As part of Save the Children’s initiative to raise awareness of their work with homeless children, Tow Law Millennium’s KS2 pupils joined in with their Den Building Day. The children had a great time, working together in teams, coming up with creative and innovative solutions to build dens in ‘The Secret Garden’. Although everyone had lots of fun, afterwards they were able to empathise with children for whom a “den” like theirs might be their only form of shelter.

At Tow Law Millennium Primary School we pride ourselves in working together with the community. We are an integral part of the town and as such strive towards providing a high quality learning environment for all our children. In February 2012, we opened a 16 place nursery in our existing Reception classroom and soon realised that we could better use the internal space at the back of the school.

We have worked with a contractor and the Local Authority during the last 12 months to remodel our space and are very happy to say that all work was completed to a very high standard during the Easter holidays this year. On Wednesday 24th May, Councillor Richard Manchester officially opened our Early Years classroom which offers a high quality provision in a respectful and caring environment. We recognise and celebrate that all children are individual and as such develop at different rates, have different interests and come from varied cultural backgrounds. We strive to ensure our provision reflects and supports all children both indoors and outdoors. The event was very well attended.

We have always had a good relationship with the two local child-minder’s but this year have taken this to a new level. We looked at the facilities in and around Tow Law and recognised that these are limited especially when you look at SAFE areas for our very youngest residents to play. We approached Annmarie Hurton and Heather Gwynette and have come up with a plan. During the school holidays we are opening the school to allow these ladies to bring their children to TLMPS, access our early years and strengthen our already effective working partnership.

Between us we are ready to cater for 30 hours a week quality provision, working flexibly to meet the needs of the parents and children. We are proud to show visitors around our facilities and look forward to continuing to evolve together to meet the needs of our community.

On Monday 5th June, Chris Cook came into school for our second Inspire Day.

We started the day with an inspiring assembly about reaching for your dreams and setting goals but not being disheartened if you do not achieve them.

Chris then did a workshop with each class about ‘mindfulness’.

We look forward to Chris coming back into school for our final Inspire Day on our Sports Day, Monday 10th July.

Miss Mawson and Mrs Jackson took some of our children to Wolsingham School for a Eurovision Song Competition on Friday 19th May.

The children performed The Proclaimers ‘I’m Gonna Be (500 miles)’. They were dressed in tartan and had Scottish flags painted on their faces.

The children enjoyed the performance so much that they wanted to perform it during our celebrations assembly.

On Thursday 26th May, our whole school, from Reception to Year 6, visited Preston Park. It was a very hot, sunny day and the children enjoyed their time in the outdoors in this wonderful park.

Each class took part in a Victorian history workshop and then had free time to explore. They explored the Victorian street, woodland areas and, of course, the playground!

We all had a fantastic day at our whole school trip.

Our KS1 children in Class 4 had a fantastic afternoon at Wolsingham School for an athletics festival with our cluster schools.

They took part in activities involving; jumping, throwing, javelin and running.

The cluster schools beat the target set for them by David by scoring thousands of points when they were all added together!

The week before May half term, our children across school enjoyed a variety of activities linked to British Values.

Each teacher in school taught a lesson to each class related to a British Value:

Miss Dobson taught a ‘democracy’ lesson,

Miss Thompson taught an ‘individual liberty’ lesson,

Miss Mawson taught a ‘rule of law’ lesson,

Mrs McCluskey taught a ‘mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith’ lesson.

Our reception children learnt about British Values linked to Mr Men.

The children really enjoyed learning about aspects of British parliament and life in modern day British society.