We are down on Westward Ho! beach in the beautiful sunshine!
Everyone is learning how to use their body boards and their surfboards, but we're still MILES away from the water!
Everyone is wet already, and we all have sand between our toes...
And NOW we've hit the surf!
We will try to blog every day, but the wifi is a little ropey!
You can always check our twitter feed instead! http://twitter.com/oakwoodlive
We've had another Weather Kid on Wave 105!
The Easter break is a perfect time to get out and about!
Our latest newsletter tells you about 50 Things to do before you are 11¾!
This is a National Trust scheme to get children out and about doing all the things we tell them not to do!
Some examples are:
If you want to know what the weather was like last Friday...
Naysa can tell you:
(* Contains scenes of mild mud....)
After much hard work in the editing suite, Minstead: The Video (2014) is now available.
It stars Years 4 and 5 and is set in the glorious surroundings of the New Forest.
Although it was too late for the Oscars this year, we know you will enjoy it!
After many days of rain, the year 2 doors can no longer hold off the water!
It was all hands on deck on the last day of this half term to keep us dry!
We had a very exciting afternoon paying our way to play games. We had to work out our winnings and exchange the correct coins to play.
All the staff and children in Year 1 won at least one game and made some money!
Autumn half-term is a perfect time to get out and about!
Our latest newsletter tells you about 50 Things to do before you are 11¾!
This is a National Trust scheme to get children out and about doing all the things we tell them not to do!
Some examples are:
Having been waved off at school by all the parents we completed the short journey to Minstead Study Centre with no problems. After arriving the children had some time to unpack their things and settle into their home for the next 4 days.
The first activity was the Monday woods walk and despite the bitterly cold weather and even a bit of snow we had lots of fun exploring. Where we encountered; ditches, puddles, bogs, rivers, leaf monsters, ponies, and the beautiful New Forest countryside - just the ideal spot for a picnic!
After a delicious dinner of sausages and roast potatoes with veg followed by apple and plum crumble and custard we headed to the classroom to prepare some lanterns for later in the week.
We also walked to the round house to enjoy an evening of songs and stories around the fire.
Jack appeared on Wave105 on Thursday afternoon to tell everyone what the weather was like!
It's nearing the end of the football season...
The Oakwood school football team have played twice in recent weeks picking up important 1-0 home victories against Table toppers St Marks Junior School and Hollybrook Junior School.
This means they have now won four out of five league games played and are still in with a chance of challenging St Marks for the league title!
Unfortunately the away match against Fairisle on Friday was cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch, but the team still has two games after school on Monday against Tanners Brook. We will try our hardest to re-arrange the Fairisle game before the league finishes on the 15th of March.
We are fully intending to open the school as normal on Monday 21 January.
The path from the wooden gate on Sandpiper Road will be open and clear, and we suggest you use that route into school.
Children can come in via reception rather than going to their classroom doors, which may still be inaccessible.
We will try to clear other paths to the side entrances during the day.
Please take care on your journeys in, as some roads and pavements may still be icy.
Once again, apologies for the closure due to snow on Friday, but thank you for the excellent snow pictures you sent in! If you have any more, please email them to snow@oakwoodlive.net and we'll blog them.
Thanks to those of you who sent in snow pictures!
If you've got any more, please send them to snow@oakwoodlive.net, and we'll add them to this album!
Thanks to Jas, Oliver, Jacob, Abbie, Oliver, Nathan, Toby, Sophie, Luke and Sam, Robbie, Maisy and Georgia, The Peggs, The Walkers, The Handley-Garlands and the Worleys!
If you are out in the snow today, we'll be offering a prize for the best "snow-thing"!
This could be a snowman, snowlady, snowdog, snow dinosaur or something else equally creative!
There will be a prize for the most creative snow sculpture and another for the biggest, so get working...
Wrap up warm and send us your pictures...
Send them to snow@oakwoodlive.net and we'll publish the best ones on the blog.
Here are some pictures staff took of the school site this morning...
