Happy New Year! We sent some Christmas cards to Huizhong Beili in Beijing and they were so pleased to receive them that they made them into a display in their school. We are looking forward to having all the children backin school tomorrow.

After our Carol Service today we presented a cheque for £898.98 to Acorns Children's Hospice Trust. This is a magnificent total collected from our school community this term and boosted by the collections after each Christmas show. We also had a children's raffle this week and Sanjay from Acorns presented the prizes to the winning children who bought tickets. The children's raffle was our last fund raising event and contributed to the final total for Acorns. Thank you to all the children, teachers and assistants who have put on such a wonderful set of Christmas performances this week and Happy Christmas to everybody involved at CBJS. We are back at school on Tuesday 6th January at 8.50am

Yesterday Year 4 performed their Christmas show using the symbols of Christmas to link their songs together. Today Year 3 were on stage to entertain their parents and Year 2 from the infant school with their version of the Christmas story. Here are some photographs from the performances

Year 6 and Year 5 have both performed their Christmas shows to their parents and other classes in the school. The performances were full of Christmas songs and dance and very enjoyable for two packed audiences in the school hall. Tomorrow is the Year 4 show at 9.30 followed by their party in the afternoon. In between 300 children will be sitting down to Christmas dinner. Our Christmas charity fund raising for Acorns stands at £635 with 2 collections to go and a Children's Christmas Raffle to add to the total to be presented after the Carol Service on Friday.

Our Christmas hall displays are all linked to our Christmas celebration shows for parents next week.

Some Autumn Term house sport results for Year 6 and Year 4 have been published on the website.

Today we have had our annual PTA Christmas Fayre. Father Christmas has been here and given out over 100 presents. Various other Christmas stalls, games, tombolas and raffles have contributed to the festive atmosphere in school. Thank you to the PTA committee, staff, helpers and all who have contributed by sending in donations and/or attending the event in school.

Yesterday our school rock band played at the Cavern Club in Liverpool. The Cavern Club was made famous by the Beatles who first played there in 1961. They played alongside bands from Langley, Alderbrook, Archbishop Grimshaw and Solihull Music Service and became the first primary age children ever to play at this world famous venue. They sang 2 Beatles songs; 'Love me Do' and '8 Days a Week'

109 gift boxes for Operation Christmas Child have been collected and are now on their way to Eastern Europe where they will be given to children suffering through war, poverty, natural disasters and disease. Thank you to all the families who contributed to this year's magnificent effort.

Mrs Blackburn, Miss Otton, Miss Williams and Mr Bird have produced a report for the Specialist Schools' Trust who funded their visit to China at half term. You can find it in our international links China page.

On our Children in Need Day we raised £267.42 mainly from our copper collection and we also increased our total fund raising for Acorns to £391 with our Christmas activities still to come.

All Year 5 classes have recently visited Kingfisher Country Park in Shard End to find out more about rivers and issues around the water cycle and conservation. The children are also studying about these things at school.

On Friday we had a fund raising day for Children in Need and Acorns. It was also the school disco. Children dressed up for a Hawiaan Summer Fun Day, which was also the theme of the disco. They also brought in copper coins to decorate our Pudsey Bear drawn on the playground. School council children ran a variety of activities at the disco to raise money and Claire in the kitchen sold Pudsey biscuits. We will let you know the amounts of money raised when we have the final totals. Thank you to the school community for supporting all these events.

Yesterday our two steel pans groups played for the first time to the school. Pandemonium [4O] played New World by Dvorak [the music from the Hovis advert] and Pantastic [4H] played Supertrouper by Abba. They were both very entertaining and the whole school showed their appreciation of the music. Learning steel pans is part of the wider opportunities programme in music that our school is involved in.

During the half term holiday Mrs Blackburn, Mr Bird, Miss Otton, Miss Williams and Mr Backhouse went to China to visit the children and teachers at Huizhong Beili Primary School in Beijing. Our friendship with the school has been strengthened by Amanda and Gloria's visit to England in October. We took part in a wide range of activities in the school which will help teachers in both schools to improve their teaching. Just like the children at CBJS who loved having Amanda and Gloria in our school so the children in China were very excited about our visit to their school.

School closes today for half term. We open again on Monday 3rd November at 8.50am.

This week Year 5 are performing their Harvest Assembly called the Last Rainbow. We don't do a traditional harvest around food at CBJS. We usuallly do something connected with creating a better world and this year we have performed a show called the Last Rainbow which is about protecting the world's ecology. We have also been collecting for the Acorns Children's Hospice Trust [see below]. Today Year 5 have performed for the school and tomorrow it will be for parents.

At the moment Gordon our school mascot spends the week with the class who had the best attendance the week before.

We are supporting the Acorn's Children's Hospice Trust with collections related to various events in school this term. Click on the links for information about Acorns and how we will be supporting their care for children with life limiting illnesses.

We have put together photographs and a commentary from most of the events that Amanda and Gloria took part in last week. They got back safely to Beijing and they are now back teaching in their own school. We all had a very good week and our children enjoyed the visit and learned a lot from it.

Yesterday Amanda and Gloria went to Drayton Manor. The theme park gave us 5 complimentary tickets so Miss Otton took them with Ben and Jordan from our school council.

