Welcome to your newsletter for week ending July 12th 

We've come to the end of a very busy (and penultimate) week of the school year. We've had additional activities happening every day (read on for more info!) but have still been keenly focused on teaching and learning with all classes getting a visit from Mrs Cooper to check teaching is up to scratch!

Although the weather has been less than summery, we've had plenty of 'end of year' events and preparations and the atmosphere in school is certainly feeling like we're very nearly reaching the holidays!

Part of our 'end of year' work is to send children's books home. We will be doing this on Wednesday, so please send children in with a sturdy carrier bag or similar on this day so they can bring back a year's worth of books! Please be mindful that we will keeping one set of books back for each year group- your class teacher will let you know if our child has been selected. If this is the case, you will be able to have books back this time next year.. and if your chid is in Year 6 and you would like their books back, let us know and we will ensure these get to you in Summer 25!

Read on for more news about the week!

What's Coming Up

Our Fabulous Fundraiser 

On Wednesday we held a very successful fundraiser for St Mary's Hospice. This is all thanks to our amazing Mia RC who was the brains behind the whole operation. For a small donation, children came to school in the charity's colours (blue and pink) there was bake sale, 'guess how many sweets are in the jar", a tombola, and the ice cream van graced us with its presence. Not to mention, we had the charity's mascot, Hetty the Hedgehog, join us to help out and meet the children - all a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone who made a donation; we hope you enjoyed the fundraiser as much as we did. We are incredibly proud of Mia for proposing this idea and look forward to hosting similar events in future.

Charity Bracelet Sale: July 18th!

Some of our lovely pupils are making bracelets to help raise money for Cancer Research UK and The Tommy's Rainbow Clinic at Birmingham Women's Hospital. 

This will take place after school in the playground on 18th July. We are asking for a £1 donation per bracelet - cash only. We hope to see you there! 

New P.E Hoodies 

From next academic year we are giving children an optional addition to their PE uniform. From September, children can wear a hoodie for their PE lessons in their house colour. This is completely optional and by no means mandatory.

If this is something you would like to do, we have sourced a supply from Kids Essentials in Northfield.

They will be stocking our house colours as detailed below and hoodies will be available at a cost of £11.50.

House colours:

Red - Oak

Bottle Green - Beech

Royal Blue - Maple

Sunflower Yellow – Sycamore

Again, this is completely optional and there is no expectation from school for families to purchase anything additional. We just want to encourage and promote our school houses and inter-house competitions within school.

Year 6 Production Update 

Just a quick note to all parents and carers who are wondering about the Year 6 production: it is coming along wonderfully! Today a rehearsal was held for Year 3 viewers and it went really well. We’re looking forward to showing it to you.

Words by Oscar V

Values of the Week

Today the teachers presented the Values Champion to the following children for demonstrating Collaboration.

This week's winners are:

* ASHA (Reception) - RR

* AXEL (KS1) - 2T

* ATTIE (KS2) - 5HPS

Youth Proms

Monday 8th July saw our Year 6s sing at their last concert as part of our wonderful school choir.

The choir joined 350 other primary school children to form the Youth Proms choir, performing a fantastic Queen Medley in front of a 'sold out' Symphony Hall. The standard of singing was superb. Not to be outdone, our school orchestra joined the massed ensemble band to perform three pieces. Again the standard of musicianship was amazing. Thank you to all the children who took part, you did yourselves and BVPS proud!

It has been a great week for concerts and on Wednesday J. and C. 6GW with the help of Miss Herborn organised our first ever Music Tech concert. The compositions we heard from Year 5 and 6 blew us away. They were amazing, well done to all who took part.

Year 2 Recorder Concert 

We would like to say massive well done to the Year 2 Recorder Club and Year 2 Ukulele classes. They all gave an amazing performance. We are all very proud!

Electro-Acoustic Concert

We would like to congratulate those who took part in the Music Club's first 'Electro-Acoustic' Music concert. A special shout out to James and Charlotte for hosting a wonderful event - they have talent in the bucket loads!

Music Lesson

Violin Lessons

There will be no more violin lessons this term

Brass Lessons

The last brass lesson of term will be on Wednesday 17th July

Choir 15th July

The last rehearsal of term will be for current Years 4 and 5 and will be taken by Rachel Stidwell and Mrs Vaughan

Stopped Music Lessons - please return your instrument

If you have stopped music lessons, please return your instrument by Monday 15th July, so Services for Education can allocate it to another child.

Music Lessons for September

Emails have now been sent confirming your child’s music lesson for September 2024. 

If you have any queries about music in school, please email [email protected]

A visit from Dr Ken, the Mathsmagician!

This week, the children were very excited to welcome Dr Ken Farquhar to BVP for a maths magic show! You might remember that a couple of months ago, some Y5 children went to a maths competition and saw Dr Ken perform his show.

We were so impressed that we invited him to come and perform at school!

Children from Y1-6 took part in the show that had some 'real world' application of maths and some incredible magic tricks. These included juggling, pouring liquids into impossible containers, card tricks, straw games, ducks and rabbits and more.

The children had an amazing time, and it was lovely to see them enjoying maths in a different way outside the classroom!

Our BVP Journalists gave their thoughts on Dr Ken's visit: 

On Wednesday, BVP had the brilliant opportunity of meeting Dr Ken, the maths magician. He showed us a variety of tricks, including juggling, and even read a segment of his book. It was the perfect blend of fun and education - providing an amazing experience for every child involved. It was brilliant, thank you Dr Ken!

