The children had a great Halloween themed Forest school session today. The older children used the bow saw to make rings of wood to decorate and they also had the opportunity to make spiders webs using sticks and wool. The younger children went on a ‘pumpkin hunt’ and used potato peelers to make sticks into magic wands. Everyone enjoyed making a ‘pizza pasty’ and cooking it on the fire.

Thank you to all those who supported our Coffee morning today.   Thanks to your generosity, we were able to raise £196 for MacMillan Cancer Support.

To make the last day of Year 6 memorable for our leavers, the whole school took part in an outdoor activities day at Weardale Adventure Centre.  Children and staff took part in a selection of activities, which included a river walk, crate stacking and the leap of faith.  Our pre-school children also joined us and completed their own activities around the site, which included a scavenger hunt.  Many thanks to Weardale Adventure Centre for a fantastic day and for making us so welcome.  It was a brilliant day, despite the weather and hopefully something out Leavers will always remember.

Friends of Rookhope School had a very successful morning today, with many plants donated to enhance our school garden.  These will be planted over the next few days.

Thanks to the recently formed Friends of Rookhope School, our outdoor classroom has been given a new lease of life this week.  Members of the local community worked with staff and pupils to tidy and update this area on Thursday afternoon.  Over the next few weeks, resources will be added and the boxes will be planted, to ensure that our outdoor area is attractive and inspiring for next year’s EYFS pupils.  The children also made bunting to celebrate the school’s 140th birthday and a scarecrow for the village scarecrow competition.

Despite being Year 6 SATs week, we managed to squeeze in some Art and Forest Schools activities in the afternoons this week.  We designed and began to make Greek pots with Mrs Eastwood and Miss Woods.

On Thursday we enjoyed a Forest Schools afternoon, with a Greek theme, to celebrate the end of SATs!  One of our challenges was to design a maze for the Minotaur.

We were also challenged  make a Land Art picture of the Cyclops or the Minotaur.

Our first two groups chose to create the Minotaur, but the third group made a picture of the Cyclops.

Of course no Forest Schools experience is complete without some cooking over the fire and some knotting practise.

This week, we began to learn how to tie a Clove Hitch.

More Ancient Greek adventures to follow next week.