February News

Hello,

Please find below some information on our latest news and fundraisers, as well as links to sign up to volunteer to our next events.

Turkey & Syria fundraiser

The school is holding a fundraiser this Friday for Choose Love; children can dress in pink/purple/red and you can donate via Scopay.

We’re holding a special cake sale this Friday at 3.30 to raise funds for the White Helmets and the Turkish Red Crescent. Please help/bake/give generously if you can.

If you would like to donate items, please contact your local mosque, including Aziziye mosque on Stoke Newington High Street, as they are organising deliveries to the affected areas.

If you have been affected by the earthquakes, please know that you have the support of all Grasmere staff and families.

CHILDREN’S Mental Health Week

This week is Children’s Mental Health Week and we’ve distributed some little notebooks to each Grasmere child in the hope that it can spark conversations about feelings and how to deal with emotions. Just writing down a few sentences, or simply doodling or colouring, can be really beneficial to our mental help. You can find free activities for families on the Children’s Mental Health Week website. If you need help on this subject, please talk to Debbie, who is in charge of wellbeing and family coaching at school, or email the school to book an appointment.

Our next events

Our Grasmere Pub Quiz for parents, carers and staff is on Tuesday 28 FeBruary at The Shakespeare Pub

• Book you ticket
• Pre-order your food

Please join us if you can – you can either join as a team or buy a single ticket (we will find a team for you on the day). Everyone welcome!

(If singing is your thing, the school is organising a parents’ choir to perform at the music recital in March – please see Schoolping message for more information)

Our World Book Day Disco (with laser show!) is on Thursday 9 March after school.

• Book your tickets here

• Please volunteer here

We’ll need lots of cake, sandwiches etc donations on the day. Thank you!

Our next jumble sale will be held on Saturday 18th March

• Start sorting your jumble now! Please bring your clothes, toys, books and bric-à-brac etc to the school on Friday 17 October. Nothing broken or dirty please. If dropping off your donations at 9am, leave them by the blue container. If dropping off your donations at 3.30pm, leave them by the main hall

• There is lots of ways you can help, from sorting out the clothes to manning a stall, preparing a soup or baking a cake!

We need lots and lots of volunteers for this big fundraiser, please sign up here if you can.

Our current projects

If you’re looking for something for the kids to do during half-term, we would love to create a Grasmere teatowel with portraits of all the children, and some artwork for the new library.

TEATOWEL

We’d love to produce a teatowel with portraits of all the children at Grasmere this year. For this we will need every single child to hand in a portrait of themselves. Please see below for the guidelines:

• Children need to draw their portrait in a square with their name close to it. The end pictures will be 3x3cm so if so the drawings should not be too big – they don't have to be exactly 3cmx3cm, as long as they are square it will work. For smaller children they can do a fingerprint/handprint with a smiley face or similar.

• Children need to use paint or felt tip pens or thick black pens (no biros or pencils) – see examples above

• Each portrait should be labelled with year in light pencil, just outside the square frame of the portrait.

LIBRARY ARTWORK

We are hoping to decorate the new library with lots of book covers created by the children. Can they draw the cover of their favourite book? Or create a cover for a book of their own creation? We’d need the artworks to be as bold or colourful as possible, and fill a full A4 piece of paper (portrait).

There are boxes for both of these projects in the covered walkway, please leave the artwork in the correct box, making sure it is flat and not creased.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

News & events

Hello,

Thank you to all who attended and volunteered at our last meeting. We’ve lots of lovely events and plans for the school, please watch out for some volunteer sign up sheets coming up very soon!

You will find the minutes of the meeting here. We’re going to add a climbing wall to the KS2 playground, painted walls, signage and noticeboards to the school’s entrances.

Well done to the Year 4 team who raised £202.80 with Friday’s cake sale! Tip for next sales: the marshmallows dipped in chocolate and sprinkles require no baking and flew off the shelf.

Our latest spends include a little gift to each child for Children’s Mental Health Week (£250) as well as paying for a local author to come in to do workshops for the World Book Day celebrations (£355).

There are lots of tins and cake boxes left in the hallway (just behind the door on the right) please collect yours as soon as possible or it will go into our next jumble sale, thank you!

SAVE THE DATES

Our next cake sale will be the Year 3 Cake Sale on Friday 24 February. To avoid a crush and allow the little ones to actually reach the tables, we will ask you to queue for this one please!

Our next big event is the Grasmere Pub Quiz, we’ll be sending more information soon on how to buy tickets, prizes etc. In the meantime, please save the date: Tuesday 28 February at the Shakespeare.

Our next events will be the World Book Day Disco on Thursday 9 March and the Jumble Sale on 18 March.

STRIKE DAY & HALF-TERM ACTIVITIES

If you’re looking for something for the kids to do on Wednesday, or during half-term, we would love to create a Grasmere teatowel with portraits of all the children, and some artwork for the new library.

TEATOWEL

We’d love to produce a teatowel with portraits of all the children at Grasmere this year. For this we will need every single child to hand in a portrait of themselves. Please see below for the guidelines:

• Children need to draw their portrait in a square with their name close to it. The end pictures will be 3x3cm so if so the drawings should not be too big – they don't have to be exactly 3cmx3cm, as long as they are square it will work. For smaller children they can do a fingerprint/handprint with a smiley face or similar.

• Children need to use paint or felt tip pens or thick black pens (no biros or pencils) – see examples above

• Each portrait should be labelled with year in light pencil, just outside the square frame of the portrait.

LIBRARY ARTWORK

We are hoping to decorate the new library with lots of book covers created by the children. Can they draw the cover of their favourite book? Or create a cover for a book of their own creation? We’d need the artworks to be as bold or colourful as possible, and fill a full A4 piece of paper (portrait).

COLLECTION: We will leave boxes for both of these projects in the covered walkway, please leave the artwork in the correct box, making sure it is flat and not creased.

HELPING EACH OTHER

RECEIVING HELP: The school has a Hardship fund, please get in touch with Mel, or email the office if you need help – they can provide you with online supermarket vouchers for example. You can also sign up for free Breakfast club spaces for your children, and ask for support for lunches too.

Please feel free to take anything you need from FROGS Sharing shelves.

DONATING: Please help us keep the Sharing shelves fully stocked – at the moment we could do with pasta, rice, pasta sauce, tea, coffee, kids’ toothpaste/toothbrushes etc. Thank you!

We would also like to share this appeal by the Hackney Food Bank: “In 2017, Hackney Foodbank spent just £2,000 per year on food, in 2018 the figure was £7,000. In 2022 we spent around £125,000 and this year, as conditions worsen for poorer families, that figure is expected to reach £250,000. £39 could help towards feeding a family of 4 for three days with a parcel of food and household items.”

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

January news

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find some information on our next meeting, our next events – including a pub quiz for parents and carers – and some pictures of our latest Cinema night.

SAVE THE DATES!

Friday 27 January, 9am, staff room – FROGS Meeting
Please join us to discuss everything from future events to a new climbing wall – see the full agenda here. Everyone welcome! Can’t attend but have some ideas, comments, suggestions, queries? Please email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com. Thank you!

Friday 27 January, 3.30 – Year 4 Cake sale

6-10th February – Children’s Mental Health Week
Please look out for a little treat from FROGS to all Grasmere children!

