It has been fantastic to see everyone this morning and we are delighted to report that everything has gone very smoothly. 

Behind the scenes staff have been working hard to plan for a very safe and happy re-opening of school.

There has been a very excited buzz around the building today and it was wonderful to see the playgrounds busy once again.

We would once again like to thank parents and carers for all that they have done to keep learning continuing throughout the lockdown and to the children for their superb effort and the resilience that they have shown.  We are extremely proud of them and will now look forwards and do all that we can to get everyone on track to be the very best that they can be.

Thank you so much children for sending in your ‘Responsiblity’ themed enrichment homework projects. We have been blown away by the quality of work that has come in and the effort that has been made to produce it.

We can see that you all take your responsibilities very seriously, from keeping your rooms tidy and helping at home, to limiting your use of plastics to help the environment. There are lots of mentions too of how important it is to follow the rules and play a part in helping to stop the spread of the corona virus. We are very lucky to have such mature, thoughtful and considerate young people in our school who will go on to be very responsible citizens in the future.

We hope that you have enjoyed looking at just a few examples of our ‘Responsibility’ work and would like to thank all of our parents, carers and family members who are working so hard to help the children to work at home at this time. Well done everyone!

Don’t forget that you are able to post comments on our blog pages, we would love to hear them! Stay safe everyone, and keep up the fantastic work!

The snow at the weekend brought some much needed mid lockdown cheer to our pupils who have stunned us with their cool creations! Thank you so much for sending us these gorgeous pictures – it is so lovely to see the children playing outside and enjoying the snow. Children – I am truly amazed at the amount of snow people that you have created – well done everyone! We are so lucky to have these wonderful pictures of them in our fabulous snowy gallery………….

You may also spot some snowy staff amongst the following pictures that staff sent in to us! Thank you to everyone who sent pictures in, keep smiling everyone!

Our whole school grand draw for our Christmas hampers has just taken place with the assistance of Paige and Ethan from year 6. The families of the three lucky winners have been informed. Thank you so much to the staff and parents who contributed to these wonderful prizes.

It’s starting to feel a lot like Christmas at Rushall and we can hear the excitement starting to bubble in the children’s voices! Our Christmas shows have been rehearsed and filmed and will be available on the class blog pages via the special codes on Wednesday. Above you can see Year 2’s spectacular rendition of ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’.

We have also held our traditional Christmas parties where Early Years and Key Stage One received a surprise virtual message from a very important key worker; Santa. They were then very excited to discover the gifts that had been mysteriously hidden for them around school!

On Friday the children enjoyed their Christmas dinners that this year were in special Christmas boxes. An enormous thank you to the kitchen and lunch staff who organised this for us, and are working so hard to continue to cook hot meals despite having to deliver most of them to various parts of the building!

A huge well done to all of our children for their stunning Christmas performances, we hope that next year we will be back on stage with a live audience as usual. In the meantime we hope that you enjoy the films and remember to look out for us on the Forest Arts ‘Winter’s Wishlist’ concert on You tube on Thursday evening at 7pm.

A huge well done to Eva who has grown a gigantic pumpkin from seeds that she planted on her allotment during the school holidays. This is amazing Eva!! – I’m sure that this will inspire other children to start growing their own vegetables as well.

On behalf of all of the staff we would like to wish all of our children and their families a very happy October half term. Stay safe everyone XX

On Wednesday we held our traditional ‘Harvest Festival’ and the children performed some of their favourite harvest time songs. We were so impressed with both their behaviour and their stunning performances; these will be available to view on the class blog pages via the special codes shortly. Well done children, you are amazing!!

Below you can see just a small selection of the produce that has been donated to us to pass on to the food bank. Thank you so much for your generosity, it is much appreciated.

We are so impressed with the wonderful work that our children have created on our new value; ‘caring’. The children have thought about caring in many different contexts, and of different ways that they can care for and be considerate of others.

As part of our autumn term curriculum we are reflecting on what has happened during the lockdown and thinking about the positive aspects that have emerged. Our appreciation of carers and NHS staff in particular has grown throughout this time and the children are enjoying learning all about the history of nursing. At harvest time this year we will be thinking of all of the people who help our food get to us in a way that we may not have done previously.

We are also thinking about all of the ways in which we can care for our planet. We now know just what a difference we could make having seen all that happened during the lockdown; animals appearing in new places, the sky appearing more blue, lower pollution levels to name a few.

Our resident pigeon family has had an eventful week with the two babies finally venturing out of their nest as you can see here under the watchful eye of their Dad.

We are so proud of our children and it has been a pleasure to begin our class based ‘Golden Moments’ assemblies where we can celebrate all kinds of achievements and acts of kindness together. Thank you to all parents, grandparents, and carers who have sent in nominations, we love having nominations from home. If you would like to nominate your child please send the details into our school email, postbox@rushall.walsall.sch.uk.

We have discovered that some wood pigeons have made their nest in the ivy outside our school offices. It has been a fantastic opportunity to observe our new school value, ‘caring’ in action as the parent birds care for their two babies. Watch this space for more pigeon news soon!!

We are delighted to welcome our children back to school! We have been so impressed with the maturity and independence they have shown as they have returned. It is wonderful to have our building full of noise and fun again too! We can’t wait to meet all of our youngest children as they begin their journeys with us.