Community News

“LOVE DEEPINGS” Your Support Is Vital (Especially Now)!

Within just one year, the Love Deepings make all the difference to helping shape our future brand has become a familiar beacon community. within the community, helping to promote the local offering, encouraging more visitors, and building on local support. LOCAL helps build a sense of community and provides a place for people to meet (in normal times). It has been great these past few weeks to see We are blessed with an amazing community spirit familiar faces, local smiles and chatter resurrected, across the Deepings and local villages, and a strong as more businesses start to re-open. sense of LOCAL is valued. People are pleasantly surprised when they visit; they find a ‘hidden gem’ – peaceful, convenient and very friendly. Most local businesses are run by people who live locally and care about our community, many of whom sponsor events, give to In lean times, consumers aim to save local causes and volunteer to help money and eliminate many or all with local clubs and organisations luxuries, cut back on extras, and across the Deepings and local apply prudent spending and villages. Your support really does budgeting. In such a volatile help make a difference to where environment, smaller local we live and definitely brings more businesses count on your custom smiles locally. to stay afloat. Alison @Love Deepings Every transaction is precious to them. With the community facing the challenges of COVID, now more than ever, your LOCAL support will Please have a peek on our website www.lovedeepings.co.uk and follow us on @Love Deepings.

DEEPING ST JAMES PRIMARY SCHOOL

Firstly, at DSJ we hope that you are all keeping well and safe during this most extraordinary time. It seems a whole world away from the beginning of March, when the children at DSJ had so much success at The Peterborough Drama Festival!

Following lockdown easing, the school has now partially re-opened to children in the Reception, Year 1 and the Year 6 classes. We also have a group for children of ‘critical workers’ and vulnerable children in other year groups. This provision has been available since lockdown began, even opening throughout the Easter and Half Term holidays. My thanks to all staff who have made this possible.

Under the very strange social distancing rules that we now all have to abide by, groups of children are now described as “bubbles” and classrooms look extremely different from the normal vibrant learning spaces. The bubbles that we have in school, at present, range from ten to fourteen children, depending on the space which they are using.

The playground and field have been divided up so that children from different bubbles don’t mix, and parents are dropping off and picking children up from four different access points around the school. Having said all this, the staff and children have adapted superbly to all the changes and I am very proud of them all. Smiling faces seem to greet staff each morning and it’s great to have the school alive again. I am hoping that, when September comes, we will be able to open as a fully functioning school, but we will have to wait and see how things progress. As a school, if we can be of any assistance in the local community, please let me know! Take care and keep safe! Thanks Ian Wilkinson, Headteacher