Words by: Oscar V, BVPjournalist 

Did you know you can bake ice cream without it melting? A Baked Alaska is a dessert with a sponge cake base, ice cream middle and meringue top!

The secret to keeping the ice cream cold is all in the meringue. Meringue is full of air bubbles which stop the heat from the oven reaching the ice cream. The meringue (and sponge cake base) act as insulators trapping the heat and stopping it melting the cold ice cream.

Ingredients:

• Ready made sponge cake
• Jam
• Vanilla ice ceam
• 3 egg whites
• 175g caster sugar
• ½ tea spoon cream of tartar

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 200 °C.
2. Slice the cake so you have five 1cm thick slices and place each on a baking sheet. Spread a thin layer of jam on top of each slice.
3. To make the meringue whisk the egg whites until they form stiff peaks, slowly add half the sugar and cream of tartar and whisk again.
4. Add the rest of the sugar and whisk again until the meringue looks thick and glossy.
5. Place a scoop of ice cream on top of each sponge cake slice and cover with meringue mixture.
6. Bake for 3-4 minutes and serve immediately.

CONGRATULATIONS - you managed to bake ice cream without it melting!

In September, we will be inviting parents and Careers into school to fully introduce the myHappy Mind programme.  Until then we wanted to share a quick overview with you as to what is it. 

We know that in order for our children to flourish and  thrive , supporting mental health and wellbeing is just as important as academic learning.  As part of our  continued commitment to  the Mental Health and Wellbeing of  our school community, we are very excited to be launching the My Happy Mind Programme . From September all children from Reception through to Year 6 will be receiving weekly myHappymind lessons as part of their curriculum.   myHappymind  is accessible to all students and  is also tailored to meet the needs of our neuro-diverse children. 

What is myhappymind? 

 myHappymind is an Award Winning, NHS-backed curriculum in  schools and is focused on building resilience, self-esteem, and happiness in children,  using preventative strategies grounded in science. 

Mental health support is often focused on supporting individuals when they face challenges. Whilst this is critical, we believe that it’s also important to support individuals in building their resilience and self-esteem proactively. 

 myHappymind helps children to: 

• Understand how their brain works and how to manage big feelings. 

• Understand and celebrate who they are . 

• Understand what positive relationships look like and how to build them. 

• Improve their focus and learn more  

• Develop a growth mindset. 

• Build resilience in times of challenge 

• Achieve more of the goals that they set for themselves  

• Feel happier. 

• Feel great about who they are and have positive self-esteem.  

The My Happy mind parent app, provides a link between home and school, enabling you to know exactly what your child is learning and how you can support at home, there are games, resources videos and more.   During the launch meeting we will be sharing details and support to  download the Patent App. 

If you would like to learn more you can  Visit https://myhappymind.org/ or, if you are interested in delving into more detail we recommend picking up a copy of myHappymind's founders book, My Happy Mind by Laura Earnshaw. 

We can be contacted through the main office or directly by email at- [email protected]

The Pastoral Team

Steph Kovacs and Daniel Purcell

Fresh seasonal salad bar and fresh bread available daily, as well as a daily selection of fresh fruit and fruit yoghurts.

School Shop

The School Shop opened for the last time this term this afternoon, in our new location.

Over the summer we will be making some improvements to the new shop and will be ready to receive more donations as we now have more space to store and sell from.

510 kids, 45+ volunteers, 2 DJs and a whole world of fun!

Thanks to all that helped out at the R/Yr1 disco last week - for the first time ever a combined disco in the George Hall that worked extremely well! Followed by a crazy Yr2/3 and then Yr4/5/6 disco last night.

Thank you all for coming through on the Arbor ticket payments - it is really appreciated.

Raffle Reminder!

The Raffle Tickets are still available on Arbor for our draw next Friday. £1 per ticket and the prize list is still growing.

Year 6 BBQ

We have got 80 of the 96 responses so far for the Year 6 Leavers Celebrations, so if you have not submitted your response please do so to help us plan https://forms.office.com/e/GzZ55640qb.

All Year 6 Parents should have received the joining instructions by now to help you navigate through all the events next Thursday.

2024/2025

We will soon be setting dates for next academic year. If you have any ideas of events that you think we can make happen in and around School please do not hesitate to contact us on [email protected] and share your ideas - we have got a great team and lots of support from the School - so technically anything is possible!

For now, enjoy the football (if you are following it) and enjoy the last week of term. Fingers crossed for a sunny summer!

David, Veronica, Becki and the rest of the PTA Core Team

And finally...

It's a good time to say thankyou to a whole host of people...thank you if you supported St. Mary's Hospice event earlier in the week, thankyou to all the parents and carers who have come in for assemblies and concerts, thankyou to all who supported the Youth Proms and a huge thankyou to the PTA (and all the incredible volunteers) who have supported events for our wonderful children, not just this week, but throughout the school year- you've made some wonderful things happen!

And as a final (and most important note), many of you have been asking about our little angel (AKA wonder woman!) who is currently still at BCH... the progress she is making is phenomenal and we will be sending out a separate email with more details.. so please keep your eye out for this.

Take care all- we hope your weekend is peaceful and we are looking forward to seeing you on Monday.

Safeguarding and promoting the welfare of children is the responsibility of everyone in our school and at all times we consider what is in our children’s best interests. We work to ensure our children are safe and cared for and by doing this we are protecting their health and development and preventing them from harm. If we are worried, we will raise concerns, share information, and take prompt action with the aim of ensuring families receive the right help at the right time.

Going On In Your Area