Maintenance Day (3)

Su, our organiser, was feeling silly by this time!


People wanted proof I actually did some work other than taking photos!

Getting there now...

We filled the skip to overflowing and took numerous bags of rubbish to the dump-it site as well:

Team spirit was high!

At the end of the day, it looked like this:

Many thanks to all who helped, and apologies that I have no photos of the afternoon shift in action. We had a veritable army of willing workers:
* Mark & Su Wood
* Paul Dunning
* Dave Wagstaff
* Julian Grummett
* Tim Clee
* Tim Allen (with thanks for his wife's brownies!)
* Tim Barker
* Tom Isherwood
* Erica Bagshaw
* Joanne Darlington
* Sarah Dodd
* Biing & Jane Hen
* Mr Sutton
* Donna Withers
* Kath Sykes

Altogether, these fantastic workers put in 44 hours 55 minutes of work. Not bad for a day's work, eh?! We were scheduled to finish at 5 p.m., but these workers worked so hard that we'd finished by just after 3 p.m. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Maintenance Day (2)

Whilst we were clearing the outdoor area, Paul Dunning was climbing high to solve a pigeon problem:

This is the plan we are working to create (not that you can see it well here!):

After two hours' work, you could finally see the ground:

As we worked, the skip was getting full!

So full, it needed compacting!

New blood arrived later in the morning:

Maintenance Day

Today was the first maintenance day for sorting out the rubble and debris in the area that will soon (we hope!) become an outdoor play area. A huge THANK YOU to all who helped out; everyone worked so hard and the difference we made to the area was incredible!

This is how it looked at the start of the day:

Here we have willing workers, digging well!

More work:

At the skip:

Yet more work:

Coming soon to a school near you!

This Saturday (28th September) will be a maintenance day at Hope House School, with willing volunteers working in two shifts (from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and then from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m.) to clear the rubble and debris in the outdoor area between the school and the Post Office. We are determined to make a good start on clearing the area so that work can begin in earnest on transforming this area into a place where pupils can both play and learn. Many thanks to all who have already volunteered to help out. If you are able to come along for even an hour or so, that would be a great help - just let us know in the school office and we'll do our best to get cracking on this new project!

The next FHHS Planning meeting will be on Monday 7th October at 7.30 p.m. We'll be looking at what to do next with the outdoor play area and planning the Christmas Fayre.

Events to put in your diaries now include:
Monday 21st October Bake 'n' Take
The first Bake 'n' Take of the new academic year will be on Monday 21st October at 3 p.m. Please bring in homemade baking to sell at this event and we are sure it'll be a great event!

Thursday 14th November Bag2School Recycling Day
Bring in all your unwanted clothes, bedding, curtains, bags, belts and shoes and we will exchange these for money! Bags will be given out nearer the time, but again, this is a great and easy way of raising funds for the outdoor area project.

Friday 29th November Christmas Fayre
Whilst it seems almost sacrilegious to mention Christmas in September, I have to point out that we're holding a Christmas Fayre on Friday 29th November from 3 p.m. until 5 p.m. We'll be running our usual hamper competitions, so if you have any items of food, drink or toiletries to offer for these, please send them in to school, remembering to give us an idea of their value. We are also holding a 'Bottle Bank', so any bottles (containing wine, spirits, non-alcoholic drinks, oils, vinegars etc.) will also be gratefully received.

At the Christmas Fayre, there will be a number of stalls selling items and lots of games and competitions. If you are able to help in any way at the Christmas Fayre, please let me know.

Calling on willing helpers!

Don't forget we are having a maintenance day on Saturday 28th September. Anyone who is able to come along for a few hours to help clear the outdoor area will be welcomed with open arms and doubtless given a wheelbarrow to load up and take to the skip we're hiring! We really do want to make this a day of significant progress, so please do fill in the reply slip on the letter from school or let us know via the School Office if you can come.

We will be running two sessions: the morning session from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m. and an afternoon session from 1 p.m. until 5 p.m. You can come for all or part of a session, but it really would be helpful to us to know who's coming, as space is limited and we need to organise exactly what's happening. Please come along if you can! As they say, 'many hands make light work' and we really do want to see this project moving forward.

Project update

A project is 'an individual or collaborative enterprise planned and designed to achieve an aim.' Schools are full of projects. Pupils do them all the time to help develop their research skills and ability to work independently. Parents will be used to projects on Vikings or Romans or Egyptians and in the Senior departments, pupils often develop their IT skills by looking at a particular area of research, giving presentations at the end to enhance their speaking skills. Projects in the wider world often involve budgets and take a lot of planning and organisation. They're not for the faint-hearted!

Over the years, FHHS has been involved in a number of projects. We like fund-raising for projects because they give us a focus for fund-raising. People can see what we're aiming to do and when the project involves refurbishment of the building, it's easy to actually see the results. The Science Lab. at school was one of the first refurbishment projects we were involved in and that saw the laboratory expanded, refurnished and a preparation area transformed (the photcopier used to live there!)

The next refurbishment project we were involved in was the Sports Hall. That turned into a much bigger project (in terms of time and money!) than we had anticipated! We started off wanting to put a new floor down and redecorate. In the end, we had a lot of re-pointing and external building work to do before we could get round to the flooring. We also had new lights fitted and a storage cupboard built.

The old Sports Hall floor:

New storage cupboard:

New floor:

The reason I mention these projects is first of all to let people know (new parents and friends in particular) of all we have done over the years. Secondly, projects are hard work and often take much longer and cost much more than we expect. The Sports Hall refurbishment began on 21st September 2005. It was finally completed in March 2011 when we were able to repay the loan the church had given us for the last items. The total cost of the project was £19,533.65 - all raised ultimately through the generosity of parents, friends and the church. When you look at the size of the school and look at the total, I hope you can see the sacrificial giving of many people in this area and their total commitment to the school. People donated time, resources, energy and money to make this project happen and although you may now look at the Sports Hall and be unable to see all that went on behind the scenes, I can assure you it was a very long labour of love for those of us involved!

The refurbishment of the outdoor area from a wasteland to a beautiful area for outdoor play and learning is a similar project. At the start of it, we feel daunted. We have ideas. Children have been involved in drawing their ideal area. Staff have been consulted. Now it's time to make those ideas a reality. The collaborative enterprise is underway! It's already started: during summer, the school caretaker, Mr Parry, has been clearing the area and church members undertook a mini-project in itself to remove metalwork that used to belong to the factory which previously owned the building.

We are having a maintenance day on 28th September. We need muscle to move stuff! There is still a lot of rubble and debris which needs clearing out before we can start to make things look good. So, if you are able to give up a couple of hours of your time on that day, we'd love to see you! We will be working in two main shifts: morning (9 a.m. - 1 p.m.) and afternoon (1 p.m. - 5 p.m.) and will hire a skip so that we can get rid of stuff we don't need in order to be able to start the landscaping and refurbishment proper.

If you can help, please let us know via the School Office, preferably giving us an idea of how long you can stay and what you can do. I'll be manning the boiler, I expect, making sure people have drinks to keep them going! This is an opportunity to be involved in something that will really enhance the pupils' learning, so please do let us know if you can help. All the FHHS projects are collaborative! Without others, we can't possible hope to achieve our aims, but we live by the TEAM principle - 'together everyone achieves more.'

AGM news

On Monday 9th September we held our Annual General Meeting.

It was good to review last year. We were involved in a number of activities, raising money for the school through these:
• Bake ‘n’ Takes (held in October, March, May and July) £376.70
• Christmas Fayre £411.04
• Beauty Evenings £92.00
• Channel Challenge Sponsored Swim £357.82
• Bag2School Recycling Days (November) £150.00

We used these monies to help school:
• Y11 Leavers’ books £67.12
• Drama equipment for Primary & Senior departments £140.64
• Printer/ ICT equipment £367.19
• House badges £112.44
• Ice-cream for pupils on Sports Day £48.00

That leaves us with £1300 to start the new academic year and we are going to need to raise a lot of money this year to help with the refurbishment of the outdoor play area which is our main project for the year! More details to follow shortly.

We enjoyed planning events for the coming term, including:
* Bake 'n' Take on Monday 21st October
* Bag2School Recycling Day on Thursday 14th November
* Christmas Fayre (date to be confirmed).

We hope you will be able to come along to these events and support us so that we can continue to improve the school facilities and help pupils to enjoy their time at Hope House School.

Here we go again!

Yes, it really is that time of year again! The summer months have flown by; the mornings are getting darker and the nights are drawing in. And I'm having to put .9.13 when I'm writing dates. We've reached September and the start of a new academic year!

It's a sure sign I'm getting older that this year seems to be flying by faster than any I've ever known. But, whether I like it or not, the academic year of 2013-2014 is beckoning and as such, another year of fun, fund-raising and fervent fantastic forays into refurbishment is about to begin!

The FHHS Annusal General Meeting will be on Monday 9th September at 7.30 p.m. in school. If you've never attended a FHHS meeting, why not make a new year's resolution (I kind of like the idea of doing that in September!) and come along? We're a bunch of friendly people who really want to help the school and improve the facilities for the pupils here. This year's main project will be the refurbishment of the outdoor play area between the school and the Post Office and we want to put on loads of events that can raise the money needed to turn the wasteland into an oasis of peace where children can relax, learn and have fun. All the money that we raise this year will go towards that project and we hope to see the area transformed by the end of the academic year.

Come along to the AGM with your ideas for fund-raising and social events and we will do our best to make this our best year ever. Thank you so much for all your support last year. Those of you who have sponsored Mr Felton in his amazing Ring O'Fire challenge (an ultra-marathon in Anglesey last weekend) should hand in your sponsor money by the end of the week if possible.

Hope to see you next Monday!