£7,500 raised by the Circle of Friends
Our Circle of Friends has been working hard all year putting on a range of fun activities and fundraising events to raise money for the School. Events included the Christmas Fayre, which raised in the region of £4,300, the Halloween Quiz, a talk on Degas, and the popular Pinkster Gin session, which will be followed this year by a wine tasting evening hosted by Tuffon Hall Wines on Wednesday 12 September 2018 - book your tickets now!
We are delighted to announce that this year the Circle of Friends has raised £7,500 this year to help benefit all the children at our School, a fantastic achievement. We are enormously grateful for all their hard work and support to fundraise this amount – and would also like to extend our thanks to all the parents and guardians who have supported all their initiatives.
In collaboration with the school, the Circle have decided to spend the funds on a range of exciting equipment that will be of real benefit to the girls going forward. For STEMM, we will be buying 5 Lego MindStorms Sets for Year 8; these programmes enable the girls to develop and build robots. This activity will encourage critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration skills. We will also be buying 20 Chess sets for Year 7, which will improve their thinking skills and problem-solving skills, as well as some new Virtual Reality headsets, to bring learning to life in the classroom. We are also investing in the Art Department so that they can buy new equipment such as a new Kiln Programmer, a Ring Flash and a Flash Gun. In advance of the new Prue Leith course which is being introduced in September 2018, we are buying a variety of kitchen equipment to enable the girls to get the most out of the course: chopping boards, serving dishes, ovenproof dishes and knife sharpeners, alongside deep fat fryers, mandolins, coffee bean grinders for spices and more! We are also investing more than £2,000 into the Design Technology department, for them to buy equipment such as a vinyl cutter, circular saw, bandsaw and strip heater.
Finally, the School will also buy yoga mats and blocks for Teen Yoga sessions, which will be running all year. Feedback from the students regarding the yoga sessions has been very positive, and we feel that this activity will support the students’ well-being and teach them key skills to alleviate stress and anxiety.
If you would like to support the Circle of Friends, be sure to come to the exciting events on offer next year. As mentioned, one of the first of these will be a wine tasting session, as well as a quiz on Friday 3 November 2018, and the Christmas Fayre on Tuesday 4 December 2018. We look forward to seeing you there.