Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue - the House System cometh

We have worked on the creation of a House system for Goddard Park over several months. The themes were based upon Swindon's heritage of Trains, Planes and Automobiles. We added water as a means of transport as the fourth. We asked the Schools Council, Staff, and Parents what names they thought would be right for each House. Some came easily as the GWR Castle engines gave us Castle House in its Green livery.Vickers Armstrong's Supermarine Spitfire provided Spitfire House with a Yellow Sun. Cars were plentiful with Honda and BMW's Mini, but we went back to Pressed Steel's MG for the Red MG House. This left us with the most difficult decision and that was Blue for water. We had suggestions around Swindon's canal, but nothing directly that the children could really relate to. Eventually, we settled on Weymouth House as it is often referred to as 'Swindon by the sea', many of our children (and some Staff) holiday there, we have had annual residential trips there from School for nearly 20 years, and it has the sailing Olympics this year.
All the children and Staff have now been attached to a House (with families in the same House) and a weekly Trophy is to be presented in a full School Assembly. Children can earn House points in a variety of ways including good work, perseverance, courtesy and good manners, being thoughtful about others, as well as good attendance and being in full School uniform. The Schools Council came up with some of the ideas and we are looking forward to this permeating all School life.

To France: the Dordogne for Christmas

It was the Dordogne for Christmas in a converted station halt in a small hamlet near the splendid town of Excideuil. 

Outings to Martignac and Sarlat were followed by time on a farm run by Thierry and Diane. We fed calves and saw the evening milking. Cows had a quick and effective response to a 'foreign' calf coming to milk, but not one I would recommend. Three days in, we had our Waterloo moment. Coming round a very sharp bend on a narrow road was our German Mercedes and it's British driver. Unfortunately, coming from the other direction was a French Peugeot on the same piece of tarmac. The outcome was another Waterloo with the French car 'totalled', and the Mercedes in need of some tender loving care, but eminently repairable. The female French driver was not Napoleon, but in fact Josephine.....
This did not affect a wonderful time 

and we were very pleased that Father Christmas found his way with the reindeer to France. He even left his footprints!

The way home was amusing. Everything was fine until the ferry at Calais where we said goodbye to the replacement C3 (which never seemed to need to visit a petrol station). A full set of luggage and the family, no trollies, and a late ferry left us at 9pm at night at the Dover terminal contemplating options. The last train was 10.44pm and we had tickets for 7.44pm. There was no connection from London. Should we stopover in Dover? Not a sentence I've ever had to use before.
It was midnight as we came into St Pancras International. A huge amount of luggage, three very young children, and no trollies again. The trainguard was brilliant - a real railwayman. As we relayed down the platform I spotted a trolley and as the family came closer it looked eerily like a carbon copy of our situation - young children, lots of pieces of luggage etc. They were getting on the train and explained they had just a car crash in France! General laughter. This required a group photo, and agreement about the good old British 'Never say die' spirit. They gave us the trolley, and then we then entered our nine-seater taxi driven by a very obliging Farzad from Old Town.

We three Kings and one mobile crown

A 3rd birthday (December 13th) party with special guests

As he approached his 3rd birthday James became increasingly excited. In addition to a bouncy castle at the party we had the services of Kenny, a local magician, as well as personal appearances by Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse. Fun for twenty friends including Lily, George, Ted, Freya, and special friend Aaron.