Dear Parents and Carers,

Here at Maidensbridge we recognise that encouraging a love of reading is important for all of our children and we aim to promote reading for pleasure across the school. Our pupils are very passionate about books and we thought it would be nice to celebrate this at the end of the school year with you! Therefore, we are delighted to invite you to our first Maidensbridge Reading Picnic on Thursday 18^th July 2024. We are encouraging families of our children to join us for a lovely afternoon on the field where everyone can read and share their favourite books in the sunshine whilst enjoying a picnic.

If parents and carers wish to join us, you can bring along something to sit on (a picnic blanket or camping chair), some snacks for your picnic and your favourite books to read as a family. The children will also bring out some of their favourite books from school to share too. Please note we are a nut-free school and would appreciate any snacks brought onto the school premises to reflect this. The event will start at 2pm and run until the end of the day. Please arrive at the Beachcroft Road gate for 1:55pm so that you can collect your children from their classes to take them down onto the field. Teachers will be at the collection points for 10 minutes to allow for parents to collect multiple children from different locations, after which they will take their classes down onto the field. You do not need to collect your children in a specific order. Children will be bringing their bags and coats out with them so that they can leave with you at the end of the event.

Children need to be collected from the following locations:

In addition to this, we will be selling ice lollies for the event (for the adults too!). These will be available to order and purchase on School Money the week before the picnic and a reminder will be sent about this closer to the time. Please note, ice lollies will not be available to purchase at the event and should be purchased before. Any children who have parents and carers not able to attend, will be enjoying the picnic on the field with their teacher. They can bring a snack for their picnic and purchase an ice lolly to enjoy too.

In order for the event to run as smoothly as possible, we are asking that you complete the form about parent/carer attendance ahead of time. This event is weather permitting so we have our fingers crossed for sunshine! We hope to see you there to enjoy a lovely afternoon enjoying picture books, novels, comics, graphic novels and anything else you wish to bring along to read!

Finally, I also wanted to take this moment to thank you all for reading with your children at home throughout the year. We appreciate the support you give the children to help them on their reading journeys.