Playground Blog

Thursday 30th November 2017

Today John Waller, Underwoodsman from Bore Place arrived at St Mary’s to help us plant our willow structures. The children had decided on a igloo, which Mr Waller told us was actually called a ‘Twigloo’ and a fence, which is apparently called a fedge (fence/hedge).

It was a very frosty morning and the first job was to mark out the circle for the Twigloo. Mr Waller helped us doing this by hammering a peg in to the ground with a piece of rope attached. We used the end of the rope to mark out the circle for our Twigloo.

Thank you Mr Waller for helping us plant our Willow structures and for teaching us how to dig and plant. we are very proud of everything that we acheived.

Lilac class have the task of breaking the turf to mark out the circle for the Twigloo.

Mr Waller tied together all the joints, which will eventually fuse together as the Willow grows.

Mr Waller used these big shears to cut the Willow. The Willow stakes will eventually take root during the spring.

Mr Waller brought lots of Willow sticks for us to plant.

It was such a cold day. The ground was not too frozen thankfully, but it did snow on and off throughout the day!

Everyone did a fantastic job digging and planting and the finished structure looks amazing! We cannot wait until spring when the Willow all starts to grow new shoots.

Mr Waller explained that we needed to turn over the grass where we planted the Willow so that we would kill the grass. If we did not kill the grass the grass would use all the moisture in the ground in the spring and the willow would not take root.

Monday 30th October 2017

Today the boat was officially launched by this week’s Head Boy. At 3.15, with lots of St Mary’s families there to celebrate the occasion, the ribbon was cut and the boat declared officially open! Once the boat was open the next task was to reveal it’s name. The PTFA had held a competition to suggest a name for the boat and the winner was The Jolly Mary. We hope that the good Jolly Mary bring much happiness and fun to the children of St Mary’s for many years to come. A huge thank you to the PTFA for all their support of this boat. They celebrated the occasion with a marvellous selection of delicious cakes which they sold in support of the school.

Friday 14th October 2017

The playground is buzzing with excitement as today the children have had their first opportunity to play on the newly completed pirate ship. We would like to name the ship and are looking for suggestions from the children for a name that we hope can be painted onto the ship. Buckets are in school to collect name suggestions at 20p a go. The name of the ship will be announced at the Grand

opening on Monday 30th October after school when we will be thanking the PTFA for their wonderful efforts in raising the money for the ship. Please come along to the playground at 3.15 to cheer the head boy or girl for the week as they cut the ribbon.

October 2017

We have been doing so much work in our playground recently. Have a read about all our activities in the blog below.

A huge thank you to the family who came and helped us to move the boat on Thursday afternoon. There will be another ‘groundforce’ afternoon on Thursday 12th October – any help from parents would be greatly appreciated.

Our amazing new pirate ship is under construction in the playground! We look forward to sharing photos of the finished product in our next newsletter. Thank you so much to our wonderful PTFA for raising the funds for the ship.

Our order from Sainsbury’s Active Kids arrived today so we thought we would share photos of Maple Class constructing their outdoor sink and enjoying the ribbons that all the vouchers allowed us to choose. Thanks to everyone who collected and donated the vouchers; as you can see, it really is worthwhile!

At the beginning of the year our class champions worked together to help design the first phase of our school playground as shown in the plans above. The photograph below shows how work has progressed after just one week.

Work has begun – week 1

As work on the playground is due to start on Monday, we thought we would bid a fond and final farewell to the area that will be redeveloped and publish some ‘before’ photos. Although there may be some disruption for the next 4 weeks we are excited about the prospect of a new play area for the children and look forward to sharing the ‘after’ photos with you! Thank you to the governing body, PTFA and Diocese for donating or raising money to enable the improvement of our playground to take place.

Our playground before work began

7th July – the playground is almost finished. Just a few finishing touches to go.