Friday 24 February, 3.30 – Year 3 Cake sale

Tuesday 28 Feburary – Pub quiz at The Shakespeare
More information to follow shortly

Thursday 9 March – World Book Day Disco
Date change due to teachers’ strike

Saturday 18 March – Jumble Sale
Please start sorting your jumble now! We need your old toys, books, clothes & bric-à-brac (nothing broken or dirty please) on Friday 17 March, 9am or 3.30pm.
Any unopened presents/brand new books that would make great prizes at our fairs or could be added to the school’s library, please donate any time by emailing frogs.grasmere@gmail.com

Friday 24 March, 3.30 – Year 2 Cake sale

Thursday 30 March, school time – Easter egg hunt
As ever we’ll need plenty of chocolate eggs and Easter bunnies for this, more info to follow.

MOVIE NIGHT

Thank you so much to all who attended our Movie Night, The Bad Guys (+ The Boy…). We hope you all had a great time.

A big thank you to all our volunteers who made this fun event possible, produced tons of popcorn – in no less than three different flavours! – and donated delicious homemade cakes and sandwiches.

We have raised over £400 with this free event.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Happy holidays!

Hello,

A big thank you to all our volunteers who worked so hard to make the Winter Fair happen!

From baking cakes and carrying the tables up and down the stairs, to decorating the grotto, preparing a delicious veggie chili, unloading trees, knitting teddies, donating prizes, manning the stalls and selling the tickets – all your work was well worth the effort: we raised over £2,000 for the school. This will matched-funded by a parent, so we can expect another £1,000 in the new year.

Not only did we raise a great amount, but it was also a lovely event that brought the community together – we really hope your kids enjoyed it as much as we did! And of course a special thank you to Santa and his elves who really did an amazing job in their magical grotto.

The leftover Santa grotto gifts will be distributed by the school, and the rest donated to the Winter Toy Appeal. Every year this local project collects new toys to make sure that every child in Hackney and surrounding boroughs gets at least one present at Christmas. There’s lots of ways to donate, and you can support local businesses at the same time. Deadline: 15 December.

FROGS DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

Please join us for the following events this winter:

• Our Cinema night will be on Friday 20 January – just in time to celebrate Chinese New Year! Any ideas/suggestions, or to offer to volunteer on the day – please email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com

• The next Frogs meeting will be held at school on Friday 27 January at 9am. Everyone welcome!

• Our next Cake Sale will be organised by Year 4 on Friday 27 January – expect shortbread and chocolate tea cakes to celebrate Burns Night!

Help needed!

Next year we will need help with:

• Pub Quiz Night: We’re really hoping to organise a pub quiz for parents in February – could anyone help organise this, or know a publican/quiz master who could?

• Library: We will be helping the school install the new library in the new year, we will keep you posted on Whatsapp groups when we need volunteers to do so!

• Music system: We need old phones to be set up with music ready to use at our events. At the moment we have a pair of speakers but nothing to play the music on. If you have old phones you can donate, or have time to download playlists onto phones, please let us know!

• Save the date: Please see below for the other events we are hoping to organise this year – if you can help with any of these, let us know! Thank you.

We wish you all a lovely break and Happy New Year!

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

December news

Hello,

A big thank you to everyone who offered their help to make our next event happen – there are so many volunteers for such a small school, it’s amazing! (But we do need a few more, please see below).

The Winter Fair is on Friday 9th December straight after school – please come in using Albion Road entrance as the Church Walk gates will be closed. The stalls will be spread around the hall, the main playground and the garden.

Help wanted!

To make this event as lovely as possible, we still need:

• one elf (no need to dress up!) – all you need to do is check the grotto tickets; please sign up here if you can help for 1 hour, thank you!

• a team to supervise the new winter minigolf stall, please sign up here if you can!

• lots of cakes and treats to sell from the kitchen – sweet or savoury, home-baked or not, we’d love your donations (though we have plenty of mince pies already). Please bring your donations on Friday 9 in the morning (leave with Patsy) or from 1pm (leave with our volunteers in the hall).

• donations of handmade gifts to sell in our shop, or anything Christmassy/festive (any festival!), Christmas jumpers, etc. Please bring your donations on Friday 9 in the morning (leave with Patsy) or from 1pm (leave with our volunteers in the hall), thank you!

Tickets & stamp cards

If you would like to buy your Grotto ticket (£2) in advance, see our online shop. Santa will be handing out gifts to all his visitors. Tickets will also be available on the day, along with stamp cards (£5), from the shop at the Winter Fair. Stamp cards can be used to buy activities at stalls or food and drinks. You’ll be able to pay for the stamp cards using cash or card.

For those who need them, free stamp cards and grotto tickets will available from Patsy’s office from Monday 5th December.

Christmas trees

If you have ordered a tree, you will be able to pick it up on the 9th from the main playground during the fair. Each tree will be labelled with colour/size and name. You might be able to pick them up in the morning, but we will confirm this via Whatsapp as soon as we know the exact delivery time. Please contact frogs.grasmere@gmail.com if you have any questions.

WINTER Toy appeal

FROGS supports the Winter Toy Appeal. Every year this local project collects new toys to make sure that every child in Hackney and surrounding boroughs gets at least one present at Christmas. There’s lots of ways to donate, and you can support local businesses at the same time. Deadline: 15 December.

NEXT UP

We hope you have enjoyed the cake sales, jumble sale and international evening; our next events will be the Winter Fair, a movie night for the kids, and a pub quiz for the parents. Also in the works are a disco; spring jumble sale; our traditional Easter egg hunt and the Summer fair. We will also pay for a Circus workshop for all the children to attend (during schooltime) and we are hoping to organise a Sport Challenge in June. You can read the minutes of our last meeting here.

This year with the money raised we will be completing the garden transformation by adding sheds and tidying up the kitchen garden; refurbishing the reception/nursery classrooms; and installing a new traverse climbing wall in the main playground.

In other news, the Art Club, run by two FROGS, has raised £638 for the school. The bulk of it will pay for the school’s Design and Technology wishlist (including a sewing machine, glue guns etc), and the rest has been used to buy a cardboard construction kit for the creative room.

Please do get in touch with your reps or by emailing frogs.grasmere@gmail.com if you can help with any of the events above – especially with the movie night and pub quiz as these are coming up in the new year. Thank you and take care,

FROGS

November news

Hello,

Did you know you could help us raise money for the school by buying your Christmas Tree through our website or filling in a form from the office? Please see below for more info on this initiative.

You should also be receiving an information leaflet and your child’s artwork this week as part of our Holiday card scheme. You will then be able to order cards, wrapping paper etc through the Art Projects for Schools.

We’re always looking for great ideas for projects and fundraisers, and we will be meeting on Zoom this week to discuss our plans for the year, please join us if you can – see below for more details.

Well done to Year 5 who raised over £100 with their cake sale.

Order your Christmas tree now

Every year Christmas Trees for Schools allows us to buy top quality trees at discount prices, and we pass the discount on to you. The company we buy the trees from are members of the British Tree Growers Association who source all their trees from sustainable crops. The trees are available in a variety of sizes. We’re hoping to raise about £400 for the school with this scheme.

Please order your Christmas tree from our online shop before the 18th November. If you prefer to pay cash, please ask the office for a form. Trees will be available to collect from the 9 December from the playground. Please note that the measurement of the trees is taken from the butt of the tree to the top to the spike. All trees will be delivered in nets, for easy handling.

You will also find Santa’s Grotto tickets, T-shirts and craft kits on our online shop.

 
Planning the Winter Fair

Our Winter Fair will be held on 9th December after school. As ever we need plenty of parent power to make this event happen! Please sign up here to help at the Winter Fair.

Each year is in charge of one stall, and we usually work in 1 hour shifts so that everyone gets a chance to enjoy the fair with their children. Just like at the summer fair, we will sell stamp cards for the activities (and free stamp cards for those who need it will be available from the office).

