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

Everyone welcome!

Hello,

Our next meeting is this Wednesday 19 January at 8pm via Zoom. We’ll be discussing our plans for the year in terms of fundraising, events and projects. Please do join us if you can (details will be sent through the class Whatsapps and on Schoolping). If you can’t attend this time but would like to contribute something, please either reach out to your class rep or email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com.

Please find the meeting agenda here.

Everyone is welcome 

We’re a school of about 220 children, and there are usually about 5-10 people at these meetings. Many of us started by helping at events, not fully understanding what was going on, but picked things up along the way. We’re working on a document with lots of information on our resources and how to organise various events and fundraisers, but in the meantime, please do let us know of any questions, ideas, comments and suggestions.  

We’re always looking for new recruits and new point of views, and are particularly keen for our team of core volunteers and our committee to better reflect our school community; we’d also love for more dads, grandparents and former students to take part and help as much or as little as they can. It would also be great to have more parents of children with SEND taking part to tell us about their experience at Grasmere.

On the subject of diversity and inclusion, we’ve been made aware of the fact that at the Winter Fair there was a doll displayed on the teddy tombola stall that some parents might have found offensive. It wasn’t any of our volunteers’ intention to cause any offence; it was a very unfortunate incident and we will be trying our best to prevent such incidents happening in the future. If you have been affected please accept FROGS’ apologies.

We are all parents and carers just like you, please feel free to approach us with any questions, suggestions, or even complaints you have! Our email is frogs.grasmere@gmail.com. You can also talk to your class reps, or leave a note for us at reception if you prefer.

Thank you Y4!

A big thank you to the Year 4 volunteers who raised £145 with their cake sale on Friday.

Construction competition

 We will be adding more information on prizes and judges for Grasmere’s Big Build competition very soon, but in the meantime, all the info is here.

 Thank you and take care,

 FROGS

Grasmere's Big Build

Hello & Happy New Year!

Here are a few dates for your diary, including the next cake sale, this Friday; the launch of Grasmere’s Big Build, a new competition to keep the kids busy this winter; and what to do with those unwanted gifts and no longer-played-with toys.

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY:

The next cake sale, organised by Year 4 parents, will be this Friday 14th January.
The next FROGS meeting will by via Zoom on Wednesday 19th January.
The competition deadline is 20th February.

We’re also supporting the school with events for the Children’s Mental Health Week in February, more info to come soon.

CONSTRUCTION COMPETITION

Calling all budding builders, engineers and architects! Put your hard hat on and take part in FROGS’ first ever Construction Competition by creating a beautiful build for us. You have until the end of February half-term to come up with something awesome. Please see Grasmere’s Big Build page for more information.

If you know an engineer, an architect or a builder who could be one of our judges (ie whose children will not take part in the competition, please get in touch, thank you.

REGIFTING & DONATING

Anyone who received gifts at Christmas or a birthday that aren’t quite to their taste, or have received two similar gifts, please donate them as raffle prizes to be given away at future fundraising events (we’re hoping to organise a Rainbow raffle in the spring). Talk to your FROGS rep or email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com. Thank you!

We’re looking for new items for the prizes for our construction competition, and second-hand, sturdy board and card games for wet play days (jenga, kappla, twister, UNO etc); as well as outdoor games for the children both in KS1 and KS2 playgrounds. If you have anything you think is suitable, please get in touch.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Happy holidays!

Hello,

Thank you so much to all of you who attended and volunteered at the Winter Fair and helped make it such a lovely event! Despite the cold and wind (which meant the bouncy castle had to be cancelled, and the Christmas tree had to be hidden inside as it kept toppling over), it seems that everyone managed to have a great time!

Thanks to your efforts FROGS raised over £1,300 with this event – thank you all again for your hard work, it was well worth it both for the funds, and the fun!

Here are some pictures of the event (We’ve tried to ask everyone their permission, but if you don’t want a picture of you to stay up on the website, please let us know and we’ll take it down asap):

All the stalls were busy, from the last-minute lucky dip that replaced the bouncy castle, to the bingo, craft, teddy tombola and gingerbread decorating stalls. The marshmallow roasting made the most of our unique garden and firepit, the coconut shy was a real hit (and the coconuts were tasty!), and on the cake stall, the delicious chocolate apples and cinnamon buns were gone in the first 10 minutes.

Last but not least, the wonderful grotto – around 130 Grasmere kids were lucky enough to meet a very special Santa, accompanied by his polar bear friend… A big thank you to Santa from coming all the way from the North Pole – and to his elves of course.

You might have noticed we weren’t allowed to sell our traditional mulled wine due to the school asking us to stop serving alcohol at all our events. If you have any questions about this, please contact the school directly.

If you’d like to support us , you can always spend the money you’d have used for a couple of mulled wines in our online shop – we have a beautiful selection of pencil cases, bags and T-shirts (and a big thank you to all of you who have already bought items). We also have a few craft kits left if you’d like one for the holidays.

NEXT YEAR

We’re hoping to organise a Lego/construction competition – any unwanted new construction sets at Christmas, or old complete sets in boxes would make great prizes, so let us know if you’ve got anything!

Also, we’d like to add to the wet play options (at the moment it seems that when it rains kids just watch a movie) by getting lots of board and card games (it would keep a local tradition alive: if you’ve done our treasure trail, you’ll now that just next door to Grasmere once stood a famous playing cards factory). We’d need things that are sturdy (Kappla, Jenga, wooden toys), active (Twister), traditional board games and easy to store card games such as UNO. If you have anything suitable that you don’t need, or if you see any good deals in the shops after Christmas, please let us know!

And finally, we’re also working on getting some outdoor games for the children both in KS1 and KS2 playgrounds. Again, they need to be sturdy! If you have anything suitable, please get in touch.

The next FROGS event is the Year 4 cake sale on 14 January. There might even be some hot chocolate too!

And we’ll have a FROGS meeting at the end of January, details to be confirmed.

In February, we’ll be supporting the school with Children’s Mental Health week, so if you have any ideas, or know someone who can do a special assembly on the topic, let us know.

Any questions or suggestions: frogs.grasmere@gmail.com

GOODBYE JULIE

A big thank you and goodbye to a very special volunteer, Julie, the FROG behind such wonderful things as the container and grass area, the sensory room, the quiet playground, the KS1 smile mural, the creative room… and so much more. We were so lucky to have her and she’ll be greatly missed by all.

Have a great break and see you in 2022,

FROGS

Winter Fair

Hello

Our outdoors winter fair is happening this Friday – everyone welcome!

We’ll be selling Santa tickets and tokens on Friday morning (and in the token and gift stall during the fair). Or you can buy your Santa tickets here. We’ve got lots of other stuff for sale in the shop (and at the fair), including some lovely wreaths, now at a reduced price.

See you on Friday,

FROGS

Winter wonderland

Hello,

The Winter Fair is coming… next Friday! With lots of wonderful stalls, and a Santa’s Grotto – don’t miss it!

A big thank you to our volunteers who are helping organise this event: about 50 parents are giving their time on the day, or baking cakes and treats beforehand, to make sure everyone has a great time on Friday. Not sure how to help? Email us on frogs.grasmere@gmail.com and we’ll find you something to do!

You can now buy your child’s Santa grotto ticket here! We’re using time slots to make sure the queue doesn’t get too long.

Here’s a map of Grasmere’s very own winter wonderland (we did find a snow machine in the cellar, if anyone knows how to use it, please let us know!):

Now if you could all please keep your fingers and toes firmly crossed for a dry winter’s day… All the stalls will be outdoors, but we’ll have the gazebos up, the fire pit roaring in the garden, and we’ll be serving delicious hot veggie dishes, as well as hot chocolate, massala chai and non-alcoholic mulled wine.

A little update on the FROGS shop: thank you, we’ve taken all your orders for Christmas trees (delivered on the 10th) and made-to-order tops. There’s still some wreaths, craft kits, tote bags, book bags and pencil cases for sale on there. We will be selling them, as well as some blue Grasmere School t-shirts, on the 10th.

The various fair stalls accept tokens only, you’ll be able to buy some from our volunteers on the 10th, either in the morning at drop off, or during the fair at our token and gift stall (where there will be a card reader).

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Winter gifts and fair

Hello,

Just a few reminders about the FROGS shop, which is now open, and the upcoming Christmas fair. Plus an update on what our volunteers have been up to in the garden.

FROGS SHOP

Please order your Christmas tree and your made-to-order tops before the end of the week, as we will be sending our final order to our suppliers on Friday.

Also for sale: some lovely Christmas wreaths which our volunteers will be making this weekend with some tips for a top florist (email us if you’d like to help); plus there’s a few do-it-yourself kits with all you need to make your own wreath.

We’ve prepared some wreath-themed craft kits which will keep younger kids busy for a couple of hours on a cold weekend. There are ready now for next day delivery by the FROGS elves.

We also have pencil cases and tote bags on offer. You can pay using Paypal but also with a normal bank card (just click on Paypal and then the option will appear).

WINTER FAIR

Thank you so much to everyone who has signed up to volunteer at the Winter fair! It looks like we’ll have enough parent power to organise a great outdoors event for the kids.

There’s just a couple of roles left, please sign up here if you can help with the Santa grotto, selling drinks and cakes, and tidying up from 5.30. The Reception/Nursery face painting stall has only one volunteer so far, so please sign up for this if you can or unfortunately we’ll have to cancel it (or we could just have it for 1 hour, if there’s just one more volunteer).

Also, there is a box in Patsy’s office for any soft toy donations for the teddy tombola stall.

GARDEN

Thanks to the amazing work of our two garden volunteers last week, the garden now has a new hedge! It comprises some 30 hedge trees (dog rose, hawthorn, hazel, crab apple, dogwood) from the Woodland trust as part of their free trees for schools initiative, as well as a few more mature trees recycled from the Chelsea Flower show. It’s right by the entrance and it is still very fragile, please help us take good care of it.

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Launching our Winter shop

Hello,

Thank you to all Year 5 bakers and sellers who have raised a wonderful £193.92 last Friday! We hope you enjoyed their cakes and treats. The next cake sale will be next year, on 14 January. But in the meantime, we’re busy planning our Winter fair, which will take place on Friday 10 December – please see below for a list of volunteering opportunities.

FROGS’ WINTER SHOP

Our Winter shop is now officially open! You can purchase Christmas trees until 2 December for delivery on 10 December. Also on offer are lots of lovely gifts, including craft kits, tote bags, book bags, pencils cases, made-to- order tops (deadline also 2 December) and fun jewellery pieces. Most items are available in limited quantities and will be ready to be delivered around 10 December.

Next week we will add Christmas wreaths and Santa’s Grotto tickets to the shop offer. We’ll also be selling some navy Grasmere School T-shirts in a selection of kids sizes at the Winter Fair.

WINTER FAIR: HELP NEEDED

Thank you to all who have already volunteered to help us organise this very popular event. At the moment we already have 10 parents helping with tasks such as selling tickets and products, handing out the Christmas trees, planning the Santa’s grotto and grotto gifts, preparing a coconut shy stall, as well as as the music and playlist, and selling delicious vegetarian food.

But we still need plenty of help to man the class stalls, as well as the food stall, from which we’re hoping to sell cakes and drinks including hot chocolate and massala chai. We will also need a lot of help setting up the fair and decorating everything, and then tidying up at the end.

If you intend to help on the day, please could you sign up for your slot using this Volunteer Sign Up sheet (even if you’ve already told your class rep you could help) as soon as possible; it will be a big help for us organisers, as we will then be able to see if we can run all the different stalls or if we will have to plan less activities to make the event possible.

If you can’t be there on the day, you could also help by lending a gazebo, making/lending items to decorate the grotto, or baking cakes etc.

Thank you for your help,

FROGS

November newsletter

Hello,

Please find below some news about our winter fair and winter shop, as well as some great local charities that we support.

Dates for your diary:
Friday 19th November: Y5 Cake sale
Friday 10th December: Winter Fair

You will find the minutes of our last meeting here. Our next meeting will be on Wednesday 24 November to organise the Winter Fair (location or zoom tbc).

