (where we can wear our party clothes/Christmas jumpers), our Friends of Kington Primary School's fundraising stall (more details to follow) and Achievement assembly.

We hope that everyone has a lovely weekend and we will see you all on Monday.

As I write this, our lovely team of Friends of KPS are busy preparing the school hall for tonight's Bingo. The prizes are a plenty as are the dabbers!  Thank you in advance to everyone who organises these events as there is a lot of preparation and thought that goes into it but the team are always happy in their work!  If you would like to join the Friends team and help fundraise for all the children, please come and see Mrs Price in the school office.

Other events at school this week included the workshops for our Year 1 and Reception parents to help them support maths or reading at home. Thank you to those who attended and it was lovely to see the children feel so proud about their learning. If you were not able to attend but would like more information, please do see your class teachers and they will be happy to go through it with you.

Congratulations to all of our Headteacher Sticker winners this week - a truly 'peaceful' bunch as they have all been spotted putting our values into practice with lots of children working very hard in everything they do but also working well with other people, showing resilience and being calm and kind.

Lots more photos to share with you today from throughout the week. 

Last Sunday, staff, children and families attended the Remembrance Day service and parade held in Kington and we were very proud of our three Year 6 pupils who placed the wreath on behalf of our school.

Year 6 then led our Remebrance assembly on Monday using some clever silhouette drama to bring their own WW1 letters home from the Western Front to life.

We also held a Multi-Faith day on Wednesday (as well as Forest School for Year 5) where the children moved around the classes learning all about the festivals that are important to different religions and how they are celebrated.  There was lots of craft activities and discussions going on in school including some very delicious Challah bread that Year 1 and 2 made which Jewish communities make to celebrate Shabbat.

Congratutulations to our very worthy Headteacher Sticker winners today - they were so proud to earn their award and have all been demonstrating peace in their behaviour this week in school. 

Thank you to all our families for helping us to take part in Children in Need today - we raised over £190 for a very good cause indeed. 

Have a lovely, peaceful weekend and take care.

What an amazing way to end our half term!  This week, we've had our first set of Enrichment days; a wonderful House team singing competition (narrowly won by Ireland); two of our Year 6 pupils were presented with our Platinum School Games Award at a very special awards ceremony at Whitecross High School and our School Council visited Little Orchards Nursery to build some community links. 

As if that wasn't enough for one week, today, our football and netball teams played so well against the other six schools who took part in the Mitchell Hamer tournament this morning - we were very proud as they all represented the school brilliantly. Thank you to LHS for lending us their field, Mr Ward-Willis and Mrs Welson for organising the whole event and to Mr Spencer and Mr and Mrs Hughes for helping out. 

Back in school, we had our first Achievement assembly of the academic year and everyone was so proud of their certificates. Well done to you all!  Grace won the Voucher prize draw for this half term and the class attendance award was won by Year 5 with a very impressive 97.4%.

You may have noticed that all the children came home today with a packet of bulbs that have very kindly been donated by Tony and Tracey from I Can Foster.  This is so that everyone can plant them now ready to enjoy the daffodils, crocuses or tulips that come up in the spring time. Thank you!

We send all our love and best wishes to Miss Minett and her husband-to-be for their wedding next week. Year 5 children and staff loved holding a special 'wedding ceremony' for her this afternoon followed by a fun party and cake!

Finally, thank you to you all for your support. It has been lovely to see so many of you at Parent's Evenings this week and we really appreciate how much you work with our staff to support your child in school.

Have a fantastic half term break and we will see you back in school on Monday 4th November.

What glorious weather to finish our week with!

We had a super start to the week with our Harvest assembly at St. Mary's. Thank you to Mr Sell and Miss Edwards for making us all feel so welcome.

Today our school has hosted the 'Selina Cup' which is our football competition for Y5 and Y6 girls. Our two teams represented our school so well and demonstrated our school values in every match that they played. Special thanks go to Mr. Ward-Willis who organises this tournament and to LHS for allowing us to play on their pitches and for letting us have some of their fabulous students as the referees. 

In school we have been excited to see our new playground shelter taking shape and we are all so pleased with how it is looking. Thank you so much to the Friends of KPS and the Co-op for helping us to raise funds to build it!

In our assembly, Mrs. Welson shared information about the BBC 500 words story competition which has been launched and showed everyone how there is information on the school website (supporting the curriculum) for any of our brilliant story writers who would like to enter.

Our weekly attendance award went to Year 2 for 100% weekly attendance!

Our stickers this week were awarded for such important and wonderful reasons including super behaviour, being excellently engaged in their own learning, contributing more in lessons, great reading and maths work and for being a kind, encouraging friend.

We hope that everyone has a super weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday.