No idling outside school please!

If you’ve not seen our banner outside the school gates yet, the message is simple:

“Engines off so we don’t cough!”

This campaign is about respecting our children’s right to breath cleaner air. This applies to anywhere you have to wait and not just schools. On a public road, it indeed is illegal to sit in your car whilst keeping the engine running within the UK. The Highway Code states: 'You MUST NOT leave a parked vehicle unattended with the engine running or leave a vehicle engine running unnecessarily while that vehicle is stationary on a public road'.

Southampton City Council are currently consulting on a strategy for cleaner air in the City. You can find out more here: https://www.southampton.gov.uk/environmental-issues/pollution/air-quality/

The map below highlights the situation in our area:

This is also a national issue and here is a link to an article on air pollution on the BBC yesterday: 'Our children are suffocating'

  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-47138228

So please reflect on your own car use and let's not add to the air pollution that NHS reports say cause up to 40,000 premature deaths per year in the UK.

Science Week: 12th – 16th March 2018

Science Week is fast approaching and will provide our pupils with a great opportunity to get stuck into some investigations, with opportunities to apply their literacy and maths skills in a scientific context. You may also be interested to know that you can also get involved, by taking part in the Citizen Science Project. The Plastic Tide are working hard to keep our beaches and oceans clean and are asking people at home to help train their algorithm to automatically detect plastics and marine litter on beaches by tagging plastics and litter on their online drone imagery.

To find out more and to get involved, please visit their websites:
https://www.britishscienceweek.org/plan-your-activities/citizen-science/
https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/theplastictide/the-plastic-tide

Currently, 60% of our oceans are heavily contaminated with plastics, which take over 450 years to degrade. This is having a huge impact on our marine life, as many of our precious sea creatures are ingesting and being trapped in plastics. In turn, this can contaminate the food chain, including our own food. Therefore, in order to our bit to help reduce plastic waste, we would like to introduce Waste Free Lunchboxes for the week (and hopefully beyond). This means that if your child brings a lunch, drink or snack from home, they are being asked to bring it in reusable, washable containers rather than single use packaging. The goal is to have little to no packaging waste.

Tips for creating a waste free lunch:

• Use a reusable container for sandwiches or wrap in kitchen roll / greaseproof paper (which can be
• composted) instead of foil or clingfilm.
• Bring drinks in a reusable bottle rather than cartons or foil pouches
• Instead of buying separate individual servings of snacks (yoghurt, raisins, biscuits, crisps etc), buy one large pack and then put a serving each day in a smaller reusable container - also a money-saver!
• Use cutlery that can be washed and used again
• Choose fruit as your snack of choice, not only is this a healthy option, but the leftovers can be composted - win-win!
• Only pack what they can eat. This will save your pocket, as well as the environment!
• Check what they like and don’t like - don’t waste time and money putting something in that’ll just end up in the bin
• Waste not, want not - pack up last night’s leftovers in reusable containers for a lunch time treat
• If you don't do so already, try packing lunches the night before and keeping them in the fridge overnight

Small changes really can make a difference and by making minor adjustments, we can all help reduce the negative impact we have on the environment; therefore, please join us in our attempts to reduce, reuse and recycle.

Swifts LOVE recycling!

Earlier this week the Swift class were visited by the recycling team in Southampton to help them understand more about recycling.  In Science we have been focusing on materials and their uses so this linked in brilliantly! Children took part in a fun activity which helped teach them about the things that can be recycled...it was very interesting!

Bin it to win it

At the beginning of this year we pledged as a school to say that we are good at recycling.
The recycling officers for Southampton have recently come out to have a look and they also agreed that we are very good! As a prize we have been presented with 5 mini greenhouses and some herbs.

 We are very excited to start growing plants, year 1 are very excited as in the summer term we grow beans and will be able to use the greenhouses to begin the seeds germination.
Well done Bitterne Manor keep up the good work on recycling!

The Golden Lock...

This half term a 'Golden Lock' has been revealed to the children at Bitterne Manor Primary School! To help encourage children to bike or scoot to school they will be given a chance to win a special prize! Mrs Rice will place a 'Golden Lock' on a bike or scooter and that child will win something just for coming to school on it! How cool is that? Ruby was the lucky winner when it started last week.  Well done! I wonder who will win next...? Good luck! 

Bench Marked For Success!

We're very proud to have just received a special bench completely recycled from plastic bottles. A group of our pupils took part in a competition to promote and encourage everyone to do more recycling. Their efforts have been rewarded with this fantastic bench which will now find a home in our school grounds. Well done!

Winners at our school

A huge well done goes to some of our children today who were invited to the mayors chambers last night after becoming winners and runners up in an unusual suspects competition. The children were encouraging others to recycle some of the more unusual items that often get forgotten.  Some of the winning entries will be seen around Southampton. Well done to everyone who entered, you did amazingly!

 

Love Your Bike & Scooter Day...

We all know that children enjoy cycling and scooting so lets allow them to show their bikes and scooters how much they are loved by decorating them with their favourite items and pictures! We also want everyone to love their heart by being healthy and cycling and scooting in to school on the 10th February. When children get to school we will have a parade around the playground to show off the beautiful bikes and scooters. If they feel creative, write a short poem about how much they love cycling and scooting. There will be prizes for the best poems. Hand the poems in to class teachers.

Raffle draw

Today the eco team had the opportunity to draw the lucky 18 winners of the chocolate hamper. There is still the opportunity to pay the donation if you didnt get the opportunity. Well done to our winners and thank you for your continued support!

Chocolate Raffle!

We apologise in advance to those who may have begun their 'New Year Resolutions' but this is for a good cause...! Mrs Carter who leads the school Eco Team has won a Cadbury's chocolate hamper for completing a survey online during Energy Month! Unfortunately the hamper arrived late afternoon on the last day of term, so we couldn't distribute the chocolate. So we then thought that it would be a good idea to run a 'Chocolate Raffle!'

Every child will be entered into the raffle. We are just asking for a small voluntary contribution of 50p to go towards our Eco Team. Please send this in by the end of this week. The Eco Team will then hold the raffle with Mrs Carter one day next week. The lucky winners will come home with some chocolate!

All contributions will be spent on badges for the Eco Team and food waste (fruit peelings) bins for each class, which can then be composted. Please support this good cause!

Horticultural Show 2015

A few more pictures to share from our Horticultural Show on Tuesday. This is the first time we've held a topic celebration like this and we hope that both the parents and children found it an interesting way of sharing their work from the last term. Well done to Year 1 and Year for working so hard on their contributions to the event!

Sunflower Results: Successes and.... Failures!

The results of our sunflower growing competition are in... Our learning leader team have recorded the heights of the surviving sunflowers as follows.

Year R: 0

Year 1: 80 cm

Year 2: 0

Year 3: 125 cm

Year 4: 0

Year 5: 43 cm (...but dead!)

Year 6: 176 cm

Mrs Hayward & Mr Adams: 62 cm

Which means the winners are: YEAR 6!

The Bitterne Manor Farm Show & Competitions 7th July

Firstly, we would like to invite everyone to enjoy our horticultural event being held after school on Tuesday 7^th July from 3.30 – 4.15 p.m.  This is an end of topic celebration for Year 1 and 3 but we thought we would share it with the whole school. (Parents of Year 1 & 3 pupils are invited from 2.30pm)

You will have the chance to enjoy:

• A display of Maypole dancing (and be invited to have a go!)
• A barn dance performance
• Enjoy a visit from Mill Cottage Farm
• Share work from our Year 1 and 3 pupils
• Refreshments available from the PTA (a small cost)

We will also be holding several competitions open and free for all children to enter. We will award prizes to the winners of each of the following competitions with separate categories for KS1 and KS2.

• Garden Gallery: 
• Create a picture/photo/collage/poem with a garden theme.
• The Great Bitterne Bake Off:  
• Bring some homemade cake or sweet on the day.
• Veggie People: 
• Create a fruit or vegetable character.
• Garden on a Plate:
• Create a garden in miniature

We look forward to seeing as many of you as possible at the event.