Reception & Nursery: Winter crafts
Year 1: Lucky dip and Guess how many baubles (small prizes donations welcome!)
Year 2: Gingerbread decorating
Year 3: Winter nails and tattoos
Year 4: Hot drinks, veggie food and cakes (cake donations welcome!)
Year 5: Teddy tombola (teddy donations welcome!)
Year 6: Bonfire and marshmallows
We also always need help setting up and tidying up, so please sign up if you can!

The more stalls the better: If you would like to run a stall that is not on this list then please let us know. A physical/throwing/jumping activity would be great – we were thinking of a obstacle course with bells and tinsels, and we also have some elements for a coconut shy stalls.

Calling all crafters and artists: There will also be a boutique at the fair. We are looking to sell homemade gifts such as jams, soap, knitted teddies etc, so if you or your children would like to make things to sell that would be great. We can also sell second-hand festival decorations (Christmas/Diwali/Eid/Hannukah etc) at the fair so please get in touch if you have any to donate.

A magical Santa’s Grotto: We will also need help to decorate the Santa’s grotto. We are thinking of housing it in a gazebo in the garden or we are also exploring the idea of having the grotto in a campervan parked in the playground (which means we would have more time to decorate it). If you have either a gazebo with sides (the one we used last year is broken), or a campervan that you wouldn’t mind lending us for a day, then please get in touch! Thank you.

Christmas jumpers & Sharing shelves

We’re going to set up a clothes rail near the shelves in the hall (from Thursday morning) to start a Winter clothes & Christmas Jumper swap (kids and adults). Hat, gloves scarves and other warm clothes also welcome. Please leave your donations on the rail, and/or take what you need. If you can, a QR code on the rail will take you to our donation page, where you can leave a small donation.

The sharing shelves need restocking, please donate non-perishable food and toiletries if you can. We also have books for all ages, please donate any that you don’t need anymore. If you have Christmas/Winter books that you would like to give away, please let us or the school know as they could have them for their reading corners, or we could use them as prizes at the fair.

Next FROGS meeting

The next Frogs meeting is this Wednesday 9 November at 8pm on Zoom. Log in details will be sent on Whatsapp groups as soon as possible; you can see the agenda here. Please join us if you can, to help us decide where to focus our efforts this year, and plan some fun events for the kids!

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Happy half-term!

Hello,

Thank you to all who helped and donated food for the International evening & autumn fair. We’re very lucky to be such a multicultural school, all the dishes were so tasty and colourful. A big thank you to all the children who worked hard on creating some beautiful flags to decorate the hall, and also to the school staff and parents who helped set up and tidy up the hall.

If you’d like to try some Grasmere recipes, you can download our Cookbook as a PDF for free.

Our next meeting will be via Zoom at 8pm on Wednesday 2 November. Please join us to help us decide where we should focus our work/funds next, and plan our next social and fundraising events. You will find the agenda here.

If you’re looking for activities to do during half-term, why not try our Treasure Trail (£3)? It will take you around the neighbourhood and can be done over 2 afternoons, with the half-way point being Newington Green. Along the way you’ll learn lots of things about the area.

If you want to support our charitable work and help us raise money for the school, we also have lots of Grasmere T-shirts and bags available in our online shop – from which you will be able to order your Christmas tree very soon.

Our autumn fundraiser is the Art Projects for Schools scheme. The children are all creating artwork at school, but if families want to create artwork at home it needs to be brought in by 1 November. This year there will be option to buy cards, wrapping paper, gift tags, mugs and tote bags.

Families should receive the artwork their child created in school and a leaflet explaining how to order on or around the 8 November.

Our next cake sale is the Year 5 cake sale on Friday 4th November and our next big event is the Winter Fair on Friday 9th December. We’re looking for a coordinator to help on the day and volunteers to man the stalls. Please could each class start thinking about which stall they’d like to run. These are easy to set up and run as we have a lot of the material needed, each class should pick one (or come up with their own idea) and let us know:

– Teddy tombola (Year 5)
– Bonfire and marshmallows (Year 6)
– Winter bingo or Tinsel obstacle course
– Craft stall (Reception)
– Lucky dip & Guess how many baubles (Year 1)
– Gingerbread decorating (Year 2)
– Hot drinks and cakes & Veggie food (Year 4)

The Santa’s Grotto is usually a joint effort, we do need some volunteers to help plan and decorate it. We’re also planning a grotto gift wrapping session on Friday 4 November, 9am in the school library, so please let us know if you can help.

Finally we’d like to make sure we have enough small prizes and gifts – if you have any unopened toys & games (including small items such as party bag fillers) you’d like to donate, please let us know so we can plan ahead.

Events like the Winter Fair are great for our community and a lot of fun for the children – probably the one thing they will remember from their school days! We really depend on parent power to make these fun events happen – many hands make light work. So if you have an hour to spare, please volunteer so that all parents have time to enjoy the fair with their children.

Have a great half-term,

FROGS

October news

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find information about the latest jumble sale; our next event, the Autumn fair & International evening; our next meeting and our future events.

OCTOBER JUMBLE SALE

A big thank you to everyone who donated, sorted, baked, manned stalls and tidied up – and of course bought some items – it was all worth the effort as you help raised over £1,700 for the school, and created a lovely community event at the same time!

Totals:
Kitchen: £205
Bric-à-brac: £178
Toys: £243
Books: £168
Clothes & shoes: £510
Parent matched funding: £400 (if you work for a big company you might be eligible to help us raise money in this way, please email grasmere.frogs@gmail.com for more info)

We will get a bit more money by selling the leftover books and clothes (if you have any more clothes & shoes to donate please leave them by the blue container before Wednesday 9am, thank you!)

AUTUMN FAIR & INTERNATIONAL EVENING —
HOMEMADE DISHES & VOLUNTEERS NEEDED!

Our next event is the Autumn Fair and International Evening. This will be a free event with autumnal crafts and games, hot drinks and cakes, as well a small exhibition of the children’s artworks. We need about 20 volunteers to make it happen: please sign up here!

You will also be able to taste dishes from around the world – the school is organising this part of the event so if you can bring a dish from your country please let Burcu or Pembe know, thank you.

There will also be a rail of free or pay-what-you-want dressing up clothes, so if you have any to give away please let us/your class rep know.

FROGS MEETING & EVENT PLANNING

Our next meeting will be via Zoom at 8pm on Wednesday 2 November.
Please join us to help us decide where we should focus our work/funds next, and plan our next social and fundraising events.

Winter fair 9th December
We’re looking for a coordinator to help on the day and volunteers to help decorate the grotto! We’re also planning a grotto gift wrapping session on Friday 4 November, 9am in the school library, so please let us know if you can help.

It would be very helpful if each class could also start thinking of which stall they’d like to run: we usually have Teddy tombola, bonfire and marshmallows; winter bingo; craft stall; lucky dip and Gingerbread decorating, but new ideas welcome! We’ve kept a stash of baubles so we could also have a Guess how many Baubles stall. We’d like to make sure we buy small prizes and gifts in advance – if you have any unopened toys & games (including small items such as party bag fillers) you’d like to donate, please let us know!

Movie night (January)
Our volunteers Nicola (Y6) and Caroline (Y2 & Y4) are organising a movie night, please get in touch with them if you have any tips or if you can help.

Disco (March)
Our volunteer Jenny (Reception/Y2) is organising this, please get in touch with her if you have any tips, or if you can help.

Easter Egg Hunt (March)
We’re looking for one or two volunteers to help prepare this. There are two main jobs: 1. collecting the eggs from Patsy’s office, bringing them home to count them and sort them into equal batches in time for the egg hunt. 2. coordinating the egg hunts at school; you’d need to be free the morning of the event – probably Thursday 29 March.

