Our pupils were engaged in a truly memorable Forest School session this week, focusing on the fundamental skill of fire-making!

This isn't just about fun—it's about deepening understanding, building resilience, and developing critical skills that go far beyond the classroom. It perfectly showcases how we encourage our pupils to learn, grow, and dream together at Wincham.

Personal Development and Resilience

The process of safely and responsibly creating fire requires focus, teamwork, and, most importantly, resilience.

• Patience and Persistence: Trying to create a spark and nurture it into a flame can be challenging! Our children demonstrated fantastic persistence, working together and problem-solving until they achieved success.

• Responsibility: We taught them about the crucial safety rules and the responsibility that comes with managing fire, reinforcing the values of care and respect for our environment and for each other.

• Confidence: The immense sense of achievement when the tinder finally catches fire is a powerful boost to a child's self-confidence and ability to tackle new challenges. This valuable wider development is a key strength of our school.

Science in Action: Practical Learning

The session provided brilliant, hands-on links to their science curriculum:

• Combustion: Pupils learned practically about the three elements needed for fire—fuel, heat, and oxygen—linking directly to the concept of combustion and chemical reactions.

• Materials: They explored different types of natural materials (tinder and kindling) and experimented to see which ones were the most effective for catching and sustaining a flame. This links to understanding the properties of materials.

• Heat Transfer: We discussed how heat is transferred and the principles of managing energy safely in the outdoors.

Our Forest School sessions are a core part of how we ensure our pupils are well-prepared for life in modern Britain by teaching them practical skills and fostering their confidence and independence.

It has been a week of tremendous concentration and discovery in our Nursery class, as our youngest pupils embarked on a super-important mission: becoming official Colour Detectives!

This activity forms a key part of our Early Years curriculum, helping children to develop their powers of observation, language, and communication. Our little adventurers marched through the school environment, their eyes sharp, searching for specific colours that matched their detective lists.

The mission culminated in a special visit to my office. Each child proudly presented the colours they had successfully identified. I was so impressed with their hard work and focused effort that I was delighted to award every single Colour Detective a sparkly rainbow sticker! The pride on their faces as they received their sticker was absolutely infectious.

Wincham Community Primary School will be joining schools across the nation to celebrate Maths Week England from Monday 15th - Friday 21st November!

What is Maths Week England?

Maths Week England is a fantastic national initiative dedicated to showing everyone that mathematics is fun, creative, and relevant to everything we do! It's an opportunity for us to go beyond the curriculum and celebrate the wonder of numbers and how they shape the world around us. Our goal is to promote a positive culture around maths, making it visible, engaging, and inspiring for all our pupils.

This is a perfect fit for our ethos of ensuring children are inquisitive learners who achieve well across the curriculum!

As part of our commitment to make maths exciting and high profile in our school, we are taking part in a friendly competition involving schools in England. The competition runs from 07:30 GMT Tuesday 18th November 2025 to 19:30 GMT Thursday 20th November 2025. It's all done online via play.ttrockstars.com. 

Children can play in any gamemode with every correct answer to a multiplication or division question, earning themselves, their class and the school a point. The Times Tables Rock Stars platform will calculate the class average - the number of correct answers per pupil in the class who play during the competition hours, subject to a daily 60-minute limit (see below). Winning classes in the school and in the competition as a whole will be the ones with the highest average.

To support player wellbeing, there is a daily time limit of 60-minutes per player. In other words, each player can earn competition points for up to 60-minutes between 07:30 GMT and 19:30 GMT on 07:30 GMT Tuesday 18th November 2025 to 19:30 GMT Thursday 20th November 2025. Once the player goes beyond 60-minutes of play on that day, they will still earn coins but will no longer earn points towards the competition.

In the spirit of the competition, please don't play on their behalf but by all means encourage and support them to the extent that it doesn't cause high stress levels or impact on family plans.

We are so pleased to invite all our pupils to join us for our annual Christmas Film Night, providing a safe, warm, and supervised environment for an early festive treat. This is always a hugely popular event and a brilliant way for the children to share some smiles together before the busy month of December begins.

This year, the children will enjoy the timeless Christmas classic: Home Alone!

All the Details You Need:

• Who: All Wincham Community Primary School pupils are welcome!

• What: Treetops Christmas Film Night featuring Home Alone (U)

• When: Monday, December 1st, 2025

• Time: 3:25 PM – 6:00 PM (Running straight after school)

• What's Included: Popcorn and a drink to enjoy during the film!

The Treetops team takes wonderful care of the children every single day, and we look forward to extending this care into a joyful evening of festive fun.

Action Required: If your child would like to attend, please ensure you book their place via the usual Treetops booking system as spaces are limited.