Thank you to everyone who ordered cards through our APFS Holiday Card Project, we raised over £200 for the school! The cards are expected to arrive at the school around 22 November.

WINTER FAIR

FROGS is organising a Winter Fair after school on 10th December. Due to Covid, the fair will have to take place outdoors, so we might need to come up with different ideas for the stalls this year to beat the cold.

Each class is in charge of one stall, so please get your thinking caps on and let us know by 24 November what your class would like to help organise.

Traditionnally stalls have included things such as decorating gingerbread men; decorating Christmas jumpers; a teddy tombola and a present wrapping stall. We also usually sell hot drinks and cakes, this year a parent is also kindly offering to cook some vegetarian food for us.

Other ideas for stalls: an obstacle course in the garden with tinsels and bells; a snow globe bouncy castle; winter-themed ring toss games; ice fishing game; guess the number of baubbles in the jar...

The fair usually has a Santa’s grotto, this year we are thinking of doing some storytelling sessions with Mrs Santa instead of a traditional grotto. If you have any other ideas, or would like to help organise this (or decorate Mrs Santa’s lounge!) please let us know.

Once we have your stall ideas we will set up a Volunteer sign up sheet so everyone can see what needs doing and how they can help.

Plan B: In the event that new regulations prevent us from organising a fair, we’re hoping to organise a rainbow raffle instead (like this one for example) next year, to bring colour into wintertime. For this, each class could provide small gift and food items to create a colourful hamper.

WINTER SHOP

We are finalising our new products for FROGS’ winter online shop, with T-shirts, tote bags and pencil cases in the works. In the meantime, Christmas trees are available to order from our online shop (delivery is 10th December); we’ll be also leaving some forms in the office for those who prefer paying cash.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED: We’re also hoping to sell some wreaths; a florist friend is kindly helping us by sourcing plain pine wreaths and decorations from the flower market, but we need volunteers to put everything together around the 2-3 December. If you can spare a couple of hours then , please let us know by signing up for this via this link.

If you would like to help in any other way, for example by supplying some homemade products to sell, please let us know as soon as possible! Thank you.

HELPING EACH OTHER

FROGS supports the Hackney Food Bank and the Winter Toy Appeal:

• Food bank collection: One of our volunteers is kindly offering to drop your donations to our local foodbank. There is a box in the hallway leading to the KS1 playground in which you can leave your donations, as well as a list of the most needed items. If easier, you can also donate money directly to the food bank. If you need help from the food bank, register for foodbank vouchers here.

• Winter Toy Appeal: If you can, please support this excellent local initiative which gives free new toys to children who really need them. Every year it benefits some children at Grasmere. There’s lots of different ways to help, have a look at their page for more information.

FROGS are also planning to support the school for the national Children’s Mental Health Week, 7-13 February 2022, by organising an event and buying new books on health and mental health for the library. Do you have any ideas on what we could organise to promote our children’s mental health? Do you know someone in that field who could do a special assembly? Any fun activity that would engage them on the subject? Let us know!

Thank you and take care,

FROGS

Our next meeting

Hello,

We hope you are having a nice half-term! We just wanted to give you some information on the holiday card project deadline, ask you about Christmas tree pick up day, and let you know about our upcoming meeting and remaining places available for the enrichment clubs.

We are also sorry to confirm that our Bonfire/disco event cannot take place due to rising Covid cases, an increase which is particularly worrying in the Clissold and Stoke Newington ward apparently. Please stay safe and look out for the school’s information this week about any new safety measures.

HOLIDAY CARD PROJECT

Orders for the APFS Holiday Card Project need to be placed by Wednesday 3rd November.

You can order now on apfsorders.co.uk, using the unique code on the back of your child’s artwork. Artwork needs to be sent back to school by Thursday 4th November. This can be used for presents and gifts for any occasion such as Thank you cards (you can choose to keep the text blank or add messages when your order).

If you have any questions of would like a code to order items with other artworks (birthday, thank you cards, sibling’s art etc) please email frogsholidaycards@gmail.com.

