Hebden Royd C of E Primary Newsletter

COVID 19 …. December , the month for joy, happiness and to finish Thank you for what you started ... your continued support with the distanced drop off and collection; it is We are delighted to be able to carry out our much appreciated. regular Christmas activities—albeit with a small twist. ….. It is of vital importance that if a household We have had the tree delivered and EYFS have member has decorated it for us. Each class has made art work coronavirus symptoms, to support the Christmas story and this is the children and wider household members displayed in the hall for us all to share. must follow guidance The PTFA have worked creatively to provide each class with “Christmas and self-isolate. This avoids the risk of wider in a Box” - depending on which class you are in you will find different transmission occurring. treats, games and challenges… the first challenge being which parcel to If a test result comes back positive, then all open first and an advent forfeit! Thank you PTFA, they are lovely! household members The magical ice post-box will make a visit on Wednesday 9th — our must continue to follow isolation guidance and letters to Santa will easily get there in time this year. Thanks to inform the school. Hebden Royd Town Council and Sand In Your Eye for putting that together. https://www.gov.uk/ Friday 11th is Christmas Jumper Day for Save The Children - please government/ send £1 and come in something festive. publications/covid-19- stay-at-home-guidance Wednesday 16th we’re having our socially distanced Christmas lunch. Friday 18th we break up for the 2 week Christmas holiday. Thank you for helping Monday 4th January we’re back at school for the start of 2021! our school to stay open and to keep each Community spirit: other safe. The knock We’re making cards and decorations for on effects of your choices are not just on Mytholm Meadows and look forward to our school family but sending our best seasonal wishes across can be unforeseen and inadvertently affect so the road. many other No Carol Concert this year but you will families. have access to some treats from your

child’s class via Dojo with love from us all.

Website: www.hebdenroydprimary.org.uk Email: [email protected]

Calder Valley Books for Change ….. School meals are almost back to normal from Elliot in Year 6’s mum has a brilliant project up and running called Calder November 30th with a meat Valley Books for Change. She is a teacher in the valley and began CVBC or veggie option each day. when it became clear, through conversations with colleagues across Have you ordered our , that many felt the books in classrooms lacked a wider Christmas dinner for your representation of experiences, cultural narratives and voices. She says “I am child? absolutely passionate about the power of books to engage, inspire and Please look on the website share experience and believe that books are essential to creating space for or ask the office to send a curiosity and conversation” menu home.

The goal is to raise £6000 to buy sets of approximately 20 books for each of PE kit should go home at the primary schools across the Calder Valley. “We need our primary school the end of term please libraries to stock a diverse range of fiction and non-fiction; picture books and make sure your child has chapter books that include diverse characters of colour, ability, strong removed it from the female protagonists and boys that are not afraid to be different. We need cloakroom in that final books that represent a range of family set ups, neurodiverse characters and week. a range of physical abilities. CVBC aims to fulfil this need.”

Please consider a donation or getting involved by contacting Ciara Sturges Things to celebrate ….we through Social Media @caldervalleybooksforchange are finally free of the leak from Water’s pipes that has made the Message from Reverend Karen ….. first term so difficult in the I’ve been in just a year and a day as I write this and it has kitchen, repairs and been the strangest year of my life... Christmas, New Year, Epiphany, the improvements are floods in February, and then COVID19; It seems that I have lost at least happening to the back half a year of getting to know people and finding out about how Hebden playground. We are also Bridge ticks...but going back and recovering that time isn’t possible.. the getting a makeover in the only way is forward...Of course Covid 19 hasn’t been all bad...for some of front yard in the new year. us it has given us a space to rethink our priorities, how we do things, a chance to be at home more...but for others it has been a difficult, lonely, and sometimes frightening time. For all of us it has been a time in which We have received a bike many things that we have taken for granted have been denied us, and it and scooter rack for the looks like the way in which we celebrate Christmas, religious or not, will playground from the be affected too. And yet all is not lost..... Bikeability people at in these short days and long nights, Calderdale. It would be when the weather is unpredictable and lovely to see more of you the darkness seems at times like it is biking or “scootering” to circling all around, the light of school now there is Christmas which burns so brightly is a somewhere safe to anchor reminder that we are not left in darkness and that we are never left alone as we them during the day... make our journey through the seasons of our lives. Whilst the baby in the manger, right there in the midst of life, confronts us with our human frailty, the story of his life is a reminder that ultimately it is love, and only love, which overcomes the dark. I wish you all a light and peaceful, if rather different, Christmas this year... Blessings Rev’d Karen (Leeds Utd Colours!!!)