Today is Amanda and Gloria's last day at CBJS. The fly back to Beijing from Heathrow Airport tomorrow. Before they go they are going to see the sights of London. The banner which is now displayed in our school hall says that although we have a different culture our schools can learn from each other. We have learned a lot from Amanda and Gloria this week and they have learned a lot from us. It has been a very good week that has been enjoyed by us all.

After the welcome ceremony all our class councillors went out into our new quiet area to plant our friendship tree, a magnolia stellata. Amanda and Gloria helped to plant the tree and it sealed the partnership between our schools. There is a cherry tree planted in the grounds of Huizhong Beili Primary School, also a sign of friendship between our schools.

On Monday this week we had a special ceremony to welcome Amanda and Gloria. We had a welcome speech from the school council, some songs from the school choir,  the Year 6 recorder group and a ribbon dance. Amanda spoke to the school about how pleased they were to be in England and about the importance of our partnership with their school. Gloria sang a beautiful Chinese song. We also had a powerpoint presentation showing photographs of children in each school. We presented a basket of flowers to Amanda and Gloria and they brought a Chinese banner to display in our school which we will hang in our school hall.

Amanda has also being teaching in Year 5 today. At Huizhong Beili she teachers English to the children. Today she has been teaching some Chinese to 5S and 5C. She taught all the children to say China and England in Chinese. Then she taught them the Chinese numbers by getting the children to repeat the words, to count, to play games, by counting objects in pictures on the computer, by competitions, by clapping and using their fingers to show the numbers and by lots of enthusiasm and praise. The children really enjoyed learning the numbers up to 10 and Amanda enjoyed teaching our children.

Today Gloria from Beijing in China taught an art lesson on Chinese painting to 5L. She showed the children a cartoon of some animals including some little chickens. Then she introduced the children to Chinese paint brushes, Chinese ink and Chinese paper. She demonstrated some techniques for using the materials and then the children experimented making patterns. Finally Gloria taught the children to draw a chicken using the Chinese painting materials and then they painted their own pictures. Our teachers have seen Gloria teaching art in her own school at Huizhong Beili so it was very interesting to see her teaching art in our school. Miss Johnson has taught art at Huizhong Beili and she was able to observe Gloria teaching today. The children enjoyed the lesson and worked very hard to learn some new art techniques used in China.

In Year 4 all the children are learning to play steel pans. They produce a great calpyso sound and the children all play as a class. This initiative is part of the wider opportunities in music programme to give all children the chance to play a musical instrument. In a large school like ours the drums are an ideal instrument. We are looking forward to our first concert.

As we have been involved with several activities and visits to Huizhong Beili Schooll in China Mr Backhouse has produced a report describing the benefits that we have seen as a result of the link.

Last week Year 3 parents and grandparents joined their children at school in activities at the Inspire Workshops. One of the activities was building a tower from newspapers using all their BLP [building learning power] skills; parents and children.

Our quiet area on the playground has been landscaped to create a better look with new shrubs, trees, pathways, seating and a fruit orchard which we hope to harvest and use in school in years to come. We are also planting a special friendship tree [a magnolia which has Chinese origins] in the area to celebrate our partnership with Huizhong Beili. Amanda and Gloria arrive in England on Friday 3rd October 2008. On Monday 6th October 2008, their first day in school, we will be having a special assembly for them at 9.30, the tree planting ceremony after that and a special wake and shake at 11.30 after playtime on the same day. Our wake and shake was originally inspired by seeing their morning exercise programme that is so impressive on our visits to their school.

There is a friendship tree in the grounds of Huizhong Beili which was planted during Mr Backhouse's first trip to Beijing in March 2007 and our friendship tree will complete the link between our 2 schools.

We have recently updated our anti-bullying policy which can be found on the policies page of the website.

Last term we did a variety of activities with the children in our school and at Huizhong Beili. All the children in both schools completed a hexagon to show the things they like to do and are interested in. The hexagons tessalate togther and are displayed in each school. The children also drew a poster entitled 'All about me'  and they have also been displayed. Finally we held a mini olympics event between the two schools where all the children in different age groups took part in a 200m race, a 60m sprint, a long jump and a throw. The results were collated to see how many gold and silver medals were won in each school. The results are displayed in our school hall. Our China displays are ready for our Chinese teachers' visit on 6th October 2008.

We are linked with two local sports clubs and we are keen for our children to take part in sport in school and out of school as well. Castle Bromwich United play their fixtures on our school field and have teams across a range of ages. Castle Bromwich Cricket Club have helped to develop cricket in our school and several children have joined their club which is based on Arden Hall field. Click on the links above for more details about each club and their activities.

Our new Year 3 children have settled down really well, and very quickly into their new school and have already made a very good impression on their teachers and assistants and everybody else around school. We have taken some photographs of them working in their classrooms.

School starts again for the children on Wednesday 3rd September 2008. We hope they are looking forward to coming back. We have lots of dates in the diary for different activities and information will come out to parents in newsletters during the first few days of term. We are looking forward to welcoming 2 teachers from Huizhong Beili School in Beijing, China to our school during the week beginning 6th October 2008. Teachers from our school have made 2 visits to their school and another is planned for October 2008 half term when Mr Backhouse, Mrs Blackburn, Miss Otton, Miss Williams and Mr Bird are going out to China. More information about past visits can be found on CBJS International.