News Archives From The East 

Radio Workshops for Schools

Express FM, the radio station that covers Portsmouth and South East Hampshire is now offering your students the opportunity to take part in radio workshops. Not only that, all workshops is designed to give students the chance to make features that will be broadcast on air. Once played features are then available as pod casts for your school or college website

Our experience shows that the benefits of such workshops help to develop not only the obvious technical skills, but also such things as....

Confidence and a ‘can do’ mentality.
·    Teamwork
·    Communication skills especially listening skills
·    Interviewing techniques
·    Organisational and time management skills
·    Creativity and enterprise
·    Facing and   overcoming fears
·    Integrating many elements of the curriculum

Each session covers a full day. Groups can be as large as a typical class size but works best with groups of 12 to 14. Two fully trained radio facilitators run the day and arrive with a mobile radio unit and recorders. Recorded features are broadcast later on Express FM so that participants can hear themselves. The training is suitable for children from Year 5 upwards and is adapted accordingly. We can also accommodate your training workshops in-house at our Portsmouth based studios and give your students a "real life on air" experience!

Interested?

The please take a visit to www.expressfm.com for booking details

Hi8us South Arts and Digital Media Hi8us South is a not-for-profit provider, working with extended schools to deliver accredited arts and digital media activities and peer educator training. Bespoke programmes are devised to help extended schools fulfil their community engagement aims, and to empower students to act as cultural ambassadors in their communities. Programmes give students the skills and confidence to lead and facilitate creative activity with others, including parents, primary school students, particularly Year 6 transition students, and elders, to generate a range of creative content often addressing local issues. Visual, performance and documentary work are distributed through youth-led events, screenings and exhibitions, as well as on DVD and the internet. Hi8us South can deliver, for example: music video production and lyric development digital storytelling film-making – complete projects in drama or documentary, or one-off workshops drama workshops ‘L8R’ - a comprehensive PSHE and life skills resource, using interactive drama and featuring online mentoring peer education training with ASDAN accreditation. For more information email Derek or visit the following websites:  Hi8us South, L8R or Hi8us South on YouTube.

School visits to Westbury Manor Museum

Westbury Manor Museum welcomes young visitors to study our permanent local history displays and family-friendly timeline gallery, and to visit our regular changing exhibitions in the special exhibition area of the museum. Our Temporary Exhibitions often have specific linked sessions for schools.

For more information about school visits, cost, linked pre and post session plans and important information, please visit:

http://www3.hants.gov.uk/museum/westbury-manor-museum/schools-westbury.htm

 

Extended Schools FILMCLUB

FILMCLUB is a new service run by movie-lovers to introduce children to the wonder of films.  It aims to help teachers and pupils form clubs in schools to show fantastic movies from every era and every corner of the world.  FILMCLUB bring as wide a range of great films to as many young people as possible. That's why the club is free to most schools. Movies can be ordered from www.filmclub.org and they are then delivered directly to the schools. 

To get started teachers simply need to join.   After expressing an interest at running a FILMCLUB you will be invited to a session where you will find out all about setting-up and running the club.  Follow the links below to read more about the background to this initiative...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2007/feb/15/schools.uk

http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/community/webcasts/FILMCLUB2008/

SHAKESPEARE 4 KIDZ

PUT ON A PLAY WITH S4K

Do you fancy "One Hour Hamlet"?  Performing your own Shakespeare play is easy with the unique PUT ON A PLAY pack from Shakespeare 4 Kidz....tights are of course optional!

The pack contains everything you need to put on your own S4K shows with your school.  The easy, affordable, one-stop, one-shop, hassle-free way to produce your own  Shakespeare school show.  For more details, please download the flyer below.  If you require 2008 costing for purchasing S4K production packs and a booking form, then please contact Susie for further information:

Shakespeare 4 Kids School's Flyer

Yoga as an Extended School or Early Year's Opportunity?

YogaBugs is an imaginative and fun yoga for children aged 2 ½ to 7 years! Yoga postures, breathing and relaxation techniques are woven together into exciting stories and games. In the safety and familiarity of their school or nursery, amongst their friends, children can have wild adventures and go on heroic journeys.  

For more information, please feel free to have a look at the YogaBugs website at: www.yogabugs.com

You may also wish to take a look at the YogaBugs YouTube video for an idea of how a class would run at:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvZ7MwgZHEo

Take a visit to the we love learning website!

