Torrential shower does not dampen spirits at St David’s Summer Fair!

After many years of fine weather for our annual Summer fair, it was bound to happen.  The weather forecasts warned of thundery showers with gusting winds between 1pm and 4pm and, for once, they were spot on.  Luckily, the showers only lasted about 15 minutes and not long after, the sun was out again drying us all out.

Thanks to the hard work and generosity of so many St David’s College parents, grandparents, children and staff, this was another fabulous event and many stalls were mobbed throughout the afternoon and sold out well before close of play.  The Tug of War was a real success (Nick’s commentary rivalled that of Eddie Waring and Stuart Hall – for those who remember “Its a Knockout” in its heyday).  The ponies were busy all afternoon.  The Raffle and the Silent Auction alone look to have raised (with the £ for £ matching) around £3,000!

But what made the afternoon so special was the commitment of the St Davids families and Old Davidians who, despite the miserable weather, came along to the Fair and stuck it out despite the downpour (and the flying gazebo!).  Thank you.

A special thanks to the members of the Summer Fair Committee, Amy, Bev, Helen, Jaime, Karen, Linda and Mary  who pulled the whole thing together and to the fantastic team of parents who were out from early Saturday morning, worked throughout the day and who helped clear up well into the early evening.

A list of Raffle and Silent Auction winners will be on display in the school and on the password protected section of the school website.  Details of the Fair’s profits will be posted on this website some time this week.

New Classroom – It’s Here!!

Those of you who walk past the gate to the field may have noticed the new classroom nestling among the trees, looking as if it has always been there!  The last three weeks have been action-packed for those of us Project Managing the build, but we are delighted with the result and feel that all the hard work has been worth it.  The final stage is the decoration of the interior which is taking place over this week.  If anyone would like to help out with painting the interior, please come along in your painting togs on Wednesday (27/4) or Thursday (28/4) and report to the school office – please bring paintbrushes and rollers if you have them.  Flooring is being laid on Friday, electrics are being finished this weekend, so the staff and children will be able to start using this wonderful new space from next week.
We will also be carrying out some landscaping of the surrounding area over the following few weeks – for more news on this aspect, keep an eye on this website.

Spring Term 2011 – How did we do?

Events and Fundraising

This term has been another busy one for the PTA with the Clothes sale, Phil the Bag, the Wine Tasting Evening and the Tea Party.  As always, these events cannot take place without the hard work of  a small band of tireless volunteers (parents and staff) and our thanks is due to all those people.

The money made by these events is as follows:

• £67 from the Clothes sale (and £67 raised for Charity)
• £137 from Phil the Bag
• £968 from the Wine Tasting
• £700 from the Tea Party.

In the background, we have had other fundraising initiatives such as Sutton Seeds, Internet buying portals (please keep using buyat, easyfundraising and TheGivingMachine for your internet shopping – use the links on this website under Schemes/PTA Online Shops) and the NfER Survey initiative (very few families have signed up for these surveys but you can still do so and earn £2 per family for the PTA – see the NfER letter on the school website).

Alongside these activities, things on the new classroom have reached a peak as we have moved into the preparation stage in readiness for the build to take place during the Easter holidays.  If anyone would like to help out with painting the interior of the classroom in the last week of the holidays, please give your name and contact details to the school office. Thank you to all those families who have supported this wonderful project by attending fundraising events, helping with preparation of the classroom site or by making generous financial donations.

For next term, we have the following events to look forward to:

• Secondhand Uniform sale on 3 May
• Summer Fair on 18 June
• Golf Day on 30 June
• Big Picnic on 10 July.

Proposed Golf Day

An interest has been shown in having a St David’s College PTA Golf Day, which we hope will be a great success. Langley Park Golf Club has been provisionally booked for the 30th June.  The day will start with coffee on arrival, followed by 18 holes of golf and rounding off with dinner. The cost will be around £40 per person.   If you are interested, please contact the school office so that we can ascertain likely numbers and confirm our booking.

Fireworks Display 2011

Being a firework display operator is ranked as one of the “World’s toughest jobs”. Safety is of the utmost concern and training is necessary. The current St David’s College PTA display team is looking for new volunteers to be trained this year and aid as firers.  If you are interested, please contact the school office.

Look out for fliers in the school bags, posts on this website and notices on our new PTA Noticeboard in Little School carpark for more information.

Happy Easter

Wine Tasting Evening

Don’t forget to buy your tickets – £10 a person – for this event and remember to invite friends and family.  This promises to be a fun evening and as well as trying out your wine tasting skills, there will be some easy games for those with a less astute palate, and a chance to bid for some great prizes in our Auction (see our new PTA Noticeboard for details and the latest flier which has just been sent home in the school bags).  As the date for construction of our long awaited new classroom edges ever closer – 7 April (fingers crossed!) – we continue to need to raise funds to replenish the PTA coffers after the expenditure on this exciting and substantial project.  So come along, have fun, and help raise funds for your PTA.

New Classroom – Site Clearance begins

Despite the miserable weather, clearance of the new classroom site began in earnest at 9am on Saturday morning.  Thanks to the back breaking efforts of a small team of parents and friends of St David’s College, by 3pm the site was clear of trees, old logs, brambles and ivy.  Huge thanks to Mark and Bev Steven, Mark and Karen Jepson, Huw and Mary Davies, Lawrence Mutti, Iain Balmain, Melanie Shenton, Rachel Wagstaff, Duncan (Rachel’s friend) and Linda De Freitas.   Thanks also to Mrs Wagstaff who kept the workers fed and watered!