We’re also hoping to organise a fun competition, a circus workshop and a sport challenge, please get in touch if you have any ideas for these.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

September newsletter

Hello,

We hope the first few weeks at school went well. Please see below for details of last year’s achievements; the new Sharing Shelf; our next events; and how to volunteer with FROGS.

We had our AGM last week, the members of the committee and the class reps this year are:

Chair: Léa Vice Chair: Erla Treasurer: Nicola Secretary: Caroline
Committee members: Pembe, Ruth, Jenn, Veronika, Luke, Nicola and Gill

Class reps:
Reception Magnus & Harriet – Y1 Kati & Lisa – Y2 Rob & Caroline – Y3 Gill & Simone – Y4 Lisa & Lindsey – Y5 Kati – Y6 Nicola

You will find the minutes of our AGM here and our latest financial statement here.

If you’re joining Grasmere this year, here is a letter for new parents and carers to explain FROGS’ role.

The next meeting will be via Zoom on Wednesday 2 November at 8pm.

Last year’s achievements:

FROGS’ Sharing Shelf

Here’s how to use our new Sharing shelf. We only accept books and food bank items on these shelves. If the shelves are full, please wait before you donate. Our volunteers will tidy them up from time to time. (To donate/request larger/other items, please see our Jumble sale info below, or ask your Reps for a link to the Grasmere noticeboard on Whatsapp.)

BOOK SWAP

Novels, reference books, activity/craft books all welcome.
Please donate books that are in good condition.
Please make sure you put the books on the correct shelf (by age).
Please donate only a few books at a time.
If you have lots of books to donate, please email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com or get in touch with the school, and we will sort them out for the library, the classrooms or the next jumble sale.

FOOD BANK

Donating items
We accept cereal; soup; pasta; rice; tinned tomatoes/ pasta saucel; lentils, beans and pulses; tinned meat; tinned vegetables; tea/coffee; tinned fruit; biscuits; UHT milk; fruit juice; baby food. Also needed are toiletries, nappies etc

Collecting items
Anyone who needs these items can collect them from the shelf in the mornings. The school will leave the hallway doors open from about 9.10 after the drop off crowds have gone. You can wait in the courtyard or come back – just ring the main bell on Albion Road and say Sharing shelves or Food bank and the office will let you in, no questions asked.

If you need more assistance, please get in touch with the school business manager Mel (Mon-Tue) to learn about how you can access the school’s Hardship fund.

Our next events:

Cake Sale, Friday 30 September 3.30pm

Year 6 is organising the first of our very popular Cake Sales on 30 September. They have years of practice, so it’s going to be delicious!

Pay by cash or card. Profits from the sale will go towards a class treat at the end of the year.

Everyone is included: Patsy at Reception keeps a small bag of change donated by FROGS for kids who might need it to buy a cake.

JUMBLE SALE, SATURDAY 08 OCTOBER, 10.30-12.30

We need your old stuff, and your help to sort it: please sign up via this link, that really helps us get everything organised in time. We’re also looking for cake and soup donations on the day.

People who help sort out the jumble on the Friday get first dibs on the good stuff; volunteers during the sale get free hot drinks, biscuits and soup.

AUTUMN FAIR & INTERNATIONAL EVENING,
THURSDAY 20 OCTOBER, 3.30-5.30

We’re joining forces with the school team and and organising an Autumn Fair and International evening after school on the last Thursday before half-term. Please save the date!

There will be a big table full of specialities from around the world (please talk to Pembe or Burçu if you can cook something), an exhibition of the children’s latest artworks, and a mix of free/paying/donate what you can stalls.

As ever this can only happen if we have enough volunteers, please sign up via this link if you can help, or email frogs.grasmere@gmail if you have any ideas for stalls or if you can help with decorations, or a world music playlist!

WINTER FAIR, FRIDAY 9 DECEMBER 3.30-5.30

We would love a volunteer or two to help organise this event, for which each class runs a stall such as gingerbread decorating, winter craft, teddy tombola, bingo… If you have any good stall ideas for the fair, would like to help decorate/run the Santa’s grotto, or anything else, please let us know!

Volunteer with FROGS:

Haven’t volunteered at an event yet? Please do! It’s very easy, and even just doing 1 hour shift this year would make a big difference – it would mean another parent volunteer has time to enjoy the fair with their children too. Most of the time (apart from the kitchen/bonfire stalls for example), you can take your kids with you – they love being little helpers! And the biggest reward as always is to see the kids’ smiling, happy faces.

If you’re not available on the day, you can do many other things, such as donate small prizes, drinks, paper cups, etc. We’ve started an Amazon wishlist here so you can see the type of things we need. To support our work, you can also set up a small monthly donation via our Kindlink page.

If you work for a big company, you might be able to help us double our takings. Many larger employers will match (up to a limit) any fundraising that you do for the FROGS. This means that the money raised from a jumble sale, cake sale, bar sales can be doubled without costing you anything except a bit of time. Another option is payroll giving: donations out of pre-tax salary that is matched by your employer. Please email grasmere.frogs@gmail.com for more information.

We’re also looking for volunteers to help with some of our projects, working in their own time:

• organise our annual Christmas card appeal (with help from the current organiser)

• look for grants that might help us improve the school, in particular transform the library cellar in a useable space such as a Makerspace where kids can learn about design, engineer and technology

• find and cost various options to replace the library stairs

• organise some tea towels with children’s drawings, or other products to sell on our online shop

• help plan cinema nights and a disco later in the year

If you’re not sure how to help please ask your class reps or email us on frogs.grasmere@gmail.com

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Have a great summer!

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find an update on our Summer Fair, new Garden Classroom and Hardship fund initiative, as well as dates for your diary for next year!

Summer fair

The sun was shining, the stalls busy, and the food delicious – it was such a lovely event and we hope you all enjoyed it! It was so nice to have the fair back after the pandemic, and to see the kids running around, having fun. We ran out of ice lollies three times and we made about £1,000 profit.

Stalls included Coconut Shy, an all-time favourite, the new Floor is Lava (complete with Mission Impossible soundtrack!), a Bouncy Castle, the classic Hook a Duck, Guess the Weight of the Watermelon, Lucky Dip and Gem Stall, as well as the great Decorate your Flower Pot stall, and wonderful Braid, nails and tattoo bar. Plus a couple of sprinklers to cool down, some nice tunes and the veggie and beef burger stalls.

A big thank you to all who helped at the fair, and donated food, drinks, prizes etc – it wouldn’t have happened without you!

PS If you child has made a little flower pot, and not taken it home, have a look in the walkway (on the shelf on the right) where we’ve put the unclaimed pots.

Garden Classroom

Our new outdoor classroom is up! This will be used by the teachers throughout the year. To help them make the most of the space, FROGS will be funding some teacher training (Barley is the school’s new outdoor learning lead) with the local charity The Garden Classroom, as well as some workshops for each year group, next year.

This is a big investment for us, so please make sure your kids take great care of it – and that includes not using it as a climbing frame at drop off and pick up! If they break anything, you will have to volunteer at FROGS events until the end of times… More seriously it cost £8,200 to build and is a very important resource for the school so please get the message across to your children if you think they will be tempted to climb on it. We don’t want to spend money fixing a brand new thing when there is so much left to do in the school.

In September we will be organising volunteer days to finish up the garden; this includes installing water and music walls and new sheds, as well as painting the mud kitchen blackboard etc. We’re also looking into getting a pizza oven for the garden, if you know any company who could donate one or anyone who could build one, let us know!