The website has links to all of the October Family Learning Festival events and lots of fantastic prizes to win on the online:

Number Island Treasure Hunt

               

Also check out the Funky Family Fitness Flyer and the Ready Steady Cleanse Flyer above for more suggestions how families can have fun learning together. 

I look forward to seeing more of our schools, libraries, museums and Children's Centres offering these family learning events.  Many thanks to Westbury Manor Museum who ran a Free Big Draw Event on Saturday 11 October 2008 in conjunction with the Dressed 2 Express exhibition.  It was totally absorbing and it was so good to see so many boys designing their own 'rock star' fashions!

Please don't forget to include family learning events in your school and children's centre newsletters or notice boards - there are lots of exciting new developments in Fareham East since the appointment of our new Family Learning Coordinator in October 2008.

My own Ready Steady Cleanse "messy" experiment.  Which leads me nicely too the...

Love Food, Hate Waste Campaign

Did you know that a third of the food we buy in the UK gets thrown away?

Schools, Children's Centres and community organisations throughout the Fareham Borough are being encouraged to sign up to the Love Food, Hate Waste campaign.  Get started on our campaign bandwagon by downloading some of the ideas for saving time & money and caring for the environment by cutting down on food waste at:

Love Food, Hate Waste

Childminders' Support Group

Every Thursday - 9.30 - 11.30am

Portchester Keepsake Children's Centre

Boogie Mites

Weekly music workshops for the under 5s.  Forget those fusty old nursery rhymes and dust off your dancing shoes - Boogie Mites tots sing, shake, tap and bang along to some fun and funky Boogie Mites songs.  Come along and capture the Boogie Mites rhythm at

Merryfields Children's Centre on

 Thursdays - 2.00 - 3.00pm

 ...and brightening up Portchester Keepsake Children's Centre on

Fridays - 9.30 - 10.30 am

V-inspired at Portchester Community Association  

Portchester Community Association have been awarded £133,000 funding by V, the youth volunteering charity, to get young people positively involved in their communities.  Over the next three years the Portchester Young Volunteer Project aims to get 120 young people aged 16-25 working in the community in a range of initiatives aimed at supporting local residents, and especially other young people.  For more information about this fantastic news and to read about Hampshire County Council's plans for services for young people, please see the special March 2008 Connect newsletter

Connect - The Partnership Newsletter

This project will be a real bonus for the local community as the young volunteers will be engaged in lots of different projects, for instance a Friday evening theatre project at Odyssey Young Peoples' Centre.   So if you are interested in chatting about introducing young volunteer into your setting, or if you are a young person who would like to be V-inspired, then please contact Louise Molloy our 'v' coordinator on 02392 210070, Mobile: 07530 660571 or e-mail: v@portchesterca.org.uk

Or you can add yourself as a friend on the Portchester Volunteering MySpace page at:

  www.myspace.com/volunteeringpca

I hope you all managed to see a copy of the Portsmouth Evening News on Tuesday 16th December or the Southampton Daily Echo on Wednesday 17th December?  My Goddaughter Summer (shown above) has made amazing progress thanks to the fantastic treatment she has received at The Rainbow Centre. I'm happy to report that she's been making the headline this week with her story.  If you missed these editions, you can still read the full stories online at:

The News

The Echo

Lots of exciting events are being planned to raise vital funds for the Rainbow Centre in 2010.

Keep up to date what's happening for families at

The Royal Armouries Fort Nelson

http://www.royalarmouries.org/events/events-at-fort-nelson/childrens-fun-days

Hampshire Fire & Rescue 'LIFE' Project

LIFE is a course for young people and has been a major success for the youth engagement role that is delivered by Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service.  The course involves young people taking part in a number of Fire & Rescue Service activities including hose running, wearing Breathing Apparatus (BA), climbing ladders, first aid and casualty handling.  The course is facilitated by local fire and police officers who have undergone special training.  On Friday 14th November 10 young people graduated from the LIFE (Local Intervention Fire Education) course and were presented their awards in a 'passing out' ceremony by the Mayor of Fareham.  After their amazing display on Friday I'm surprised they didn't pass out!  My warmest wishes to our three Cams students; Sam, Gabbi and Harley, and all of the fantastic young people who completed this physically and mentally demanding week.

