February 2025 Whole School Newsletter
This month, ask your child:
- What makes you smile and feel happy? What are you good at? Which different emotions have you felt today?
- What have you learnt about in assemblies, including Lunar New Year and staying safe online.
- Which Life Skills are you learning about this month? They will be learning about self-belief, resilience, honesty and courage.
- Are you challenging yourself to learn a poem by heart? Which poems are your favourite? Poetry by Heart launched for the Juniors last month.
Message from the Heads
Dear Parents and Carers,
As we step into this chilly but bright month, the school is buzzing with enthusiasm, children are deep into their spring topic learning, and we are all appreciating the lighter mornings and evenings.
Children’s Mental Health Week: "Know Yourself, Grow Yourself.”
We’ve started the month with Children’s Mental Health Week, which is themed “Know Yourself, Grow Yourself”. The children explored the wide range of emotions we all experience daily, learning that greater self-awareness fosters personal growth and resilience. Through stories and animated clips, we emphasised the importance of emotional literacy, as the ability to identify and articulate feelings leads to a deeper understanding of oneself and others. We encourage you to continue these important conversations at home, helping your child to feel comfortable discussing their emotions, and the concept that no emotions are ‘bad’, they are all valuable and valid. One way to do this is to read stories together and talk about the characters’ changing feelings, to ask them what made them smile in the school day, or to notice and help them to name any big feelings they have.
Here are some top tips for families: Children's Mental Health Week
Spring Nature News: Signs of Spring in London
We encourage you to take time to appreciate these changes in nature with your children, discussing the beauty around them and how it makes them feel:
- Blooms and Buds: look for early blooming flowers like crocuses and snowdrops.
- Birdsong: listen for the cheerful melodies of returning birds.
- Longer Days: notice the increase in daylight as the sun sets later.
- New Life: watch for the activity of animals waking from their winter slumber.
Football News
Our Football squads have been competing this season in the Camden North League Championship. Well done to our boys who have played brilliantly and finished 4th in the league and congratulations to the girls’ squad who, for the 2nd year running, are league champions! Not only this, but for those of you who like footie stats, they have some truly impressive ones. Over the 2 years the girls’ team have played 20 games - won 18 of these, drawn 2 and are undefeated! They have scored an incredible 65 goals across these games and conceded only 7. Talent wins games, but teamwork wins championships - so well done to our dream-team: Aniera, Beau, Daisy, Janet, Maya, Mimi, Renee, Sara and Vanessa.
Camden Schools Maths Challenge
EP hosted a maths tournament this week inviting schools across Camden to participate. 24 schools joined in, each sending four mathletes to compete. Congratulations to champions Torriano and well done to Ava, Alia, Edrin and Marcos who represented EP. We came 4th, just missing out on 3rd position in the final round.
National Engineering Competition
We are launching the National Engineering Competition on Monday and will share details with children through assemblies and class newsletters ahead of half-term - a great time to chat over and develop ideas for inventions. The Leaders’ Award is a competition open to children age 3-18yrs to encourage engineering and to respond to the question: If you were an engineer, what would you do? There are around 48,000 entrants nationally and EP always has fantastic entries, with multiple regional and even national winners over the years. We’re always blown away by the children’s creativity and imagination and are excited to see what their amazing minds invent this year.
Community Event: Bingo Night
We are excited to invite you to our Bingo Night next Thursday, February 13th! This fun-filled evening is a great opportunity for our community to come together, win fantastic prizes… and it’s also brilliant for spotting numbers! We’re fortunate to have Tom Gibson as our bingo caller – please ask your children to listen for his numbers during each round, so we don’t have to stop and wait for quiet. Remember that school rules apply and children should not be using mobile phones during the event. We can’t wait to see you at this evening of fun and laughter - your participation not only supports our school community but also fosters connections among us all - that essential value that we have at EP: a sense of belonging.
Thank you for your continued support in making our school a place where children feel ready, respectful and safe, allowing them to thrive in their learning.
