As anyone who witnessed the Celebration Assembly this morning will know, mistakes are a fact of life. It’s how we respond to them that matters. I hope that my response in front of the children when faced with a delayed arrival, lack of connectivity, and then clumsiness and forgetfulness on my part, will have helped to demonstrate that we all make mistakes and that calmness and self-deprecation (as well as learning from the mistakes of course) are usually the best policies!

With connectivity in mind too, I would like to draw attention for all parents, and especially those of children at the upper end of the Prep section, to the important message from Mr Watkins about online safety found in this newsletter. Some of you will also have read Amanda Spielman’s comments yesterday about the appropriateness of primary school age children being able to access smart phones. For those of you resisting your children lobbying for access to or ownership of mobile devices, please know that you are far from alone. I have lots of conversations with parents feeling under pressure but not wanting to open the potential Pandora’s Box too soon, and of course the consequences for technology company executives of putting children at risk are currently a topic of debate in parliament. We mark Safer Internet Day later this half of term and will be touching on these important topics with the children in that week before half term, as we regularly do anyway in School of course.

Especially with the cold weather and hence the need for gloves, hats and scarves, our lost property coffers seem to be growing daily, although I am pleased to say that the Tupperware mountain has now subsided since the advent of School provided snacks. The School staff always try to reunite lost items with children as soon as possible, but this is only ever possible if items are labelled. Please can parents check that almost all items that come into school are labelled (we might draw the line at pencils and such like!)? How and where items are labelled is not always obvious too (we even found one pair of trousers this week with the name written in pen on the inside of the trouser leg; whether by child or parent, we were not sure!). I am told that Labels4kids provide excellent ‘press and click’ name tags which withstand repeated washing, and that Stamptastic are also reliable. Of course, using a Sharpie on the item label usually works well too, especially on items not often washed.

Fingers are firmly crossed for a warmer week next week to allow the return of some competitive sport, but in the meantime I hope you and your families enjoy the fabulous crispness of a winter weekend.