Books and toys for the summer holidays

We had lots of leftovers from the Jumble sale so we thought we would distribute them for free in time for the summer holidays. The toys have now all gone but there are lots of books left, these are now in the blue container, please help yourself today.

Hardship fund

Thank you so much for being such a generous community – we raised £2,788 for the school’s new Hardship fund. We’ve handed the money to the school. Please get in touch with them directly (Neela, Siobhan, Emmy or Debbie) if you need help. The school will send out more information about this in September.

CLASS TREATS

Nursery and reception enjoyed a trip to the Little Angel Theatre; Year 1, Year 2 and Year 4 constructed towers and bridges out of legos with Mr Brick; Year 3’s treat had to be cancelled due to Covid and will be held in September instead; Year 5 went to Rainham Marshes.

Leaving presents

Thanks to all for your donations for staff’s leaving presents.

Our volunteers bought some vouchers for Lisa and Lorena, and some lovely treats for our retiring dinner ladies Margaret and Breda.

Next year’s EVENTS

Our big projects next year will be to finish up the garden; launch our FROGS’ Sharing Shelf for books and food bank donations; spend £3,000 helping the school refurbish the nursery/reception classroom; install a new climbing wall in KS2; and paint the KS2 playground. Also on our to do list are planning a new Makerspace, getting a mural on the Library wall, and fixing those library steps…

Our upcoming events for the autumn are below, please save the dates:

Friday 16 September, 9am
AGM, coffee morning & FROGS tour of the school to show parents where we have spent our money (mural, play equipment, creative room, library, garden classroom etc).

Friday 30 September, 3.30
Y6 Cake sale (this will be accompanied by a baking day for the kids during school time)

Saturday 8 October, 10.30-12.30
Jumble Sale (we always need lots of volunteers for that one!)

Thursday 20 October, 3.30-5.30
Harvest festival, food bank donations, second-hand Halloween costumes sale

Friday 4 November, 3.30
Y5 Cake sale (this will be accompanied by a baking day for the kids during school time)

Friday 2 December, 3.30
Second-hand Xmas jumpers, baubbles and ornaments sale

Friday 9 December, 3.30-5.30
Winter Fair (each class to organise a stall, just like at the summer fair)

If you can’t volunteer but would like to support FROGS and help us add fun and colour to the school, you can always donate (including monthly donations) on our Kindlink page or buy/donate items on our wishlist. The more funds we collect this way, the more free/cheap events we can organise to make sure the whole community can join in – and the more we can do for the school.

We hope you all have a lovely summer break,

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Summer fair

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find more information about the Summer Fair on 16th July 12-3pm. Everyone is invited! Please come along for lunch and fun activities for the kids, and to help us inaugurate the new Garden pavilion, which is being installed next week!

Also don’t forget, this afternoon 3.30, the Y6’s ice lolly sale!

Volunteers needed!

• to help set up and tidy up (kids go free on the bouncy castle while volunteers are setting up)

• to run the tea and cake stall

• to bake some cakes and treats for the kitchen stall

• to organise a Rubik’s cube competition – if there is enough interest from the kids/parents
  

The stalls

• Lucky dip (Nursery/Reception)

• Guess the weight of the watermelon (Nursery/Reception)

• Braid/tattoo/nail bar (Year 2)

• Decorate your flower pot (Year 2)

• Bouncy castle (Year 1/3)

• Hook the duck (Year 4)

• Floor is Lava (Year 5)

• Gemstones hunting (Year 6)

• Coconut shy (Year 6)

The food

• Burger bar (Year 1)

• Veggie food (Year 3)

• Coffee, tea and cakes (and ice lollies) – we need some volunteers for this!

• Free squash amd biscuits

Payment system

Tokens will be replaced with loyalty stamp card format that will be stamped on the day. We will sell the cards for £5 each and they will have 10 “goes” each to be stamped when used. All the activities will cost one stamp, apart from the Bouncy castle and the Braid with coloured extension and bead, which will each cost two stamps.

Cards will be on sale at drop off and pick up on Friday 15th and again at the door on the day of the fair. Cash or cards accepted.

Food will be charged at £3 per meal – cash or card only! Coffee, tea (50p) and cake (50p-£1) will be on sale for cash or card only. Biscuits and squash are free.

Families who are struggling don’t need to miss out on the fair: FROGS will leave some cards for activities and cash for food with school reception. Pick up your cards anytime from 11 July, no questions asked.

Thank you,

FROGS

Latest news

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find information about:
– our next events, including the Summer Fair
– our current fundraising campaigns, including the Hardship fund
– how we have raised money recently
– how we have spent money recently

NEXT EVENT: THE SUMMER FAIR

We’re busy planning the final big event of the year, the Summer Fair. Thank you to all who have volunteered already to organise each year’s stalls, there’s lots of exciting activities in the works! The fair will be held from 12-3pm, with delicious veggie food and BBQ on the menu.

It’s a great community event that all children absolutely love – and they’ve missed so many of these due to the pandemic – but it cannot happen without parents and carers’ help, so if you can spare an hour or two, please let your Class Reps, or Gill (Year 2) or Nicky (Y1 and Y3) know. You can help with your kids in tow, and older children can help supervise too.

Everyone is welcome at the fair, so please let your neighbours, friends and family know they can join us on the 16th. We’re also hoping to inaugurate our new Garden classroom, due to be installed soon in the garden above the firepit area.

We’re still looking for more volunteers for the following:
– any musicians or artists (perhaps former Grasmere pupils?) interested in doing a little show for us at 12h?
– anyone free to sort out music/speakers?
– anyone free to help set up the fair in the morning (free access to the bouncy castle for all children of volunteers before the fair starts)?
– anyone free to help on the stalls, in particular the kitchen stall serving tea, coffee and cakes? (free cakes and hot drinks for those who help on this stall)

If you can do any of these then please let us know as soon as possible.
Please look out for next week’s newsletter for more info on the Summer Fair.

We’ll be having our last FROGS meeting of the year on Friday 8 July, 9am, at the school. Everyone welcome – please join us if you can!

On the same day Year 6 is organising an ice lolly sale at 3.30.

CURRENT CAMPAIGNS

• We’re helping the school set up a hardship fund to support Grasmere families experiencing financial difficulties. Please see more information here, and donate if you can – thank you. And a big thank you to those who have already donated so generously!

• Last call for donations to buy gifts for our lovely dinner ladies, Margaret and Breda who are retiring at the end of the school year, after close to 50 years working at Grasmere between them!

HOW FROGS HAS RAISED MONEY RECENTLY:

• Jumble sale: We raised £868.38 – many thanks to all our volunteers who helped sort, set up, man the stalls, and clear up. It’s a disappointing result (the last one raised nearly double this sum and the sale is usually one of our biggest earners) as it requires a lot of effort and volunteers, so let's hope the next one this autumn fares better. If you have any ideas on how to improve it or would like to help organise the sale on 8th October 2022, please get in touch.

Still it was a lovely event with some great bargains:

We’re also looking for a better system to make sure the leftover jumble goes to a good cause or makes more money for our charity. If you know any charities who would be interested in picking up children clothes and toys on the 8th in the afternoon, please let us know.

• Reception & Nursery Cake sale: £140. Well done to Reception and nursery for their first cake sale – only six more years of this!

Actually we’re changing the format slightly next year, as we think the children would love to do some of the baking themselves, at school, with parents donating ingredients or time to help them. The older years will be also doing some of the selling themselves. And of course we’re hoping our keen parent bakers will continue bring in some of their amazing cakes to supplement the kids’ bakes.

