Friends of Whitehill
Friends of Whitehill, (FOW) is an informal group of volunteers made up of parents and grandparents who help organise social events for the school. The aim of FOW is to plan along with the staff, fun events for the children and parents. The group is very informal and friendly and we meet a few times in the year, during school hours. Meetings last approximately forty five minutes and these are held prior to events coming up. As you can guess the lead up to Christmas is the time when we have the most events.
VOLUNTEER MEMBERS
Currently we have three permanent FOW volunteer members and we would love for more people to join us. Fortunately we have a few parents and grandparents that we can call on to help us during actual events which is such a great benefit. However as the children move through the school and leave we will always need to replace volunteer members of FOW. We would love to have additional help with either planning or running events so if you have any spare time especially in the lead up to the Strawberry Fair and Christmas, we would really appreciate an extra pair of hands. It's amazing how many presents can be wrapped in half an hour for the Christmas gift and wrap!
GETTING INVOLVED
If you would like to join FOW please inform Miss Connell or Mrs Munton who will pass on your name to us and we will let you know of ways to help. A couple of hours during the year would really help us. Also we would like to ask if any person involved with the school is connected to any business that may be able to donate a prize to the school Christmas raffle. Any prize donation would be gratefully accepted.
FUNDRAISING
Although the primary aim for all the events is for the children and parents to have fun, during some of the events we can raise money for the school. All money raised goes directly back to the school to pay for things such as Christmas parties for the children, trips out from school, playground equipment and the DJ for the disco.
EVENTS
Valentines disco - making decorations & decorating the hall, making up 300 bags of sweets, preparing food and drinks, serving refreshments at both the infant and junior disco tidying up, (having the occasional dance!).
Strawberry Fair - planning stalls and who will be manning each stall, collecting in items required for each stall, preparing tombola prizes, setting up stalls, face painting, preparing and serving refreshments, tidying up.
Children In Need day - face painting nearly 200 children with Pudsey Bear faces before lunch time, it can be done!
Christmas Events -
Toy Sale - setting up the hall with hundreds of donated toys so all the children in the school can come and shop, manning the stalls, tidying up. Its chaos, but fantastic!
Gift and Wrap - during gift & wrap week each morning wrapping presents bought by the children for their friends and families.
Parents Mince Pie Carol Concert - setting up the hall with tables, setting up refreshments and serving refreshments, selling raffle tickets, tidying up, all whilst listening to each class singing Christmas Carols, it's really beautiful.
Nativity Plays - preparing and selling refreshments to the audience, selling raffle tickets, taking orders for the children's photographs, tidying up and of course watching the lovely Nativity plays up to five times (and crying five times).
Christmas Raffle - visiting local businesses to ask for donations for the school Christmas raffle, collecting prizes, selling raffle tickets at all Christmas events which is a great fundraiser for the school.