ENRICHMENT CLUBS

There was lots of applications for our new enrichment clubs! Most clubs are oversubscribed but we still have space for:

Alberto’s djembe club on Fridays for KS2 children (£5 per class)
Alberto of Performing Creations says: “Learning it will be interactive and super fun and not the usual copy-paste. We are going to be creative and learn dancing rhythms from the origins of the Malinke music to today's House music as the Djembe instrument is developed.” Sounds like a lot of fun! Please email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com if you would like your child to join. (There’s a free space for a pupil premium child).

Debate Mate club on Thursdays for KS2 children (£10 per class)
Debate Mate helps develop your child’s communication skills. Developing debating skills is a very effective method of preparing and motivating young people for higher education and the world of work. The organisation charges the school a fixed fee for this so the club cannot go ahead if we do not get the minimum number of students (12) – and there are only 3 places left! Please email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com if you would like your child to join. (There’s an extra free space for a pupil premium child).

Library club on Fridays for Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 children.
This club is about books, storytelling, illustration, paper crafts and creative writing for younger kids. We’ll look at classic picture books for inspiration. There’s 1 paying space and 1 free space for a pupil premium child left, please ease email frogs.grasmere@gmail.com if you would like your child to join.

CHRISTMAS TREE ORDER

If you are planning to order a Christmas tree through the school this year, please can you let us know which date you would like to pick up your tree by answering this survey ? It seems like it’s always either too early or too late for some, so we’d like to go for what the majority thinks! It takes one second to answer and it will help our volunteer plan this more efficiently. Thank you!

NEXT FROGS MEETING

Our next meeting is this Wednesday 3 November at 8pm on Zoom. We will send the agenda and Zoom login via your class reps. Please join if you have any ideas on Covid-safe fundraisers or anything else!

We’re also looking for ideas on what to sell in our Christmas shop this year. Please get in touch if you have any ideas, or anything homemade that you could donate for this. At the moment we’re thinking craft kits, wreaths and tote bags… (This is an example from another school just to give you some ideas). We could also organise a raffle or a winter trail, any ideas and offers of help welcome!

Thank you,

FROGS

This weekend's Jumble sale

Hello all,

A big thank you to all who have donated jumble and food for our latest Grasmere Jumble sale. Thank you also to those who have put up posters; who have helped sort the jumble (especially the mountain of clothes!), who have helped set up and tidy up afterwards, and of course who have manned the stalls during the sale…

It was well worth the effort: the event brought in a whopping £1,794.76 for our school’s charity!

Here’s a break down of what we raised:

DOOR – £199.63
FRIDAY SALES – £38
DESIGNER CORNER – £334.08
BRIC-A-BRAC – £52.66
BOOKS – £242.08
TOYS – £136.55
SHOES – £38
CLOTHES – £257.35
FOOD – £276.41
PARENT MATCHED FUNDRAISING – £300

We hope those who attended enjoyed the new layout, with half of the stalls outside in the playground. To be able to do this (and to make our next events both less weather-dependent and more Covid-safe) we have invested £622 in buying two large gazebos with sides (as well as sand weights for the gazebos and the doors).

Our food offering was absolutely delicious (thank you to Grasmere parent business @onroot_ for supplying some of their butternut squash) and raised quite a big chunk of money; we’ll try to advertise this more to the local community next time.

Books-wise we sold lots, and we kepts two big Ikea bags of great books for the school library, and gave the teachers two more boxes of books to pick from for their classrooms.

If you have any suggestions on how we could improve the jumble sale please let us know. The area that we felt wasn’t working particularly well was the clothes section – there was just too much of it, and we need a better display system. If you have any idea on how to improve this, or if you have any clothes rails, shoe trees or folding plastic crates that you don’t need, please let us know for next time.

The next jumble sale is in the Spring – and the next FROGS meeting is on 3 November at 8 via Zoom. We’ll be confirming our November and December events very soon.

Thank you,

FROGS

PS: The school has sent out the Enrichment Clubs forms; these will be held from 1 November to 10 December, and from 10 January to 4 February (a total of 10 classes). There has been some cancellations from the teachers for clubs including cooking, skateboarding and tennis, but we will do our best to try and set them up for the Spring term.