We have been very heartened by the response to our Target 50K leaflets and the messages of goodwill from the Elstead community. At the time of writing we have received over £5,000 in personal donations. Thank you so much to everyone who contributed. £50,000 is a huge amount to raise in a relatively short time and it is an immense challenge for us with only 85 families in the school. We are most grateful for the support from the community in helping us achieve our target. Our next fundraising event is a family treasure hunt on Sunday 7^th May. The Midsummer's Ball on Saturday 24^th June will be a fabulous evening of music and dance in our beautiful school grounds. Tickets are £34 and are on sale now; available from the school or the Village Post Office. It would be most helpful if you could buy these within the next month so we have an idea of numbers. Why not get a table of friends together?

St James School recently started working towards an Eco School Award. This award promotes a whole school approach to environmental issues. Caring for the environment and sustainability are part of our school curriculum and the children are very committed to being eco friendly. Our first task was to set up a committee and deputy headteacher Mr Mark Smith is leading a team of children, governors and parents to decide on our action plan. Children interested in being on the committee had to prepare a presentation to convince their peers that they should be chosen. Two children were elected to represent each class and at their first meeting they decided to call themselves the Green Team. They appointed monitors in each class to be responsible for making sure that lights and water taps are turned off when not needed. They also set a competition for the Easter holiday for all children to design posters to promote the Three Rs - recycling, reducing and re-using. The Green Team will judge the entries and the winning posters will be displayed around the school.

We had already made a commitment in school to improve our use of energy and resources. For example, we have replaced our old dripping taps in the toilets with push spray taps which use less water when washing hands; we monitor our use of water and electricity, we compost our garden, fruit and vegetable waste; we use recycled paper and our rubbish is recycled where possible. Our action plan will get the whole school involved in other measures to improve and protect the environment.

An exciting new venture is the polytunnel that our caretaker, Mr Nigel Sorensen, has erected in the playground over the last few weeks. Elstead's Hookley Herbacious very kindly sourced the growing compost and it is now ready for planting. Mr Sorensen will be working with Year 3 to grow vegetables for our school lunches. Secretts Garden Centre are keen to support this initiative and have offered to show the children round their greenhouses, giving them tips about growing on this scale. They are also providing seeds and plants. We will be able to sell any surplus salad items which will fund more seeds and we hope that by learning to grow vegetables in school, the children will want to grow some at home too.