We are lucky to have a school with so much space both inside and out. Recently we started our project to make the most of this asset for everyone - making the building and grounds the BEST that they can be.
Just before the summer holidays Hampshire County Council completed the sale of the old dining room land (just outside the school grounds near the railway line). We are working with Hampshire on how we can use the proceeds from that sale to help make some significant improvements to the school building. We will share more information as these plans start to come together, but it will take a little bit of time before things start to move on this.
In the meantime, we are not hanging around. With the help of the Friends of Stanmore, Mr Foard our new site manager and many others we are making a difference. Here are some of the things we have been doing or are in our plan.
We have cleared the outdoor classroom area and we now have four raised beds ready to be adopted by each of our school Houses. They will compete in a Stanmore in Bloom competition later in the year.
If you are able to help your child’s House become the clear winner, then we need your green fingers, your expert advice, imagination and a bit of time. The Friends of Stanmore will be in touch with more details in the coming weeks.
Moving onto the field. In this area we will be installing three Willow Tee Pees paid for by the Friends of Stanmore. This will give a lovely place for the children to play and explore.
Talking of the back field, we have been using this great space for both playtime and lunchtime since the beginning of term.
We’re currently working through how we enable the children to use the field in through the winter. We are thinking about wellies and wet weather trousers at the moment, but we’ll communicate more on this shortly.
We’ve repaired the fencing and the steps around the play equipment and the children are now enjoying the use of the this during their playtime and lunchtimes. There is plenty of scope to help them use up some excess energy.
The area around the pond has been cleared and the children have been studying some of the wildlife we share our environment with in lessons recently.
We have engaged a contractor to come to site during the October half term to give the greenery a good haircut and help us to get some the bushes around the school back under control.
We haven’t stopped with the outside though. During the summer we moved the Stanmore Library and the Ready to Learn inside the main school building. The old library space in the quad is now an outside classroom which is being used daily for intervention.
