British Values are really important to us at The Forest School, we embed the teaching of this in all that we do. We want our children to be proud of who they are and of what they do but we also want them to remember that not everyone can be home for Christmas and that our Armed Forces play a really important role in keeping
everyone safe.
We want our children to grow into kind and thoughtful adults and we want them to know that Christmas is a time to think of others as well as of ourselves. To support this learning, during the Autumn Term The Forest School children have continued a tradition of writing Christmas letters to the Yorkshire Battalion, who are this year in Afghanistan.
This has become an important event in school that the children (and adults!) now look forward to and thoroughly enjoy writing.
The children’s letters have included them introducing themselves and discussing how they celebrate Christmas, asking questions to the soldiers and sending them a Christmas wish. Alongside the letters, the children brought donations for shoe boxes or filled their own shoe box. This year we sent 27 boxes to Afghanistan which were gratefully received by all the soldiers.
In return our wonderful armed forces (The Yorkshire Battalion) have taken the time to write to the pupils which encourages our children’s engagement in literacy activities. The soldiers sent lovely pictures of them opening their presents and this allowed our children to see the joy of giving and reinforces exactly what we are trying to help our amazing young people understand.
