Drop of and Home Time Health and Safety Reminder
Please remember that, as we remain in tier 3, all health and safety guidance around dropping off and picking up pupils remains in place. As we all work hard to make everything feel as normal as possible for our pupils, it is easy to forget that Edinburgh is still experiencing a number of positive COVID-19 cases each week and guidance remains that we should continue to follow health and safety measures. This is particularly important as we are approaching the holidays and many families wish to ensure that they have taken all precautions possible before the relaxing of the guidelines over Christmas so that they can spend time with loved-ones. Please ensure that you are helping us to do the best that we can to keep the school and community safe by adhering to the rules that are in place at all times:
- Please wear face coverings when dropping off or collecting pupils
- Please maintain a physical distance of 2m as much as possible
- Please follow our one-way system by entering by the Stirling Road gate and leaving by the Pentland View Road gate
- Pupils coming to school on their own can enter and leave the school by either gate as they are not required to physically distance
- The car park gate is open from 9-9.10am for families wishing to drop off pupils here – a one-way system is also in place to enter and leave the car park, and parents must accompany their child through the car park
- Families who have children in P1 or P2 and also P3-7 and wish to make one drop off in the morning can do so at the P1 and P2 drop off time of 9-9.10am. Classes all have a soft start to the day to support this.
End of Term Arrangements
We had confirmation on Monday afternoon that we will be finishing at lunchtime on Tuesday 22nd December.
To allow for safe dismissal and physical distancing between adults we will stagger our finish times as follows:
P1 & P2 11:40am
P3 11:50am
P4-7 12 12 noon
Nursery will also finish at 12 noon but parents can pick their child up earlier if they need to.
School Equipment
Please ensure that your child does not come to school with any toys or additional items as we approach the end of term. We are trying to reduce the risk of infection transmission as far as possible. The only items that should be coming to school are:
- Snack
- Packed Lunch (if applicable)
- Full Water Bottle
- Change of clothes (if not already in school)
- Wellies on wet days
We will continue to provide all stationery.
Winter Clothing
We continue to work within health and safety guidelines and classes all remain in class bubbles in the playground during break and lunch. We actively encourage pupils to stay off grassy areas however with the nature of our Scottish weather it is very likely that children may get wet and/or muddy during outdoor play throughout the winter months. The best solution to this is for children to wear welly boots on a wet day (or any day) and have shoes in their bag that they can change into. Wellies can be left in school if this is preferable.
Please also continue to ensure that your child has a full change of clothes in their bag in case they get wet throughout the day. We continue to provide outdoor learning opportunities, as well as indoor water play for some classes, and have a limited amount of spare clothes in school to loan to pupils who require a change.
There is support available for families who need it, please contact the school office.
Absence Reporting
When reporting that your child will be off school due to illness please give details of their symptoms. If your child is off school with sickness/ diarrhoea they need to be off school for at least 48 hours after the last episode.
Assembly
This week marked our Keep Connected Sharing assembly.
Mrs Hughes talked about what she didn’t like and what she loved about Winter. Despite having to put on more layers to keep warm and clean her muddy dog after walks, she loves the cold frosty landscapes, all the festive lights bring a smile to her face and eating the delicious treats. She went on to introduce Hanukkah, the Jewish Festival of Lights which is being celebrated in the next week.
We shared our learning and reflected on the Keep Connected unit of our Building Resilience programme. P5 shared their Keep Connected back up team webs, showing how they are all connected with the people in their back up team and the ways that they keep connected. As well as reflecting on our learning and thinking about friendship being a two-way thing, we also thought about sending positive thoughts to people who we do not consider part of our back up team, and then about how thinking positive thoughts about everybody can keep our own mindset positive and help us to deal with difficult situations. We listened to the poem ‘The Race’ by D.H. Groberg. We also discussed different ways that we can keep connected with family and friends over the winter holidays, when we might not be able so see as many of them as we usually would.
Miss Smith created a wonderful video for assembly today that showed all the classes across the school dancing the same dance. While we cannot all be together physically, the video showed that we are all still connected. Everyone loved watching the dance come together and it really felt that we were part of something bigger. That was until, in the last scene, some of the staff team closed the dance off. Let’s just say, the staff would not score a perfect 10 on Strictly Come Dancing!
This Week in Nursery
This week in Nursery …..
Everyone has been working hard, practising their parts to retell the story ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’, we are recording this to share with our families. The children enjoyed the fun of everyone wearing their Christmas jumpers!
We are excited to have new staff joining our team in January. Mrs Mikrut will be our Senior Early Years Officer, Miss Thompson and Mr Lowe will be our new Early Years Practitioners.
Christmas parties take place next week on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th. We are having a SURPRISE visitor in a big red suit – this is our janitor Peter who is already working in the building with the nursery team.
Thursday the 17th December is the last day for our Wednesday/Thursday children, the children finish on Thursday normal time at 4.15.
Tuesday the 22nd December is the last day for our Monday/Tuesday children, the children finish at 11.45.
Dates for your Diary
- Christmas Holidays Wednesday 23rd December 2020 – Tuesday 5th January 2021 (inclusive)
- In-Service Day Tuesday 5th January 2021
- February Holidays Monday 8th – Monday 15th February 2021 (inclusive)
- Easter Holidays Friday 2nd April – Monday 19th April 2021 (inclusive)
- May Day Holiday Monday 3rd – 4th May 2021 (inclusive)
- In-Service Day Tuesday 4th May 2021
- Victoria Day Holiday Monday 24th May 2021
- Session ends Friday 25th June 2021