Best wishes,
Natalie Stevenson and Sally Hill 
Key Information and dates for your diary
Reminder to apply for Nursery 2025
We are welcoming applications to our Nursery for September 2025. The deadline for application is the end of February. Please don't forget to apply - we need you to fill in the form, even as a sibling! Please also spread the word locally to apply to our Ofsted Outstanding Nursery - such a great foundation for future learning. The new intake is for children born between 1/9/21-31/8/22. Ask any interested friends and family to contact Tania@eleanorpalmer.camden.sch.uk for more information.
Half term and INSET day
Half term will arrive soon, with children breaking up as normal at 3:30pm on Friday 14th February. A reminder that there is an INSET day on Monday 24th February so the children return to school on Tuesday 25th February.
World Book Day - Thursday 6th March
EP children love reading! To celebrate World Book Day we encourage any children who wish to, to dress up as a favourite character from a book. In school we will be taking part in live lessons with authors online, teachers will read stories in different classes for ‘story swap’, and we will ring a bell throughout the day so that everyone in school can ‘drop everything and read’! Make sure your children have a great book on the go!
CBC Planning Meetings
A brilliant group of parents have begun to plan our Celebrating Black Culture (CBC) Party, date to be confirmed, and there are plenty of ways that all parents and carers can get involved. The next planning meeting will be next Friday 14th after drop off. Please come along!
Playtime fruit snacks
We know how important healthy snacks are in supporting children’s wellbeing and learning at school. The children in infant classes enjoy daily fruit and vegetable snacks at morning playtime, provided by Camden. Junior children are also welcome to bring in a piece of fruit for morning play. No chocolate, crisps or bars though please.
Attendance
We know that sickness in our community can be higher in the winter months, but ask that if your child is a little under the weather or has a light cold, that they still come to school. If they have a temperature however, please let them recover at home. There is a useful link on the NHS site to help guide whether or not to keep children home. NHS Guide -is my child well enough for school?
Term dates for 2025-2026 are linked. A reminder that there is no authorised holiday outside of term time. Our pupil attendance is reported to, and monitored by Camden, who may issue penalty notices for term-time absences in line with national guidance. We obviously don’t want our families to face these fines, so please be clear of, and adhere to, the new guidelines -
Excellent attendance = academic and wellbeing success!
Children who have excellent attendance and punctuality achieve more highly and progress more rapidly across the curriculum. This is evident in the Camden-wide Year 6 SATs results data for 2024, which clearly shows that high attendance results in higher attainment. As a school, we see the link between excellent attendance and learning success across all year-groups, not just at the end of Year 6.
Club EP
Club EP bookings are open for the second half of term. The club is very popular and its primary purpose is to support working parents. If you do not need your booking on any given day please let the office know as soon as possible to free up a space for someone else.
Sports Clubs
The timetable for sports clubs remains the same after half term and clubs commence on our first day back. A reminder that the fee for attending these clubs is £10 for each half term (regardless of how many sessions or how many clubs attended) . Please settle any payments for the first half of the term through Scopay (or cash to the office). There is no cost for children eligible for Free School Meals.
Spring Term Dates
- Thursday 13 February - Bingo
- 17 - 21 February - Half Term
- Monday 24 February - Staff INSET day
- Friday 28 February - Stay & Play and Year 2 Snack Sale
- Thursday 6 March - World Book Day - children can dress up as their favourite book character
- Friday 7 March – Year 1 Snack Sale
- Friday 14th March- Reception Snack Sale
- Wednesday 26 and Thursday 27 March - Parent Progress Meetings
- Friday 28 March - Nursery Snack Sale
- Friday 4 April - Egg Race and last day of term ending 3:30pm
- Spring Holiday - Monday 7 - 18 April plus Bank Holiday Monday 21 April
Summer Term
- Monday 5 May - Bank Holiday
- May 12-15 Year 6 SATs tests
- Thursday 22 May – CBC Night
- Half term Monday 26 May - Friday 30 May
- Monday 2 June - INSET day
- Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 July Parent Progress Meetings
- Friday 4 July - Nursery Sports Day
- Tuesday 8 July Sports Day Rec -Year 6
- Friday 18th July - Last day of term ending 1:30pm