HOW FROGS HAS SPENT MONEY RECENTLY:

• New hoses and sprinklers to be used by the whole school

FROGS has spent around £200 some sprinklers for each of the school’s playgrounds, as well as some new hoses. These are to be used by the school during heatwaves, and to help the children water the plants in their playgrounds. They were set up on the hottest day of the year and the kids really enjoyed them. Here are some images of the yellow flower sprinkler now in the nursery playground:

• New outdoor play equipment

We’ve spent over £1,500 on play equipment for both KS1 and KS2 playgrounds. These include foam blocks, clipboards, skipping ropes, hula hoops and big red spinning tops. The children are using them at playtime everyday – ask them which is their favourite :

• A subscription to unlimited recycled art resources for the whole school

FROGS has spent some of the money raised by the Art club on a subscription to the Children Scrap art project which is used by the entire school. Here are some of the children’s creations using textile and wings sourced from the Scrap art warehouse:

And of course our next big spend is the new Garden classroom, coming soon!

Last but not least, a big thank you to Rob and Billy who have dismantled the cricket nets, leaving space for a new and improved climbing wall, and a painted football goal. We’ll also paint the remaining walls in KS2 playground, and the toilet doors. Watch this space:

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Dates for your diary

Hello,

We hope you had a lovely half-term. As this week is Volunteer Week we would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank you to all parents and carers who volunteer to help FROGS transform Grasmere into a more colourful, creative and fun place to learn.

Thank you for baking, painting, fundraising, manning stalls… and everything else. The school would look very different without you – among other things, there would be no Key Stage 1 playground, no library, no creative room, no computers for children, and no bright murals.

We are a small school community and although we are very lucky to have a core group of volunteers, we always need help, especially to organise large events such as the fairs and jumble sales.

And of course, every year we need some new recruits to take over from the lovely Year 6 parents who have left!

So if you can, please consider volunteering at our next events, listed below:

Friday 10 June, 9am-1pm
Painting/gardening/tidying up morning – a second coat for the container, fixing the mural, etc

Saturday 18 June, 10.30-12.30
Jumble sale – please sign up here if you can help. For example we need strongmen/women to carry the trestle tables up from the cellar on Friday afternoon, and back down on Saturday at around 1pm. It’ll take 30 minutes of your time at most, and be a big weight off our shoulders! And we would also love to have someone in charge of selling teas, cakes and soup.

Friday 24 June, 3.30
Nursery & Reception cake sale

Friday 8 July
9am – FROGS meeting
3.30 – Year 6 Ice lolly sale

Saturday 16 July
Summer fair

We’ve also planned some events for the next school year, so please put these dates in your diary:

Friday 16 September, 9am
AGM, coffee morning + FROGS tour of the school to show parents where we have spent our money (mural, play equipment, creative room, library, garden classroom etc).

Friday 30 September, 3.30
Y6 Cake sale

Saturday 8 October, 10.30-12.30
Jumble Sale

Friday 21 October, 3.30-5.30
Harvest festival, food bank donations, second-hand Halloween costumes sale

Friday 4 November, 3.30
Y5 Cake sale

Friday 2 December, 3.30
Second-hand Xmas jumpers, baubbles and ornaments sale

Friday 9 December, 3.30-5.30
Winter Fair

If you can’t volunteer but would like to support FROGS and help us add fun and colour to the school, you can always set up a monthly donation on our Kindlink page. The more funds we collect this way, the more free events we can organise, to make sure the whole community can join in.

Please find the minutes of our last meeting here. All our events dates are in the FROGS calendar.

Last but not least, we are collecting money for our lovely dinner ladies Margaret and Breda, who are retiring at the end of term after close to 50 years working at Grasmere between them! One of our parent volunteers, Sophie, has started a collection so we can give them a present from all the parents to say thanks for their work over the years: https://pay.collctiv.com/collection-for-our-dinner-ladies-margaret-and-breda-65823

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Happy half-term!

Hello,

We hope you and your families enjoyed our Jubilee day! In the morning, both children and staff had lots of fun making giant bubbles with Mr Bubbles:

In the afternoon, we had a lovely tea party with strawberries and cream, and delicious cakes, scones and sandwiches – what a feast! Thank you so much for all your donations.

Our two activities, the Corgi trail and Royal Photo Studio, were also very popular!

This party was a bit of an experiment for us: we are trialling a different model, with free or ‘pay as you can’ events. We’re planning to raise money for the school through the Jumble sale, online shop, and monthly/one-off online donations instead. This means more families will be able to attend and enjoy our events.

To give you an example, this event cost FROGS around £344 (£280 for Mr Bubbles, plus £64 for strawberries and cream). All the food, drinks, cups and plates, and accessories for the activities, were donated. We raised £195.20 in donations on the day. Which mean we’ve made a loss of £148 – we think it is well worth it for the lovely, inclusive event! (to help us break even, you can always donate here of course!)

Our next event is the Jumble Sale on 18 June. As ever we will need everyone to join forces to make it happen – if you can spare an hour or two of your time you will make a big difference (and you most probably will come home with a bargain or two!)

The jumble sale is very important for FROGS as it is an event for the whole community, a tradition at Grasmere, a great way to recycle as well as shop on a budget, and of course great fundraiser for our charity.

Please bring your clothes, toys, books etc from Friday 17 June (morning) and leave them by the blue container.

There is lots of ways you can help – from sorting out the clothes and carrying all the trestle tables up from the cellar on the Friday afternoon, to setting up the speakers, manning a stall, preparing a soup or baking a cake! Please see all our volunteering opportunities here, and sign up if you can!

We hope you all have a lovely half-term, and see you at the Jumble sale!

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

May news

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find information on our next events, and how you can help!

THANK YOU!

To the Year 1 parents who raised £188.50 with their cake sale!

The next cake sale – the Reception & Nursery cake sale – is Friday 24 June.

PAINTING VOLUNTEERS NEEDED – THIS FRIDAY, from 9-13.

We’ve got big plans for the blue container – Billy, the school’s caretaker, has found some second-hand speakers and perhaps even a screen and projector that he is offering to install in the blue container. This could turn it in a real outdoor classroom, and also perhaps an outdoor cinema! 

Before he can install this, we’d like to paint it white inside to hide all the white plugs. Do you have any leftover white paint we could use on the walls and ceiling of the container (plywood)? Or any dust sheets you don’t need that we could use to protect the decking? Let us know! If we have enough volunteers this Friday, we’re also hoping to fix the mural and paint over the graffiti, and perhaps tidy up the kitchen garden.

JUBILEE EVENT VOLUNTEERS NEEDED – THURSDAY 26, 3-5 

To celebrate the Jubilee we’re offering the kids a treat on Thursday 26 May – we’ve asked Mr Bubble to come do little shows and workshops (for all the year groups) in the morning.

And from 3pm, we’d like to invite parents, carers and children to meet up for tea and strawberries & cream. Please let us know if you can help by setting up the event, or selling the food and drinks… or even baking scones!

Just email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com or text Léa. Thank you!

JUMBLE SALE – SATURDAY 18 JUNE, 10.30-12.30

We’ve got a new date for the Jumble sale!

Please sign up here if you can help. We need lots of volunteers for this, on the Friday to sort the donations (you get first dibs!) and on the Saturday to help set up, run the stalls and clear up. It’s a big fundraiser and a great community event, but it requires a lot of work, so please help if you can – even an hour will make a big difference.

SUMMER FAIR – SATURDAY 16 JULY

We’re looking for some ideas for stalls for the Summer fair. We have lots of stuff in the cellar for a gem stall, painting plant pots or stones, hook a duck and even a slack line to put in the garden. Please let your class reps know if you have any ideas of if you can help on the day. We will prepare a Volunteer Sign Up sheet once we have a list of all the stalls – thanks!

