On Thursday, the Pre-Prep staff, parents and grandparents gathered to watch the Reception Nativity. As Lola K stood up to sing a solo in front of her friends, something she had accomplished brilliantly in the first performance of Whoopsy Daisy, Angel earlier in the week, she was suddenly overcome with cold. What do we all need in such circumstances? A friend to help us through, of course. Up stepped Mabel C who held her hand and uttered the words, ‘let’s do it together’. What a wonderful example of kindness and compassion!

The nativities, Little Lambs singing and Pre-Prep Christingle service this week all marked a welcome return to the School calendar after the hiatus of the last two years, with lots of parents joining us to celebrate and admire the efforts of their children. Next week, with the Carol Service (at the earlier time of 5.45pm) on Wednesday to look forward to, as well as the pantomime trip for children in Reception to Year 6 on Tuesday and the Christmas lunch for all children on Thursday, the festivities continue thick and fast. Of course, it would also be remiss of me not to thank our wonderful SVPSPA for a fabulous Christmas Fair last weekend too.

Not only have the staff been preparing for these events, but they have also been writing end of term reports for children from Reception to Year 6 (with the Nursery parents having only recently received reports and had their consultation appointments). Together with the Senior School, these reports will be published to parents on the morning of Saturday 17th December. Our calendar for the Lent Term will also be published at the same time, including details of the Bookshares and parents’ consultation evenings for the term. Furthermore, some of the bigger events for the Summer Term will also be published, which will hopefully allow parents to plan ahead more easily.

Another adjustment to our communications is that we have just set up an automatic notification of ‘missing equipment’ from our School system, iSAMS. This will allow our teachers to notify parents quickly and efficiently if a child is missing a vital piece of equipment, such as a coat, gumshield or headphones. We want to make it clear, as we have done to the children, that this notification is not a sanction per se; in fact, such are the limitations of the system that the wording will say that a child has been ‘awarded a SVPS Missing Equipment’! For children from Year 3 upwards though, missing the same piece of equipment three times in one half term will then be treated as a low-level sanction, which we hope and expect will incentivise better organisation and be mercifully rare.

One final matter to mention is the timing for the last day of the term next Friday. Pre-Prep children finish at 1.30pm and Prep children finish at 2pm; for parents with children in both sections of the School, please do collect your children in Prep at 1.30pm too (straight after their lunch). Little Lambs Nursery will continue to operate as normal until Wednesday 21st December before closing for Christmas, to reopen on Tuesday 3rd January.

Have a lovely weekend wrapped up warm and hopefully trying to avoid the many sniffles and other illnesses doing the rounds at the moment. With the forecasts as they are, we are ever hopeful that our plans for next week will not need to be adjusted but we will let parents know as soon as possible if snow or other extreme conditions make this impossible. Hopefully, we will look forward to seeing many of you at the Carol Service on Wednesday.