Dear Parents

This certainly was the week of LOVE. From the amazing decorations put up by our group of parents, to the dressing up on Monday and the spreading of love and care for pets, we have been quite overwhelmed.  An enormous THANK YOU on behalf of all the pets that will be blessed with full tummies from your generous donations.  I will include some pictures of where the food is delivered, in the next newsletter.

Thank you to those parents who attended our Coffee Connections talk this morning by our resident Physiotherapist Ashley May. We do hope you found it helpful and would love some feedback about some other topics that you would like to hear about.  Please email me and we can see if we can arrange some speakers to cover the topics highlighted.

A gentle reminder that boys arriving before 7.30am must attend early care up at the hall.  If you enter across the field, please direct your son to the hall where they will be supervised until 7.30am and then taken down to their classrooms. Please be aware that boys that arrive late for school (after 08h00) will be required to be dropped off at the botton gate (Drop and Go). We would however be most grateful if the boys would arrive on time.

A warm welcome to Ms Nobonke Sipoyo who has started with isiXhosa lessons at the Pre-Prep. We are very excited about this very necessary addition to our programme and look forward to all she has to share with us!

Being half term, we are asking staff to take early leave from school today so if your call is not answered, please feel free to contact me via email should you have any urgent issues.

Wishing you a wonderful weekend.

Kind regards

SHARLENE GROOM
HEAD: PRE-PREP

To purchase tickets please click on the following link:

https://www.howler.co.za/events/bishops-community-event-2022-057a

Ticket prices will increase on 1 March 2022.

Ice Creams

The ice cream cart seems to be causing a little stress with some parents.  If you wish to purchase an ice cream for your son, on collecting him, that is your choice. However, we please ask those generous parents, not to purchase ice creams for other children and particularly not for children still at school. Boys are also not permitted to bring money to school to purchase these ice creams at any time.  What is packed in the boys lunch box is what parents wish them to eat so we do not want them being given anything else without consent.  As difficult as it is, please can we ask that parents adhere to this request.

Message from our Youth Pastor

Lord be with you

Let us take a moment to reflect on the above picture and narrative of the Good Samaritan, and maybe some parents might have spotted this picture in the house. It has been a week of love and how we can express our love to our neighbours and our enemies. And the boys have shared of some experiences they have at home and at school from their siblings or friends of a not so nice treatment, but nonetheless the boys still confess their love for those friends and siblings.

So now we have motivated that when sharing love the world can become a better place, for we understand that the only way we can over come hate is by just loving. And when we love, we love all people no matter their different religions, background and so profoundly the colour of their skin the boys shared.

Let us pray   

Lord let us be beacons of love in the world and different communities we serve, remind us that you loved us first so that we too may love all your people. Amen

A Big Thank You

Our group of parents who kindly decorated our school with LOVE for our valentine celebrations.  Thank you to each of them that gave up their time to make our space beautiful!

VUSA has started the year with a strong focus on academic support to assist children in the Langa community after the past two challenging COVID years.  Early intervention is key and the creche programme has grown from strength to strength.  In 2019 we partnered with three registered ECD Centres and launched a numeracy and literacy programme through play.  In 2021 we introduced the tuk-tuk mobile library which visits the three centres each morning and reads books to the children and this year we are rolling out English as a second language programme (ESL) in partnership with Project Playground.  

Many of you will have seen the Atlas Digibus drive out of the Bishops gates each morning as it heads to Langa to provide  (ESL) lessons for Grade 4 learners from 5 primary schools.  Each afternoon, VUSA children also receive academic support in English and Maths as well as homework study sessions.  We are keen to involve Bishops Boys (or parents & grandparents) who wish to volunteer at the homework sessions  (which take place at the Leap School from Mondays to Wednesdays from 3 – 5pm).  Should you wish to get involved, please contact Nikki Matthews or Brendan Fogarty.  Please click HERE to read the VUSA Newsletter.

The Grade R boys continue to derive much pleasure from participating in Muscle Mania at school. Here we learn to cut, paste and colour in! Thank you teachers and Muggle!