Dear Parents and Carers,
Welcome to December! How quickly this year has gone. This week the school has been filled with the wonderful sounds of the children rehearsing for their winter performances. The staff tell me that the parents/carers are in for a real treat. Please do ensure you have booked your tickets; emails have been sent to all year groups now.
Whole school Assembly this week was led by Dennis. He talked about children's rights & views & took the children through how our Pupil Parliament would work. He spoke about the make-up of the Pupil Parliament; it will have five committees, Behaviour, Wellbeing and Health, Eco, Diversity and Teaching and Learning. There will a representative from each class from year one up on each committee. Dennis told the children that if they want to be considered for one of the committees, they should prepare a statement, which they will then present to their class. The children can be considered for two committees (but they will need to prepare two statements.) The class will then have a vote for each committee. We will announce our parliament committee members once all voting is complete.
I 
hear the ‘Starry Nights’ fair was a huge success. Thank you to everybody who attended and to the many helpers, parents and staff, it is this collective effort that made it such an enjoyable experience. We are delighted to let you know that FoK raised over £7,000 at the fair and when combined with our other Christmas activities (cards, tea towels, Christmas trees) they expect to have raised over £11,000 to support our school. We are incredibly grateful for your continued support.
Thank yous
A huge thank you to all our volunteers, in total we had over a hundred people ‘donate an hour of their time’. This meant that all our planned stalls and activities could take place.
I want to also say a special thank you to our wonderful PTA, and their creative supporters who organised the event – without them these events would not happen. I really appreciate your hard work organising and running these events.
The winning class, who donated the highest weight in chocolate, was Kate’s class (year 2). They will be having a movie and popcorn before Christmas. Huge thanks to the parents & guardians for your generosity with chocolate donations.
On Tuesday, Sarah's class went to St Paul's Cathedral. They completed a workshop about the Great Fire of London whilst they walked around the cathedral. Did you know that when Sir Christopher Wren designed and built the cathedral, he wanted to have a dome shape and not a spire like other churches and cathedrals? He thought that people felt protected under a dome.
- Oviya - “I liked when she (Nicole who led the workshop) gave us the bucket and she gave it to us and told us not to spill a drop.”
- Sid - “I loved looking at the dome. I saw all the patterns.”
- Willem - “I liked the dome. I thought it was fascinating with all the patterns and how did they actually get up there!”
Arbor - action required by parents & carers – further to my previous newsletter, you should now have received a letter inviting you to sign into the Arbor parent portal. Please can I ask you all do this as we are planning to use this for many of our booking systems, giving you much more control. Next term’s parents evening (w/c 22 January 2024) will be booked using this system. The meetings will be in person.
Don’t forget to collect your raffle prizes. Martha and I held the virtual raffle draw on Tuesday, the file is available on FoK's social media pages, and all winners have been contacted.
SEND Coffee Morning due to staff shortages the `in person` coffee morning had to be postponed. A big thank you to David, who managed to hold a virtual meeting using the SEND WhatsApp group and has shared with Dennis the PowerPoint made, summarising the discussion. Thank you to all that contributed. A rearranged coffee morning has been scheduled for the 18th January 2024.
Donations: We have been very lucky to receive some IT equipment from parents in Y2 & Reception. As I am sure you are aware school budgets are being squeezed making our funds very tight. If you have anything that you think could be useful to us as a school, such as musical instruments, working digital cameras that are working but no longer used, or any equipment that is no longer used, do please think of us and ask if we could make use of it. Thank you
Changes in the office: Michaela is sadly moving on to an administrative post closer to home. Whilst she is very sad to be leaving us, the move will hopefully make big improvements to her work:life balance. She will be leaving on Friday 15th December. I am sure you will join me in wishing her every success in her new role. However, further to both Michaela and Aaliyah leaving, and whilst we are in the process of recruiting, we are also having a think about the office structure. I hope to be able to update you by the end of this term about how things will be from January.
We will once again, be supporting Save the Children’s Christmas jumper day, but we would like to align this with our festive lunch, we are asking for children to wear their Christmas jumpers on Tuesday 19th December – we will remind nearer the time.
Polite reminder: we are finishing early (2pm) on the last day of term, and there is no wrap that day. Please see below.
For those of you who purchased a Christmas tree from FoK. Please remember to collect it from school this Sunday 3rd December between 12pm and 3pm, Please let FoK know asap if there is a problem with collecting your tree.
Have a lovely weekend, do keep warm! I look forward to seeing some of you next week, as we begin our winter performance programme.
Julie
Christmas tree collection - if you ordered a tree, please remember to collect it from school on Sunday (3rd Dec), between 12 -5pm. We would be grateful if you could come as early as possible during these times. 
Are you selling your house? Winkworth will donate £250 for every instruction they receive from a current Kilmorie parent. All you need to do is make the team (at the Forest Hill branch) aware at the beginning of the instruction. Winkworth Forest Hill is a customer and community focused estate agent – if you’re thinking of selling or renting your property, you can contact them at 
Blythe Hill Christmas Market - 9th December 10-1pm