Clifton College Website

Butcombe Newsletter

Dr Wendy Bowring, the Headmistress of Clifton College's Butcombe Pre-Preparatory and Nursery School, writes a regular newsletter for parents and friends of the school.

Archive...

Newsletter 4

Dear Parents

Firstly, many, many thanks for all your support at last week’s Book Fair. The costumes were simply amazing, and weren’t we lucky with the weather! The children had a most enjoyable day, and I hope all parents found it a pleasurable afternoon – certainly the staff did! The school received £600 worth of books as our ‘commission’, which have been well received by the teachers and children. If you took some good photographs on the day, we would love to see them. Many thanks must go to Mrs Griffiths who did the lion’s share of the organising from the school’s point of view, and to Bina Shah and the Parents’ Network, who did a great deal to support the organisation of the afternoon – not to mention the scrummy cakes!

On to the next thing – Harvest Festival. Just a reminder that it will take place in Chapel on Friday, 10th October at 2.30 p.m., and you and your families are all very welcome. I mentioned last week that donations of produce would be sent to the Crisis Centre in St. Paul’s, but in fact this year it will be given to the nuns in St Paul’s who will distribute it to the needy in that area.

Please will you bring any contributions directly to Butcombe Hall on the morning of Friday, 10 October, simply in bags or displayed in boxes, and I will ensure the items are taken to Chapel and put on display. Many thanks for your support in this.

Parents’ Evenings

This term’s Parents’ Evenings take place just before half term, on Tuesday 14th and Wednesday 15th October, where you will all have the opportunity to discuss how your child has settled in to his/ her new class.

For the benefit of parents new to the school, appointments can be made to see the teachers between 4.00 p.m. – 6.30 p.m. on both days. A fifteen-minute period with the class teacher is allocated for every child in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2. For children in Year 3, you are invited to sign up for a ten-minute slot with the class teacher and a five-minute slot with your child’s maths teacher if this is different to the class teacher. If your child’s class teacher is his/her maths teacher, then you will sign up for a full fifteen-minute appointment with this teacher.

To make an appointment, you need to sign up against a convenient time on your child’s class list which will be displayed in one of the following locations:

The lists will be posted first thing on Thursday morning, 9th October. I hope this all makes sense – please do not hesitate to pop in if it doesn’t!

Breast Cancer Awareness Day

Because we did not take part in the Macmillan Coffee Morning earlier this term, we are holding a Coffee Morning on Friday, 17th October, the day we break up for half-term, in support of the Breast Cancer Awareness campaign. The actual date specified by the charity is Friday, 31st October, but we are unable to support it on that day due to other commitments, so we hope 17th October will be fine for you.

The Coffee Morning will take place in Butcombe Hall directly after drop-off at 8.30 a.m.. Please come and support before you dash off on your busy schedules. There will be a couple of side-stalls (e.g. guess the name of the pink teddy, guess the number of marshmallows in the jar), and there will be a DVD playing about breast cancer awareness that I would personally advise everyone to see.

The children are invited to wear pink for the day (or if they do not have any pink clothes, then red ‘mufti’ will be fine), and bring in a donation of £2.00 to be sent to the charity. We will be arranging pink snacks, pink drinks and pink lunch, so the children will be in on some of the fun.

I heard in the news at the beginning of the week that a vaccine to protect against breast cancer is a real possibility in the not too distant future. For the six of us on the staff who, either personally or have close relatives who have been through the disease and survived, this is one extremely worthy cause that the staff and I want to support. We were the lucky ones, but it isn’t always the same story. I do hope you will join with us in supporting this cause.

Stop press....sports results

Our rugby and netball teams had their first inter-school matches against teams from Bristol Grammar School on Monday of this week. The two rugby teams won one and lost one; the girls’ hockey team won 2 – 0. Congratulations to everyone involved, and thanks to the staff: Mrs Askew, Mrs Ingram and Mr Wagstaff. Great start to the sporting year!

Finally...

If you think you have missed any letter from the school, remember you can find them all on the Butcombe Parents’ page of the website.

I look forward to seeing many of you on Friday in Chapel, or at the Coffee Morning next week.

With best wishes,

8 October 2008

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