We can’t believe it! It’s nearly the end of the year! We’re in the middle of planning for our festive singing evenings, concerts, and Festive Fair and hope that you are looking forward to the season as much as we are! Our biggest event of the year is coming up at the end of the month on Friday November 30th: our Festive Fair is a great day out for the whole family and one of our major fundraisers. It’s a fun-filled day full of games, prizes, food and refreshments, and activities for all ages! Please feel free to bring along your friends and family. We’re also looking forward to our Bahrain National Day celebrations on Wednesday 12th December. This is a wonderful day when the whole school comes together to celebrate our beautiful island home. The end of the year is full of fun and we’re excited!

We’re looking for willing volunteers and support for our Festive Fair! Maybe you can help? Here’s how:

•  Donate an hour of your time to help the PTA
• Donate a prize to our raffle
• Donate unwanted and unused gifts to our “Present Room” – we know that you’ve all got gifts that you haven’t used and we’d like them!
• Donate books for our Second Hand Book Stall
• Donate baked goods to the “Tea and Cake Room” on the dayAnd please remember to buy your raffle tickets! Come to see us in the office if you need any more!

Want to know more about what we do? Come to our parent workshops—you’ll learn something new! To sign up please contact Miss Patricia on office.leadership@nadeenschool.com

Well done to our Gaelic Football Team who competed in the Bahrain Gaelic Games school blitz on November 8th. There were two Nadeen teams and they were recognized for their sportsmanship, camaraderie, and school spirit. We even had an ex-student infiltrate and join the team! Quote of the match: “This was the BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!” The team were really happy to see Mr. Michael, last year’s coach, attend the event…thank you for coming all the way from Ireland to see us! Big thanks and a round of applause to all members of the school community who walked, jogged, or ran in the relay marathon on November 9th. It was a great event and the first time we have entered a school team. We even had ex-staff run with us and it was great to have everyone together again. The teamwork, enthusiasm, and support we all gave to each other was so heart-warming. Alumni Alert!: Two of our Year 6 children from last year have been elected by their peers in their new school to be Year 7 Student Council Representatives! Wow! Keep on shining……!

Dates for your diary!

•  16 April—INSET DAY— all children finish at 11am
• 17 April—PTA Bus Trip
• 19 April—Maths House competition
• 21 April—Sponsored Walk
• 22 April—Earth Day and recycled Fashion Show
• 1 May—Labour Day
• 3 May—Talent Show
• 24 May—BSPCA Animal Day

We had a wonderful morning on our first PTA bus trip on October 15th sharing a Bahraini breakfast in the local restaurant Emmawash followed by visits to bargain shops. We hope more of you will join our next trip. A big thank you to all the Mums, Dads, and children that made all spooktackular treats for our Halloween bake-sale. It was a super morning with enough treats donated so that all children could purchase something. The PTA are now busy preparing for the Festive Fair due to be held on November 30th. This is a family fun day held in the school grounds with fun games to play, BBQ area, tearoom, local vendors, Arabic Corner and much, much more. There will be a big raffle draw on the day, too. Tickets are selling well and we have lots of super prizes. On November 21st the PTA will host a coffee morning where parents can sign up to volunteer to give 1 hour of their time to help out on Festive Fair Day. Your donation of time will enable the PTA members to take an hour to spend with their children having fun at the Fair. We look forward to seeing on you November 30th.

News from the school council: We are so excited about our upcoming events! We have so many ideas and are looking forward to implementing them this year. Our first event will be this week, hosting the esteemed Chelsea Pensioners at our very popular Tea Party. We can’t wait to talk to the gentlemen that visit and share some scrummy tea and cakes! We will have a stall at the Festive Fair at the end of November as well as hosting our first Winter Wonderland disco! Lots to look forward to this term 🙂

Students have been very busy learning new and exciting sports and are now able to move and stretch freely, using their space to its maximum. KS2 students have been learning about hockey and its basic rules, passing techniques, and controlling the ball as well as defending and attacking. They’ve also developed sportsmanship such as being a supportive team player and a good communicator. The younger students have been learning basic hockey skills such as holding the stick correctly, following and dribbling the ball. Once students demonstrated confidence with those skills they were introduced to passing techniques. Students also took part in several engaging games of their choice with different rules to further strengthen other skills that are needed for hockey. We also hosted our football team tryouts and we’d like to thank all those who participated! Selected football teams will be trained by the PE specialists to prepare them for upcoming tournaments taking place at St. Christopher School. We will announce the dates for both the training sessions and the tournaments for all Nadeen students and parents to join and support the teams!

Young children are active learners and if they are interested in achieving or doing something, they will be involved in their chosen task for a long time and with the deepest concentration, until they are satisfied with the result. Children in early years start to show signs of craftsmanship in their play, when they try as hard as they can to produce best possible outcome. It can be anything – from parking the car, building a road, dressing dolls or painting a picture. Later, when they start more formal learning, children will develop the skills of craftsmanship performing various tasks, but it all starts in early years, in child-chosen play!

Real craftsmanship skills, those that are not casually or easily learned, help to equip children with many skills that are not necessarily about what they are making – things like preparing confidently for a task, following directions, tolerating frustration, knowing when to shift focus and the ability to finish a project completely. It also offers one thing more: pride in a true accomplishment. A child who has built a real stick and tissue model airplane, one that really flies and flies well, will feel pride not only in ownership and use of the new toy, but also pride in the ownership of a new, larger self-confidence. These are lasting experiences: the basis of genuine self-esteem. Encourage craftsmanship at home in all areas not just creating and building but in writing, maths and everything that they do!

Craftsmanship. Craftsmanship allows us to express our creativity in lots of exciting ways. We can be painters, we can be sculptors, we can be musicians, we can be poets, we can be actors. I could go on. Craftsmanship isn’t just about making something your hands, being a literal ‘craftsman’; it’s about creating/crafting exciting pieces of work and producing the best outcome of which you are capable. You can ‘craft’ a piece of writing, you can ‘craft’ a piece of music. In KS2 we work on promoting craftsmanship in every lesson, every specialist lesson and during home learning projects. Robert J. Martin, Jnr, a professor of education in America tells us that, ‘The craftsman’s skill does not come from mere following of instructions, but develops through interaction of making the thing and the observation of that thing as it takes form.’ This is exactly what we encourage throughout a child’s education journey and every lesson will allow them to interact and observe what they are creating.