Portchester Play Day Art Competition

In February 2007 a Unicef study was carried out surrounding the ‘well-being’ of children in the most affluent countries of the world.  Astoundingly - the United Kingdom came 21^st out of 21 countries for child well-being!  In response to this damming report, the Portchester Extended Services & Children’s Centre want to do something practical to improve children’s well-being in our area.  So we consulted our local children, young people and their families on their ideas about:

“A Space to Enjoy Childhood”

We officially launched a fun art competition at a family event in partnership with Fareham Borough Council to celebrate National Play Day on Wednesday 6th August 2008, at Kenwood Road Play Area in Portchester.  The entries we received created a fabulous display at Portchester Community & Children's Centre.  The prize giving took place at the Portchester CAT meeting on Monday 20th October by the Mayor.

Portchester Play Day Art Competition Update

More news from our Play Day Art Competition

We have more good news from the East Fareham partnership following our Space to Enjoy Childhood Competition from August 2008.  A big congratulations to Elizabeth Watts (age 10) from Uplands Primary School whose delightful entry was selected as the first prize winner to win a digital camera.   Elizabeth’s highly imaginative risky adventure involves her being ‘stuck in syrup, whilst her toes are being eaten by snakes’, and as if this wasn’t bad enough she is also being scared by a big roaring bear!

In addition you can see an article from our 'Junior Press Pack' team at the Portchester Play Day event (you may even recognise some of our young volunteer journalists from Cams Hill and Portchester Community School) in the 2008 Special edition of Play England Magazine.  Click below to read their article:

Play Day Special

Ukulele as an after-school activity anyone...?

Ukulele Flyer  

NEW for September 2008 at Portchester Keepsake Children's Centre

Tiny Talk classes are an informative and fun way to learn to sign and also give families the opportunity to meet other families in the Portchester area. Tiny talk consists of an hour of signing and singing, followed by playtime for the little ones and social time for parents  (which includes coffee/tea made for you - the ultimate treat for busy parents/carers!). Come and meet Sara and baby Jack at Tiny Talk.

Mondays at 10:00 - 11:00 am

Portchester Community and Children's Centre

Westlands Grove, Portchester PO16 9AD

 contact: (01329) 822912 or e-mail: sarabr@tinytalk.co.uk

On Thursday 10 July, the Africa Alive! Multi Arts Project involved some of Cams Hill Year 8 and Year 10 pupils teaching Year 5 pupils from Harrison and Uplands Primary Schools.  Three groups (Ghana, Ivory Coast & Zulu) were introduced to African drumming and singing, story telling and mask making, supported by funding from Extended Services .

The day began with a short introduction about Africa and the plans for the day, in the Main Hall. The pupils were put into three groups and they all took part in three main activities during the course of the day.  This involved a session of singing/drama where a group of Year 10s taught the children some African songs and Miss Considine taught them a story, which we then incorporated the songs into.  Another of the activities was a drumming workshop where the children played Djembe drums and had a go at improvising rhythms. They then fitted the rhythms together along with traditional lyrics of an African song, to form the piece.  Finally, with the Art Department, they all made bright and colourful masks decorated with African symbols.

As a conclusion to the day's work, the primary school children did a showcase that included the various elements of their day. It linked together the story with singing and drumming and was performed to their parents in the hall. 

Portchester Community and Children's Centre

PCA are proud of being one of only two Children's Centres in Hampshire which are managed within the Voluntary & Community Sector - now often called the Third Sector.  We have worked hard to ensure that Sure Start (Statutory Sector funding) meets our own Third Sector (community) objectives so that the position of PCA as an independent charity is not compromised while still meeting government objectives.

Andy Pandy Pre-school is thriving and increased its OFSTED registration to 48 and also successfully attained Pre-School Learning Alliance Quality Assurance Accreditation; the first in Fareham.

Westland's Youth Club is operating as a new section. Westland's Youth Club opened early in 2007, initially for one night a week and now  twice a week; the 2nd evening as consequence of Extended Services and Children's Centre Steering Group consultation (see photos below)

Andy Pandy Toddler Group is a new group run by our enthusiastic volunteers Joanna Fox and Jane Pinkstone to whom we give many thanks.  The group attracts 15 - 20 mums, grandparents and childminders with their children to each weekly session.

Junior Gym Club  This new group run by Jane Sansom has proved very popular.  Our thanks to FBC for funding the gym mats.

Extended Services and Children's Centre Steering Group met regularly throughout the year and were key in the attainment of the Children's Centre status.  Meetings continued to assist with the planning and progress of all extended services in Portchester.  Two sub-sections of this steering group were formed:

The Family Forum Chair: Bev Wilson, led on the design of Portchester People (see below for the latest online copy) our very own Portchester children and young people's newsletter.

Extended Services Youth Meeting Chair: Sarah Moss, ensured the provision of young people's activities in Portchester develop to meet their needs.