So now let me tell you about some of the activities that your child can do during the after-school sessions. As well as being able to use the playground equipment, computers and the library, there is usually at least one ‘special’ activity that children can do each day. For example, Spanish. We have a specialist teacher coming in every Thursday to give a basic introduction to the language through games and songs. She does two sessions: one for the over 8s and one for the younger children. This is the only activity which we have to make an extra charge for – but it’s well worth it.

Once a week the children have the opportunity to do some music. We’re very lucky that one of our staff is a member of a folk band. On Mondays, she teaches singing and percussion to groups of children. We do rely on parental support for this, so if any of you sing or play an instrument and would be prepared to help out at these sessions, we’d be delighted.

Painting continues to be one of the most popular activities. To begin with we weren’t keen on offering this because of the extra mess involved, but children kept asking if they could do some art and so we finally gave in. Art is great for helping the children to relax after working hard at school all day.

Yoga is something that we’ve been meaning to introduce for some time but haven’t been able to find anyone available to teach it – until now that is. So we’ll see how this goes. Hopefully, children will benefit in all sorts of ways from this.

Cooking is another popular activity. They make a different sort of cake, or pizza or bread each week. Although the younger children love doing it, we found that the mess was just too much, so we’ve decided to restrict this to the over 8s, as they are better able to clean up after themselves.