Swimming Gala

Thank you to Rebecca Griffiths for organising a very well run and entertaining gala and to everyone who helped make the event a thoroughly enjoyable one.  Thank you also to everyone who entered, attended and donated raffle prizes.  The winners of raffle prizes who did not collect on the day are listed below and prizes can be collected from Justin Hall.

1)    GUYLIAN CHOCOLATES     WHITE 437     NAME  LAWS

2)    LIQUEURS                            PINK 495         NAME SLATTERY

3)    ISSEY MIYAKE                    WHITE 494       NAME  KAWA

4)    POSH PARFUM                   WHITE 418      NAME JULIA MORRIS

5)    GUINNESS SET                   WHITE 532      NAME NORTON

6)    WHITE WINE                      PINK 520         NAME P STREETER

7)    SLOW COOKER                  WHITE 542      NAME NORTON

8)    TRINKET BOX                      PINK 395         NAME E TICKEM

9)    DAIRY BOX                          PINK 576         NAME HANNAH

10) THORNTONS                     WHITE 538      NAME NORTON

11) CELEBRATIONS TIN          PINK 493         NAME SLATTERY

12) PLACE MATS                     PINK 552         NAME SCARROTT

13) DIARY                                 PINK 531         NAME SMITH

14) DIARY                                WHITE 420      NAME JULIA MORRIS

15) BOOTS ROYAL JELLY       PINK 573          NAME SCARROTT

Christmas Fair Figures

Finally (!), here is the breakdown of the Christmas fair profits by stall.  N.B.  If you add these figures up, they will not tally with the total Fair profits exactly because there are some miscellaneous items which are not attributable to any particular stall. 

Craft Room (Yr 3) – £233
Raffle – £404
Hair and Nails – £23
Garden Stall – £96
Tea Room (Yr 5) – £254
Secrets Room (Yr 1) – £251
Toy Stall (Yr 4) – £218
Santa’s Grotto – £29
Money Tree (Reception) – £101
Jolly Jars – £80
Bottle Tombola – £315
Soft Toy Tombola – £100
Chocolate Tombola (Yr 2) – £1,290 (this includes £645 matched funding from Barclays)
Charity (Yr 6) – £132 

Quiz – £75
Programme – £450

A fantastic result.  Thanks to everyone who did so much to make the Fair an enjoyable and successful event.

New Classroom – Latest News!

For those of you who have been following the progress of the school’s planning application for the new classroom – many months of hard work and a depressing rejection in October - we resubmitted our application which went to Committee last night (20 January).  Those in attendance from school – Mrs Wagstaff, Mrs Peters, Mrs Talley, Jaime Griffiths, Bev Steven, Mary Davies, Nick Chase and Linda De Freitas – sat with bated breath as the Councillors debated our application, and then heaved a collective sigh of relief as all the Councillors voted to grant our application.

A big thank you to all those involved in getting the project this far.  Special thanks are due to our Ward Councillor, Nicholas Bennett, who has provided so much help and advice over the past few months and who spoke in support of our application yesterday evening.  With a fair wind, we should be able to get the classroom “built” in the Easter holidays and the children could be using the new classroom in the Summer Term.

What’s On in Spring Term 2011

Happy New Year to all St David’s families and friends. Hopefully you are all feeling refreshed by the Christmas break as we launch into another busy term. 

This term our PTA events include the Interhouse Swimming Gala in February (organiser – Rebecca Griffiths), Spring Social in March (organiser – Sherry Bailey) and Mother’s Day Tea Party also in March (organiser – Bev Steven).  Keep an eye on this site and in the school bags for more information on all these events. 

As well as needing people to help out with these events, we are on the look out for volunteers to take on the following roles for the PTA:

• a small team to organise the Summer Fair (planning for this event needs to start this term)
• one or two people to run the refreshments table at the Dance Production in March
• someone to organise helpers for the Justin Hall Disco in May 
• someone to take on the task of selling advertsing space on the PTA website to parents wanting to advertise skills, businesses, holiday lets etc

If you are interested in helping, please contact Linda De Freitas or Helen Slattery.

Finally, don’t forget to hand in your St David’s College Christmas Quiz entries to the office by Monday 10 January 2011.  Results and answers will be posted on this website by Friday 14 January.  1st prize – £10 book token    2nd prize – £5 book token. 

 

Autumn Term 2010 – How did we do?

Well, a little later than anticipated (it was a busy week!!! – and then more snow!) here are the figures for some (but not all) of the PTA events for last term.

The Quiz Night made £272.41 for the Canterbury Oast Trust (a charity that this event has supported for many years).

The Fireworks Display made a fantastic £797 profit.

The Pamper Evening was not as well attended as we had hoped, but still made a healthy profit of £590.  Thank you Jaime for all your hard work organising this event.

Because the Christmas Fair had to be postponed, and was therefore held one week before the end of term, we still do not have final figures because not all expense claims and post-Fair receipts have been recorded.  So at this stage, we can say that profits from the Fair will be well over £3,000 – which is great, especially bearing in mind the postponement – but the final figure and stall-by-stall breakdowns will not be available until the beginning of the Spring Term.

Best wishes to everyone for a peaceful and relatively snow-free Christmas.  Don’t forget to have a go at the St David’s College PTA Christmas Quiz over the holidays and bring in your answers by Monday 10 January 2011.