Weekly News - Friday 25th June 2021

Sports Days

We have enjoyed truly wonderful Sports Days this week for every year group from Nursery to Year 6. While many of these were forced into a different format from usual due to Covid restrictions, the enjoyment and determination on the children's faces was as evident as ever. There is no doubt that healthy competition builds character and that striving to improve one's own performance is a super skill to embed in our children. Very well done to all of the children who took part and thank you to all of the staff involved, too. You can see some photographs of the Pre-Prep Sports Days on our Galleries page here and photographs from today's Prep Sports Days will be uploaded soon.

We thank all parents for respecting the request to stay away so that we were able to run these events so smoothly for the children.

We are very much looking forward to the Ducklings Sports Day next Friday too!

Musicians' Concert

Once again, Covid restrictions unfortunately thwarted our plans for our annual Musicians' Concert which is usually such a wonderful event at All Saints Church. However, our musicians have performed in school and we have put together an online 'concert' for parents to enjoy. You can watch this here.

Ark Farm Visit Ducklings!

Our Ducklings children had a wonderful time yesterday when they were visited by Ark Farm. They spent time learning about and petting animals including a donkey, pig, goat, sheep, dog and duck. We were so impressed by how attentively they listened and how gently they handled the animals. You can see some photographs of their day on our Galleries page here.

Prospective Head Boy/Girl Speeches

Very well done to the Year 5 candidates who have put themselves forwards as potential Head Boys and Head Girls for the 2021-2022 academic year. On Monday and Tuesday, they gave speeches to the rest of the school about why they would be a good choice for these positions of responsibility. We were so impressed by how well they articulated their personalities and ideas. Pupil voting has been taking place at school this week; staff input will also be considered and the new Pupil Leadership Team will be announced at our final assembly on the last day of term, which will be live streamed for parents.

Online Chamber Choir Auditions 2021-2022

We invite students from Year 2 to Year 5 to audition for Chamber Choir by submitting a video entry. The following YouTube video may be used to learn the audition song "Give Me Oil in my Lamp" which is from 7 minutes and 10 seconds until 8 minutes and 3 seconds on the video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fr0wAJHYCfU

Lyrics are below:

Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning
Give me oil in my lamp, I pray
Give me oil in my lamp keep me burning
Keep me burning ‘til the break of day
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna. sing hosanna to the king of kings
Sing hosanna, sing hosanna. sing hosanna to the king.

Children should sing looking directly at the camera at a distance of 1 metre away approximately. There is a piano accompaniment available which you can download here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12NeTmWIQweMfp1deJT19YeM4Fw_-t49o/view?usp=sharing

Please submit your child's video entry using the piano accompaniment and not the YouTube video by no later than Friday 2nd July 2021. We request that the subject of the email is clear, e.g "Chamber Choir Auditions: name of child and form group".

Please submit to both of the following:

cfawbert@sthelenscollege.com and
mgarnes@sthelenscollege.com

Members will be selected and announced before the end of term. Best of luck!

PA Forum and PA Class Representatives

We had an enjoyable and successful PA Forum meeting on Wednesday evening, at which Mrs. Drummond, Mrs. Hunt, Mr. McLaughlin and Mrs. Smith met with the PA class representatives to discuss/feedback on issues raised by parents throughout the school. Minutes have been sent to all parents.

The PA will have vacancies for class representatives in the following classes for the 2021-2022 academic year:

Ducklings
Robins
6R

If you would like to put yourself forward as a class rep for any of these classes, please contact pa@sthelenscollege.com.

There will be collection bins outside both Upper School and Lower School for the last two weeks of term and the PA will be very grateful for any donations of uniform that you no longer need. They are hoping to run a second hand uniform shop outside of the school over the summer holidays, and more information will follow about this in due course.

Summer Holiday Club

Holiday Club bookings for the summer holiday open today for children in Nursery to Year 6. The Holiday Club will run at Upper School for all children and places will be allocated on a first come, first served basis. We urge parents to make bookings as early as you can, so that you secure the dates you would like and so that we are able to plan our staffing and logistics with certainty. Please login to your SchoolsBuddy account to make your bookings.

Royal Institution Events

You might be interested in the events which are being planned by the Royal Institution for July. You can find out more details by following the link below.

https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/events-2021/july/family-sounds-and-vibrations

St. Helen's College Trust

If any parents have not yet signed up with EasyFundraising and would like to do so, now is a good time as there is an extra promotion which means an extra £5 incentive for both you and the school. Don't forget, if you support our cause on EasyFundraising, you will raise money for the St. Helen's College Trust at no cost to yourself every time you use the app to shop online with over 5000 participating retailers. If you would like to sign up, please use the link below. If you need any support with signing up, please contact Mrs. Smith at susmith@sthelenscollege.com. We are very grateful for your support.

Sign up to support St. Helen's College Trust on #easyfundraising, and they will give you a £5 shopping voucher once you have raised your first £5 - PLUS we will get a bonus £5 donation, it’s win, win! It's simple to join and you can raise FREE donations whenever you shop online with over 5,200 retailers. Sign up here: 
https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/sthelencoltrust/?invite=NX24VZ&referral-campaign=c2s&utm_source=ew5sharebox

Please don't forget, also, that you can donate your unwanted textiles (clothes, paired shoes, bags, belts, sheets/pillowcases, curtains etc) to our textile recycling bank which is located outside 227 Long Lane. You can pull your car into the car park area there while you drop your textiles off, whether during term time or holidays. The textiles are donated to poor communities and/or recycled to make industrial cleaning cloths, so nothing ends up as landfill, and the St. Helen's College Trust receives a small donation per kilo of collected clothing. We are happy to receive textile donations from the wider community, so do feel free to share this with any local family and friends too.