The Courier

Dear Parents

Welcome to this last edition of the Courier for the Spring Term. The weather has provided some great challenges for us during the last three months but we have battled through and managed to enjoy a really rich and varied programme with lots of sport, music, drama and hard work.

 

I do hope you are all able to spend good quality time with your families during the break and we look forward to welcoming you and the children back for the Summer Term on Wednesday 18 April. I am looking forward to getting my garden back into some kind of shape as well as a few days in the Lake District with my two sons.  My youngest son’s new year challenge was to camp out on a mountain top so that is the plan, weather permitting.

Next term I am particularly looking forward to launching the new School Promise and you will be able to read about an information meeting all about this elsewhere in the Courier, planned for Tuesday 24 April. I hope many of you will be able to come along.

We finished the term this afternoon with a delightful Easter Service courtesy of our Year 5 class and I have copied my final address below for those who were unable to attend.

With my best wishes for a relaxing Easter break.

Joe Thackway
Headmaster
Crescent School


Easter Service Address

At Easter, we seem to celebrate two different things, don’t we? On the one hand, we learn about the story of Jesus and his torments on the cross. On the other hand, we give each other Easter eggs and exchange cards, perhaps with pictures of fluffy bunnies on.

Does anybody know if there is a connection between these things?

Well I’ve been thinking about this and I think there is a connection. There is a common message hidden beneath the two stories and it is this; Easter is a time of renewal or of rebirth. It is a time for us to remember the message; don’t give up hope, even when things seem difficult.

When Jesus was on the cross, he was being tormented and teased by the guards and the other prisoners. He cried out, didn’t he, ‘My God my God, why have you forsaken me?’ He couldn’t see a way forward and he was doubting that things could ever be right again.

All of his followers at that time, I’m sure, were also full of despair. They felt that Jesus had been defeated and that all the messages of goodness and caring for one another that he had been teaching, would die with him on the cross.

However, of course, two days later Jesus rose again and met his friends and the future seemed different and full of possibilities.

Well, if you get out into the countryside in the woods and fields this holiday you will see a world full of hope for the future. There are lambs in the field, daffodils in the hedgerows, bluebells poking through the forest floor, birds nesting and laying their eggs, frogs and newts laying their spawn in ponds and ditches. In the natural world, although not in modern day farms, chickens start laying their eggs again in the spring, so yes, you might even see some lovely fluffy chicks, although you might need to go to a children’s farm to actually see that. They won’t be made of chocolate, you’ll need to try Sainsbury’s if you want to find one of them. Talking of shops, even B&Q and Ikea are full of families planning how to make their own nests more cosy and comfortable now that the spring is here.

So the message is, although the days can seem cold and dark through the winter, and we have had a few days like that this year, there’s always the prospect of spring ahead. Children, you might have had times this term when perhaps your work seemed hard, or perhaps you’d fallen out with a friend and you looked around and everything seemed to be problematic. Well, the message this Easter is that there is hope, that there is a better time ahead.

We need to keep reminding ourselves of the story of Jesus and the message that it holds. Try to see this Easter message in the world around you as spring finally unfolds itself.