Hedgehog Houses and Christmas Gifts

During their DT lessons students have been working on Hedgehog houses which will be positioned around the new school.  We are hopeful that they will be inhabited by little hedgehogs in the very near future.  The students have also been making some small Christmas gifts for their loved ones.  They had a variety of figures to choose from.

Sky Class Make Jungle Scenes

This week Sky class has been very busy making 3D jungle scenes. We have practised our fine motor skills, cutting and colouring. We learnt how to curl paper strips with a ruler and make tube tree trunks using brown paper. Students have thought carefully about placement of their animals in the jungle, some have worked out how to make their monkeys swing from the trees.

Year 7 Art

Year 7 students have been busy creating reindeer with handprints in their Art lessons to decorate a tree. This will form part of the Stevenage Christmas Tree Trail and can be seen in one of the shops in the Westgate Centre in central Stevenage. Each tree represents a song, ours is one we are learning in lessons to sing in the Performing Arts Showcase on 7 December. Can you guess what it is?  Thank you to The Stevenage Creative Network for offering us this opportunity.

Friends of Valley School Fundraising

As previously advised we had a FoVS fundraising meeting last Wednesday, 8 Nov, and were thrilled to welcome some New Year 7 parents.

We are focusing our fundraising activities in the wider community rather than within the school community however, we would like to ask parents to investigate if their companies offer match funding opportunities.

 

Match funding is an arrangement between a company and their employee. Not all companies offer matched funding but those that do will pledge a sum of money relating to the amount their employee has raised for or donated to the charity of their choice.  We would be grateful if parents / carers could reach out within their places of work to ask if fund matching is available to them as this could be a great way to increase our fundraising.

 

How match funding works

A parent who works for a company that offers match funding, volunteers to work on the refreshment stall at the PTA summer fair. The profit made by the stall is £100. The parent’s employer will then match this amount with a further £100.

Some organisations will match fund on a pound for pound basis, while others will stipulate what they are prepared to give. It is likely that an upper limit will be applied along with certain criteria such as the recipient organisation being a registered charity.

Some companies will also pledge time and resources instead of money, so enabling their employees to support a cause during their working week, or offering a tangible service such as the opportunity to print posters, programmes, newsletters and so on.

Alternatively, a parent may opt to make a cash donation to the PTA, which again could be matched by their organisation.

 

Year 8 Lime watch Epic Tails at the Cinema

Year 8 Lime took a trip to the cinema this week to support their studying of ‘Film’, this half-terms topic.  The plan was to see ‘Early Man’ however due to a technical fault they watched ‘Epic Tails’ instead. All students coped with this last minute change really well.  The staff and students had a great time.