New Year, New Hall

Our new location, Okeford Fitzpaine village hall.

I hope that you have had lots of fun throughout the festive season. Now that we're in the new year I'm finding that I'm itching get on with lots of new projects.

Our group has moved from using the hall in Sturminster Newton to Okeford Fitzpaine's Village Hall. It has it's own dedicated car park so there will be no more problems with parking, the bus stop is also in easy walking distance.

There are six meetings booked for the Spring term:

• Tuesday 14th January 2014
• Tuesday 28th January 2014
• Tuesday 11th February 2014
• Tuesday 4th March 2014
• Tuesday 18th March 2014
• Tuesday 1st April 2014

The hall is booked from 10am - 1pm. This is slightly longer than before, it will be interesting to see whether we will make full use of this extra time. The cost will be £3.50 per family per session. Simple refreshments will be available.

We have always been primarily a social group but this term we are going to add a little bit of structure by introducing circle time. This is a simple activity where we all sit in a circle and take turns introducing ourselves and say a little about something that we have done or created in the past week. Hopefully this will help me to finally remember every body's names! This will be followed by the introduction of the activity organised for the session. Free play is always an option as activities do not suit everybody but we do ask that children not run around the hall whilst these are taking place.

Another new idea that has been put forward is that we should have a quiet area where children can sit and draw or play quietly. 

Here is a rough timetable for our session, how accurate it will be remains to be seen!

• 10:00 Arrivals
• 10:30 Circle time
• 10:45 Organised activity
• 11:45 Tidy up and free play

Details for the first session will be posted shortly.

We are always looking for volunteers to run activities, if you have any ideas then do let us know. Activities could include drama, science, music etc., it doesn't always have to be crafts. 

Finally I want to say thanks to everybody who has been with us throughout the autumn term, many of you have also paid a little bit extra into our funds to help us pay off our backlog of rent. This is not yet completely clear but the situation is looking a lot healthier than it was. Thank you!