We’re hoping to update you on our other projects (including the new play equipment we’ve bought for the school and the planned garden pavilion) very soon.

To learn more about what FROGS do please join us for our next meeting, on Zoom on Wednesday 27 May at 8pm.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Happy Easter!

Hello,

Please read this newsletter for information on our last meeting; how to sign our new petition for the library steps; our latest projects and events; some pictures of the annual Easter Egg Hunt; the upcoming Jumble sale as well as the results of our Big Build Competition and last Friday’s cake sale.

What we’re working on

Last Friday we held a meeting in which we discussed our current projects and events for the school. Please find the minutes of the meeting here. See below for how you can help:

• The school gave us the green light to start an online petition regarding the dangerously steep library stairs. Please sign it and share it (including with former Grasmere families and pupils!). If you’ve been worried about your child using the stairs, please leave a comment. The more the better.

• Following requests from the school to help fund these specific projects, we’ve approved a spend of £3,000 to refurbish the Nursery and Reception classrooms. We’re aiming to create a more unified space, with new furniture and storage. We’ll explain how you can help with this in a next newsletter.

• We’ve also decided to use £8,500 or our existing funds, plus the £500 Tesco grant, to create a garden classroom that will help the school expand its outdoor teaching. Many studies (such as this one) have shown outdoor learning to be of great benefit to children so we hope this shelter with provide a new, exciting teaching space, without taking up too much space in the garden so that children still have space to play (ours will not have any walls, just pillars and a canvas roof, with benches and a blackboard around the firepit.)

• For the same reason, we’ve applied for a grant to improve the school’s outdoor loose part play equipment, which is an amazing way to build children’s confidence and STEM skills. Please see our application here. We’ve also applied for a Metropolitan Garden grant for a new tool shed and some plants for the garden. If you know of any other grants we could apply to, please get in touch!

Food for thought

Given the difficult economic circumstances – the biggest fall in living standards since the 1950s – we would like to do as much as we can to make sure that no family is left behind at Grasmere.

We’ve discussed setting up a hardship fund to help families in case of emergency; to offer birthday cake vouchers to pupil premium children (please get in touch if you know a bakery who could help); to offer discounted spaces in enrichment clubs; to work with Chefs in School to give away hampers for the school holidays, creating some pay it forward schemes…

If you have any ideas on how else we could help, you can let us know anonymously here. We’ll be discussing this in more details at the next meeting.

EASTER EGG HUNT

Thank you so much for your egg-cellent donations, which amounted to over 3,000 eggs! They were delivered by bicycle in the morning. And thank you to our volunteer who sorted and counted all the eggs in preparation for the hunt, and to our handful of volunteers who braved the cold (it actually snowed at one point!) to help hide all the eggs in the garden.

There were some leftover eggs, so we prepared some bags for the children who might not receive any more treats during the holidays (the school is distributing them for us). A big thank you to Paradise fish & chips on Newington Green who kindly donated some paper bags for this.

UPCOMING EVENTS

In the next few months we would like to organise the following events (dates TBC):

• funding 1 children entertainer (circus, bubble) to come for the whole school in celebration of the Jubilee. Any ideas, recommendations? let us know. Probably on Friday 27 May.

• organising a free Grasmere on Wheels/Roller disco event for kids to have fun in the playground on scooters, skateboards, bikes and rollerskates, possibly on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon in June.

• Volunteer days for painting/gardening in May, June and July.

• Summer fair (let us know if you have any stall ideas etc) in July.

• Silent auction (possibly linked to the summer fair), offering a variety of prize for all budgets, or gifts for those in need. We’re looking for volunteers to organise this - please get in touch!

GRASMERE’S BIG BUILD COMPETITION

Congratulations to Miles & Albert, Year 5, who win the First Prize for their wonderful project of ‘a communal place for everyone with free food and shelter from rain and wind.’ They win a £20 Lego voucher. Great teamwork and a very worthy idea!

Runners up are Bruno, Reception, who wins Best Family Project for his design for the library steps; and Oscar, Year 2, who wins Best Recycling with his clever cardboard spy-den. They each win a small wooden hammer – hopefully they can use it to build even bigger projects!

Click here for more pictures of the winning projects, and of all the wonderful entries. Well done everyone.

JUMBLE SALE

Our next event is the spring Jumble sale on Saturday 23 April. We’re looking forward to your donations on Friday 22 April.

Please register here to help sort out the donations on Friday, or help on a stall on the Saturday. This allows us to plan ahead and have all the info in one place – it’s a massive help for the organisers so please take a minute and sign up! Thank you.

We’re working on a plan to improve the way the clothes are displayed, please let us know if you have spare hangers and clothes rails. We’re also hoping to get some shopping baskets/crates donated to present the clothes in various categories, if you know any one who could help with this please let us know.

As ever we will also love to have some cakes and soups donations for the Jumble sale.

CAKE SALE

Last but not least, a big thank you to our wonderful Year 2 parents who have raised just over £200 with their Cake Sale last Friday.

We organise these cake sales because the kids love it of course, and secondly because they raise funds for a gift for each class. Every year we give each year £200 (topping up any cake sale that hasn’t reached this amount) to spend as a treat at the end of the school year. In the past teachers have used it for day trips, visits from travelling zoos, and rounds of gelato ice creams in the park. We can’t wait to see what they choose to spend it on this year!

Take care and have a lovely break,

FROGS

March news

Hello,

FROGS’ funds were put to good use this week for World Book Day; we spent £350 on inviting local storyteller Emily Hanna of Dragonfly Tales to host a whole school assembly, followed by a series of smaller assemblies for different years group. A whole day of stories to spark the imagination.

We’re also investing in outdoor play equipment for the school, watch this space! Please join us at our next meeting on 18th March if you have any suggestions on future projects.

UKRAINE APPEAL

A big thank you to Grasmere parent Nicola who organised this week’s Ukraine appeal. Thanks to your generosity we managed to send some necessities, including clothes, toiletries and blankets, to Ukraine, via students from UCL’s School of Slavonic and East European Studies. They were there to help unload, sort, pack and reload onto a lorry which is now on its way to Lviv:

And thanks to Grasmere’s wonderful bakers and helpers, we raised £390 for Choose Love (plus £100 matched donation) and £321 for Unicef (with matched donation doubling that sum), a grand total of £1,132.

Unfortunately the situation is not improving, so we might help organise more fundraisers in the future.

The next FROGS meeting is on 18 March at 9am at the school. And if you see any good Easter Egg deals, don’t hesitate - we’ll need lots and lots of little chocolate eggs of our traditional Easter Egg Hunt in the garden, which will be just before the Easter holidays.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

February news

Hello,

In this newsletter you will find information about our next events, a parents initiative to help raise funds for Choose Love’s Ukraine appeal, and the entries for our Big Build competition (there’s still time to take part, just send us your entry asap!)

Thank you

To our Year 3 volunteers who helped raise £151.70!

UKRAINE APPEAL

The war in Ukraine is directly affecting some families in our community – some Grasmere children have close relatives currently in Kyiv and Kharkiv.

Grasmere parents are organising a special cake sale to raise funds for Choose Love’s Ukraine appeal, please take part if you can.

And if you can spare any cash to help Ukrainian people at this terrible time, parents have recommended the following organisations:

– The Red Cross’ Ukraine Appeal

– The UNHCR’s Ukraine Appeal

– Vostok SOS

– Save Life

There’s also a parent’s friend private initiative on Just Giving here.

You could also sign this petition asking for safe passage for Ukrainian refugees, or write to your local MP. Finally, you can also donate blankets, hygiene products and clothes etc to the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 16 Taviton St, London WC1H 0BW.

