Dear Parents and Carers, 

What a week of contrasts, beginning with hats and gloves and ending in glorious warmth and sunglasses! 

This week, we were lucky enough to have a visitor from Surrey Young Carers to run some Easter activities with a group of Year 5's. The children decorated scratch eggs and made impressive Easter Bunnies from fluffy socks. If you would like to know more about Surrey Young Carers, please contact Lucy Cray our Home School Link Worker.   

It was a glorious, sunny day on Tuesday when Year 1 went to Guildford Castle and the grounds for a combined history and geography trip. The children had an exciting time exploring the castle keep tower and using maps to explore the castle grounds.  We are very lucky to be a short walk from this fascinating local attraction! 

Also on Tuesday, ten children from Year 4 had a wonderful time visiting Prior's Field School to take part in the annual APPArt sculpture trail around the rose garden and grounds. The trail included a large range of different sculptures; the children particularly enjoyed finding as many animal sculptures as they could.

It’s been another successful week of sport. The Year 5 netball team finished their season on a high by winning all their matches at the Guildford Primary Schools Netball Tournament, held at George Abbot on Monday. Meanwhile, the Year 6 netball teams played at home to QE, both teams winning their matches.

The Guildford Primary Schools cross country season came to an end yesterday with a gruelling 3rd race at Rydes Hill, hosted by St Joseph's. After three races over the Autumn and Spring term, HT came 3rd in the Boys, 2nd in the Girls and 1st in the Overall cross-country shield. Three of our runners also won individual medals - well done runners! 

On Wednesday, the Juniors had a visit from Galliford Tye who are completing the Downs pipe work on behalf of Thames Water. They came to explain the project to the children and introduce an art competition to decorate the blue hoardings that have now been erected. Look out for the children's work there after the Easter holidays. Prizes will be given to winning entries at the beginning of summer term.

A local plea. I have been contacted by Mount Alvernia Hospital about their concern with parents and children using the hospital car parks as a shortcut on the route to and from school. Unfortunately, on Thursday there was another near miss witnessed by a staff member and seen on CCTV, where a moving car narrowly missed a pupil who was running across the car park. The hospital car park has continuous traffic throughout the day and it is a real safety risk to children. As such, I have been asked by the hospital to make parents/carers aware of this and ask you not to put your child at risk and refrain from using the busy hospital car park as a cut through – thank you. 

The children marked Red Nose Day in school today by wearing something red and competing against their classmates in a wide range of silly contests. We also launched a competition sponsored by Lego for Comic Relief, called 'Build the Change'. The challenge is for children to design and/or build a model for a school of the future. Details of the competition can be seen here https://www.comicrelief.com/rednoseday/fundraise/schools/lego/. If you would like to continue the project at home, please email a photograph of your child's design to Tom at the juniors (tome@htpd.surrey.sch.uk) or Emily at the infants (emilyr@htpd.surrey.sch.uk). If one of our designs wins, we could win a Lego bundle for the school.  Happy designing! 

In the final week of term, the Juniors will be welcoming back a favourite house event - House Bake Off! On Wednesday 2nd April, children in Years 3-6 may bring in one individual cake or biscuit decorated to reflect the theme, Easter. The children and teachers in each house will gather together for a special house assembly, where the house captains and staff will showcase the baking excellence on display and conduct a taste test. Winners for each house will be announced on the final day of term.   

Have a wonderful weekend. 

Vicky 

Thought of the week: Are you a forgiving person?