 | Village News |  |
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| Mar 08 - Pre-School News | |
We welcomed 9 new children and their families into the pre-school in January; and currently have 36 children attending; we have recently expanded our opening times to five days a week. See our advert for ages, times and phone numbers. Children become funded from the term after their 3rd birthday. So if you are thinking about a pre-school space, or would like to look around, please ring during session time, we will be happy to see you. The pre-school has enjoyed a very busy start to the year; with the children learning about colours and shapes, the children enjoy celebrating festivals from different countries, and have celebrated the Jewish tree festival by planting two trees in the garden, and tasting fruits from Israel, Chinese new year, was celebrated with the children making their own Chinese lion, dancing and listening to Chinese music. Easter is approaching fast this year, and as usual they will be celebrating this with the various craft activities. We are very proud to say that we have been awarded The Suffolk Quality Assurance Scheme by Suffolk County Council. The staff have worked hard over the past few months to get their pre-school up to this standard. This makes our pre-school one of high standards in care and education of early year’s children. | All we need now is a real village hall to place our award! Don’t forget to support the village hall fundraising events it will benefit the pre-schoolers. Our hard working committee organised a family valentine disco held at Thorndon Village Hall on 16th February. The next family event is our annual sponsored spring walk; on April 13th at 11 am. This is always a popular fun time, with the children, parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles enjoying a short walk around the footpaths, returning to the village hall for a drink and a barbecue lunch. Should anybody like to join us for this event, you are most welcome, just let us know so we can cater for you? The children are also working on some amazing art work so we thought it would be nice to hold an art exhibition in the hall on Wednesday 19th March at 1pm. All work will be framed and signed by the artist, and will be available to purchase for a reasonable price, who knows we may have a budding Picasso in our midst. Their will be a glass of fresh orange juice and light refreshments for all who attend. The children will be spending any money made on toys of their choice. Please support them if you can. More news after the Easter holidays. |
| Mar 08 - Play Area and New Village Hall | |
| Play Area We have secured £7,890 from ‘Awards for All’ to install galvanised metal fencing around the play area. Since submitting our original application the price of steel has shot up so we are applying for a little bit more from a couple of other sources just to complete the task and hope to have the new fencing, together with self closing gates in place soon.
| New Village Hall At the beginning of December, we were thrilled to receive the news that out of 1500 applicants, Occold had made it into the final 130 (8.6%) accepted into the Stage 2 of the Big Lottery Community Buildings Fund. Different members of the ORAC team are now busy preparing the various documentation required to complete this stage (Capital Delivery Plans, Business Plans and Legal Work etc). Once submitted we will then have to wait up to a further 6 months to hear if we have been fully successful. So we are busy trying to pull everything together as soon as possible, whilst ensuring a professional approach, so that we have a final outcome by the end of this year! In the meantime, we are continuing to make applications to various other sources of funding to boost the appeal. Please stay positive – this round of the Lottery is far less competitive than the first so we are nearly there!!! |
| Mar 08 - Occold Basketball Team Wins!! | |
High Suffolk Schools Sports Association Small Schools Basketball Tournament. On Tuesday 26th February the annual basketball tournament was held at Stradbroke Business and Enterprise College. The event, which was organised by Mr Fordham, Head teacher at Hoxne Primary, went very smoothly with nearly one hundred youngsters taking part from ten local schools split into two leagues. As the leagues progressed the standard, which began from a good level, improved and there were some very exciting matches. The outcome of the leagues led to two semi finals with Thorndon playing Wilby and Occold playing Hoxne. These were closely contested with the old rivals Occold and Thorndon winning through to the final. |
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