This Guardian article has helpful tips on how to talk to children about this issue.

THE BIG BUILD COMPETITION

We have lots of amazing entries for our Big Build Competion – see them all here! Think you can do better? There’s still time to take part, just send your entry as soon as possible!

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

We’re organising our traditional Easter Egg hunt on Thursday 31 March. We need a volunteer to manage the event (collecting eggs from donation box from school, and making sure there are enough for the whole school) and volunteers to help on the day by hiding the eggs in the garden. Please let us know if you can help with this much-loved Easter egg hunt and we’ll prepare a flyer and volunteer sign up.

The school is also looking for some Library helpers so that the library can stay open at lunchtime for kids. Grandparents welcome! Please see Schoolping for more info.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

Wednesday 2 March – Choose Love Ukraine Appeal cake sale, 3.30

Friday 18 March – FROGS meeting, 9am, at the school

Friday 25 March – Year 2 Cake sale, 3.30

Thursday 31st March – Easter Egg Hunt

Saturday 23 April – Spring Jumble sale, 10.30

Friday 6 May – Year 1 cake sale, 3.30

If you’d like to help organise other events – Jubilee party, Summer fair, etc, please get in touch!

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Happy half-term!

Hello,

A few words on our Children’s Mental Health initiative, the Big build competition, and FROGS’ enrichment clubs.

Supporting Children’s Mental Health Week

Thank you so much to all who helped by writing gift tags for the Grasmere staff for our Love Yourself, Be Kind to Others initiative. The lovely messages were delivered to the staff room in the form of a wellbeing tree, along with brownies from local charity The Luminary Bakery. “A very kind thought, it has had everyone in the staff room 'oohing' and 'ahhing',” said one of the staff.

Children are also still welcome to give their friends (and family – we live in hope!) some messages of kindness before half-term… A little bit of kindness goes a long way!

Don’t forget, this Thursday parents and carers can meet the school’s psychologist, Dr Ellen Presser.

Thank you also to those who have already bought some books from our Health and Mental Health wishlist. Here they are looking great in the library, along with some older books on the same theme:

You can still buy some books for the library until the end of February. Or help the school buy more books on the subject by giving £1 on Friday for Inside Out day, where kids can wear a piece of clothing inside out to show they care about how people are feeling inside.

On the subject of mental health, this article explains how many more of us will be affected by mental health issues due to the pandemic, and makes the case for more social interaction and a sense of community as a great way to boost mental health: “Is the casual socialising that we previously thought so little of – the school plays, the church fêtes – more important that we noticed at the time? “Those things are not just pleasant and fun: they’re investments in your future sanity and wellbeing. The way you build community resilience is through knowing each other.”

So in this spirit we will doing our best to organise lots of events for the Grasmere community to get together in the spring. If you have any ideas or would like to help organise some events, please get in touch on frogs.grasmere@gmail.com or come along to our next meeting on Friday 18 March, 9am, at the school.

In particular, we’re looking for someone to organise our traditional Easter Egg Hunt on the 30/31 March; it involves collecting the chocolate egg donations and sorting them to make sure each class has enough eggs to hunt, and organise a rota of volunteers to help them hide the eggs in the garden. We’re also planning a jumble sale on Saturday April 23, a rollerblading/skateboarding/scooting afternoon, something for the Queen’s Jubilee, and a Summer fair.

Contruction competition

Please take part in Grasmere’s Big Build. The construction competition deadline is the last day of half-term, you’ll find all the details on our dedicated page. Lego, cardboard, Minecraft blocks are all great materials to work with! We’re looking forward to seeing your creations. Billy, the school’s care taker, who’s been building all sorts of things for the school for over a decade, will be our judge.

Enrichments clubs

After a successful first batch of clubs organised by FROGs, the school as agreed to take over completely the organisation of the next sessions, starting after half-term. They are always looking for more club ideas, so if you know other clubs from neighbouring schools who could also work at Grasmere, please let us know. We’d love to see a cooking club, or even a martial club or dance club in the evenings (for parents and/or kids!) as the hall is free from 6pm every day.

FROGS volunteers are running two of the Enrichments clubs at Grasmere to raise money for the school: the Art club and the Library club.

The Art club has raised just over £400 for the school. This will be used to subscribe the school to the SCRAP Project, something that has been on Barley’s (Grasmere’s art teacher) wishlist for a while. Now she will be able to stock up on all kinds of fabric, plastic, card, paper, toys, comics, wood off-cuts, stationary, etc… all part of a great recycling project.

The Library club has raised over £500 for the school, with money going toward new shelf labels and dividers, a new CD player for audiobooks, and a budget of over £350 to buy some new books.

If you’re interested in running a club at the school to raise money for FROGs and share your passion with the children, please let us know.

The next event is the Year 3 cake sale on Friday 25 February.

Have a lovely half-term,

FROGS

January news

Hello,

Please find the minutes of the last meeting here. Our next meeting will be on Friday 18 March, at 9am, at the school. In the meantime, see below for a few FROGS news, including announcing the judge for our construction competition; a shout out for library volunteers; looking for some help on how to start a farmer’s market/ renting out the hall for children’s parties or classes at Grasmere at the weekend. We’d also like to hear your thoughts on the nursery and how we could improve it.

Please also look out for our next newsletter which will outline our plans for our Love Yourself, Be Kind to Other initiative for February’s Children’s Mental Health Week.

GRASMERE’S BIG BUILD

We’re very happy to announce that the top judge for our current construction competition is no other than Billy, our amazing caretaker!

Please tell your kids we would love them to build something out-of-this world to impress him and the rest of the judging panels. They can use cardboard, lego, minecraft blocks… anything they like! Perhaps they could even come up with a new design for the library steps? Skyscrapers, robots, poolhouse or flying machines etc also welcome.

If you’d like to take part, all the details are here on our dedicated page. We’d be very grateful if you could buy a ticket or two, that would help us figure out approximately how many prizes are needed! The deadline for the competition is the end of February half-term, you have until Sunday 20 February to submit your pictures.

LIBRARY VOLUNTEERS NEEDED

The school is looking for some volunteers to help keep the library open to the children at lunchtime. At the moment, the volunteers make sure that there isn’t too much noise, help kids find new books to read, and check that they tidy up at the end of breaktime. We’re looking for parents, carers, grandparents or former pupils who have time from 12.15-13.15, one day a week, or even one day every two weeks. The school will arrange a DBS check for the volunteers. If you’re interested, please send a message to Lena, the deputy headteacher, or let us know on frogs.grasmere@gmail.com. Thank you!

RENTING OUT THE SCHOOL AT WEEKENDS

The school has suggested that we could perhaps open a monthly farmers/food market in the playground to bring in a bit of revenue to complement the school budget, and build links with local businesses and community. There are some very successful farmers market/car boot sales in other school playgrounds in the surrounding neighbourhood, and lots of foodies around Newington Green, so we think this could be a great idea! If you know anything about setting up one, or know someone who does, or have some ideas on what type of stalls we could have, please let us know! frogs.grasmere@gmail.com.

We’re also hoping to open the school at weekend for families or tutors to rent out the hall/garden. Does anyone know an easy way to manage bookings etc, or advertise this? If you’re interested in renting it out, how much would you pay for the use of the hall and garden for an afternoon? Or to give a class in the morning? Any tips welcome.

GRASMERE NURSERY

We’re thinking that one of next projects could be to update the nursery and reception area as the school is keen to have more children attending. Please could take a second to tell us why you chose to put your kids there, or why you didn’t. Would you have considered it if the hours were extended to 5pm? Very, very short survey here.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS