The dining hall looked slightly different today as three of the most well-mannered, polite children in the school took their well earned places at the top table with guest of honour-Mr.Wills. The children had been selected by the dinner staff for their exemplary manners and politeness at the dinner table.
Cookery Club had their first session of the Spring term today and make a delicious sweet potato and lentil curry.
We learned how to chop, peel and dice as well as how to deseed peppers and measure liquids and lentils!
Alongside our curry, we tasted samosas and onion bhajis. We have started our own recipe books and hope to add more recipes as the weeks progress.
Both Oakwood Schools have to remain CLOSED today
We have done our very best to stay open today, staff have come in early and Martyn and Gary have been trying to clear paths, but with little success.
After closing on Monday because of the heating failure, the last thing we wanted to do today was close, but unfortunately we have no choice.
Most other local schools are closed and the conditions on the roads are very bad.
The forecast is for the weather to get worse rather than better.
We are very sorry for the further inconvenience.
In the light of today's news about supermarket beefburgers, City Catering is pleased to be able to report that the burgers used in school meals are unaffected.
The beef is sourced locally, as is much of the food used in school meals. A food source statement is available for you to look at.
City Catering continues to be a very highly regarded LA catering service, and our kitchens at Oakwood have received the highest hygiene rating possible.
If your child does not currently have school meals, why not try and persuade them?
Here's what's on the menu today!
Meals are £1.90 a day, £9.50 for a whole week. You can pay online, or by cheque (made payable to Southampton City Council). You can also pay in advance so that your child can take a meal when needed.
Dear Parents
It was a very busy last week at Oakwood!
It was really wonderful to see so many of you at the two Christmas performances and I was very proud of our talented singers, dancers, actors and technicians!
I hope the performances got you in the Christmas mood!
We had a really lovely Christmas dinner – roast turkey, stuffing, chipolatas and all the trimmings. Thank you to our amazing kitchen and lunchtime staff for producing fantastic fare for us!
And on Friday morning, we had our Carol Service. This is always a very magical occasion and we were joined by the team from Lordshill Church, who led us in celebration.
As we come to the end of 2011, I would like to wish you all a very Happy Christmas on behalf of everyone at the school. Enjoy spending time with family and friends and we’ll see you in 2012! School reopens for pupils on Tuesday 3 January 2012.
Best wishes
from all at Oakwood Junior School
We said goodbye to Mrs Smith, our long-serving school cook today!
She has been dishing up dinners at the Oakwood Schools for 28 years and we reckon that she must have cooked and served over 600,000 dinners in that time to thousands of pupils and staff!
She is now looking forward to her retirement and spending more time with her grandson!
We will miss you, Lorraine! Good luck!
Some of our pupils met Tom Daley, the Olympic Diver, earlier this year...
But, they actually didn't! It only looks like they did!
Southampton City Catering asked our children to come up with questions for Tom about his life, his sport and his training. They then came in and filmed the children asking the questions. Tom's busy schedule meant he answered the questions while away on training and then the two bits of film were cleverly joined together!
The questions about how Tom eats a healthy diet were particularly important considering how school lunches are a really good, healthy, balanced meal!
Watch the question below...
...and then head to the City Catering website to see the rest!
There are about 30 short videos altogether - half of them are Oakwood pupils. Everyone who asked a question got a signed photo of Tom - they were great ambassadors for the school!
Year 6 enjoyed making a healthy vegetable curry as part of our 'Millions' topic. We learnt lots about food in other counties.
We learnt that in India, one of the staple foods is rice and lots of people are vegetarian. We decided that making a vegetable curry would reflect the diet of many Indian people.
We thought the curry was fantastic and lots of us wanted seconds!
When we asked children what they'd like to do more of in school, one thing was at the top of everyone's list...
Cooking!
Year 3 decided they they wanted to cook for some members of our local community and so today they made delicious muffins for some of the residents of Neptune Court.
Our visitors had a great morning in school, learning about what we get up to at Oakwood. They were then treated to their muffins with tea at break time and they even stayed for school dinner!
Now a few people in year three know how to make the muffins (Thank you Mrs Hayter and Mrs Mattack!), everyone from the year group will be cooking next week!
Watch out for many more muffins!
We had a really great collection of food for our Harvest Festival today.
Chris Davis came in and reminded us about where our food comes from and how hard it's been for farmers this year because of the floods and foot and mouth disease. You can learn more about how food gets to our tables at the Food and Farming website - and you can take a quiz!
He asked us to collect lots of food in tins and packets and jars - and as you can see, we did! These foods keep for a long time and so they can be given to people in Southampton who really need help. Chris takes it all back to SCRATCH and makes sure it all goes where it's needed.
This year, we also had some great vegetables from Mrs Larder's allotment - we never knew she had such green fingers - and we'd also like to say thanks to the bakers at Tesco in Chineham who made the beautiful wheatsheaf for us. It made our display look really fantastic!
If you want to listen to the celebration song we sung, you can click below...
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