And thanks for the lovely email we have already received from a parent:
"As ever Oakwood, good call and thanks for letting us know nice and early.
I for one know you don't take these decisions lightly, but today I think you would have been fighting a losing battle with the snow!
Hope all the staff who came in get home safely as it's much worse now than it was when they came in. "
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.
We are pleased to announce that we expect the school to be open as normal on Tuesday 15 January.
We are very sorry that we had to stay closed on Monday, but as I said yesterday, the sudden cold snap over the weekend meant that the classrooms were bitterly cold. Even wrapped up warm, this was uncomfortable, and would have been for children.
Heating engineers were on the school site from 7.30am on Monday and stayed all day. (If you're interested in the technical detail of what went wrong, please see below...)
I can only apologise once again for the inconvenience this has caused, but even though the heating system has been out of action for a full four days, we have remained open for three of them. As many of you know from previous snowy weather, closing our school is the very last resort. We hope that the system will carry on working properly and we don't get any deep snow!
The heating was working fully from about 2pm on Monday and it was due to stay on all night, so we expect the school to be warm for Tuesday morning.
Thank you for your support.
What went wrong:
A separate fault, exacerbated by the major leak from last week, meant that a fail-safe pressure device in our boiler room was not allowing the heating to stay on before it automatically shut off. This device could not be over-ridden, and so was completely replaced on Monday.
The replacement for the pressure device which failed, now working properly.
We are sorry to report that Oakwood JUNIOR School will have to remain closed today, Monday 14 January.
After engineers spent most of Thursday and Friday digging up corridors and restoring heating to the site, the system failed completely again over the weekend, and has left classrooms as cold as 7°C. This is too cold for children to sit, even in coats.
We expect engineers to be on site again today and will keep you updated via the website, and via text message if necessary. We will also update the school answerphone.
Oakwood Infant School is open as normal.
Many apologies for the inconvenience this will undoubtedly cause.
We have engineers on site today looking into ducts which haven't been opened for over 10 years to track and track down our leak! Our lovely carpet in the shared areas is being torn up!
Nothing yet...
The school is fairly warm today and we'll keep you updated!
You can also read our letter from 9 January, about the problem and about wrapping up warm...!
Sorry it's been a while since our last blog - things have been pretty busy!
We came home to the UK for 3 weeks over Easter and enjoyed seeing a lot of our family and friends. When we returned to Mexico we spent a couple of weeks in a beautiful area called Cuernavaca - it is an old part of Mexico and had some lovely buildings. We were there to attend a language school for 2 weeks, staying with a Mexican family who were great hosts.
At the moment we are in the middle of our 'summer teams'. These are teams that come in, mainly from the US, and work with us - doing what we do all year round. In the last 3 weeks we have served around 2500 people, offering them medical, optical and dental services as well as having a children's and hair/nails area! A lot of the people simply cannot afford to go to the doctor, dentist or optician although they often need treatment. They are very grateful when we offer it to them for free :)
Mexico has now entered the 'rainy season'. Usually, this means we have sunshine for most of the day and somewhere around 4-5pm it will start to rain. The rain is often accompanied by a thunderstorm which lasts about 2 hours. Last week, however, it was cloudy, drizzly and rather chilly during the day - most unusual and, I'm happy to say, the sun has returned this week!
Lucy's school, which follows the American system, finished for the summer on May 30th! Therefore, she is free to work with us during the summer - although some school work, using the internet, is done when we have free time! Their school year starts again on August 16th.
We have been following your school blog with interest at all the different activities going on at Oakwood Junior School. We were impressed with the 5 Olympic rings that you managed to make together on sports day!
Enjoy the rest of your summer term and then your summer holidays!
Unfortunately, due to the weather on the last couple of days at Knapp, we were unable to blog. Now back at school we are working on putting some of the video footage and unseen photos together for a very special film-to be shown as part of the Year 6 leaving production. In the meantime we thought we would share a few more photos from the last couple of days.
On Water...
On Land...
At the Disco...
|