Hello!

Starting immediately after the Easter Holidays, Hawking Class will have a swimming lesson every Thursday afternoon. They will be walking to the swimming pool with Mrs Lees and Miss Groves.

To enable this to happen, we need a volunteer to go with us each week. Please contact the school office or catch me if you are able to help with this.

Guidance for swimming:

• Your child will need a swimming costume with them otherwise they cannot participate in the swimming session. For girls this must be a swimsuit (no bikinis or tankinis) and for boys, trunks (not swimming shorts).
• They will also need a towel.
• No earrings at all. If the children come with them in, staff can't take them out and they will not be able to swim. 
• Long hair must be tied up - a bun is preferable as long ponytails impede the arm movement in the water.
• Children will need to be able to get changed within 5 minutes so they can have time in the pool.  If they are not great at this, please practise with them over the holidays.
• Whilst the children are having swimming lessons in school, it would be great if you can find time during the weekend or evenings to take them as a family so that they are building their confidence. 

Please note:

Please do not send your child to school wearing their swimming costume: this makes going to the toilet during the day complicated and often results in them having no underwear to put on when they come out of the water!!

Year Five Classroom: Thoughts Like an Ocean

The sea comes to me on the shore

On lacy slippered feet

And shyly, slyly slides away

With a murmur of defeat.

 

And as I stand there wondering

Strange thoughts spin round my head

Of why and where and what and when

And if not, why, what then?

 

Where do lobsters come from?

And where anemones?

And are there other worlds out there

With other mysteries?

 

Why do I walk upon dry land

While fishes haunt the sea?

And as I think about their lives

Do they too think of me?

 

Why is water, water?

Why does it wet my hand?

Are there really as many stars

As there are grains of sand?

 

And where would the ocean go to

If there was no gravity?

And where was I before I lived?

And where’s eternity?

 

Perhaps the beach I’m standing on

Perhaps this stretch of sand

Perhaps the Universe itself

Lies on someone else’s hand?

 

And isn’t it strange how this water and I

At this moment happened to meet

And how this tide sweeps half the world

Before stopping at my feet.

 

Gareth Owen