Our first 'Lending Library' ran on Wednesday after school. Brilliant photographs of our very first customers! This will take place very Wednesday after school - just come along and choose a book. Parents or carers simply sign to take a book home, when you bring it back, you can take another.

Come along and take a look out our wide variety of books thanks to our local One Stop Shop and their Causes for Carriers grant.

You can take a look at the books during our MacMillan Coffee Afternoon on the 28th Sept, we will be running the lending library after school, on that Friday too, as a one off.

We are entering the Garden Festival’s ‘Our School’ Category again this year as there are cash prizes and garden goodie bags up for grabs for the schools!

However YOU and YOUR CHILDREN could grow something and enter the competition yourself, at home! Just get organised now and plant your peas, beans or any other type of vegetable, fruit or flowers ready to enter them into the Sept competition.

If baking is more your thing, then look up your favourite cake recipe and get practicing.

The competition is on Saturday 1^st Sept for fruit, veg and flowers and Sunday 2^nd Sept for baking in a big marque in Mansfield marketplace.

Lots of different categories to enter – lots of fun things for children. We will remind you again just before the start of the summer holidays!

There are a number of events/activities happening locally:

• All other district Council summer holiday activities are listed in their 'My Mansfield' magazine that is delivered through residential letterboxes or visit: http://www.mansfield.gov.uk/mymansfield

• On Wednesday 8th August - 'Summer Spectacular' Event on Oak Tree Primary School field - 12noon until 3pm. Small charge for some activities. Range of stalls and activities.

Have a lovely summer break.

Asquith Primary School has visited Mansfield Library to work with artist, Emma Reynard, to develop ideas for an automaton that will be the central feature for the Big Draw in 2018.

Inspire run the libraries in Nottinghamshire. Inspire commissioned artist Emma Reynard to spend a day with two year 5 groups from Asquith Primary School. The children were encouraged to come up with ideas, designs and artwork which will inspire a final automaton design.

Emma based her initial workshops on Alexander Calder who was famous for making a mechanical circus in the 1920’s. Calder would carry the circus around in a suitcase and perform to lots of people in Paris.

Asquith pupils had to imagine what kind of strange things could happen if the circus came to the library! They used lots of different materials to create amazing artwork, as well as collage to make pictures which could be projected onto the wall.

As well as being used by a second artist Keith Newstead to inspire his final automaton, the children’s artwork will be on display in the library as part of a Big Draw exhibition in November.

Clare Harding, Head of Asquith Primary School said:

“It has been amazing to be invited to take part in this project. Our pupils have loved working with Emma, a professional artist, who helped them to bring their ideas to life.

We hope to return to the library to see the actual automaton and to see our own children’s work in the Big Draw art exhibition.”

Asquith Primary School has visited Jackson’s Park to work with officers from Greenwood Community Forest Partnership to learn more about the trees they planted earlier this year.

Greenwood Partnership were part of the partnership which planted Jackson’s Fruity Wood in February 2018. Jackson’s Fruity Wood was named by a pupil from Asquith Primary School and the logo was drawn by a second pupil. They were inspired by planting all the trees and hedge plants.

The Greenwood Community Forest, one of 12 Community Forest initiatives in England, helped the school and District Council plan and plant the orchard thanks to Defra funding. This funding also included the delivery of a follow up learning related to the new trees.

This learning activity was linked to the School topic week about the Stone Age. Over eighty children took part in the activity which involved making examples of ‘wattle and daub’ walls to take back to the classroom – very messy!

Over the day three classes visited the Park. They took a look at the Orchard to see how it was growing.

Nic Wort, Project Officer for Greenwood, said: “The Greenwood team is committed to supporting schools to plant trees and working with Defra and England’s Community Forests has helped us to reach even more schools, encouraging them to plant native trees in their school grounds and parks.

Hopefully we are creating future green guardians of our parks and green spaces”.

Pupils from both schools were offered the chance to take part in the “This is Me, This is Mansfield” project by artist Clare Taylor who has been managing the art project for Mansfield Museum. Four families from Oak Tree joined five families from Asquith to take part in the workshop.

The workshop was great fun. All the artwork will go into an exhibition at the Museum. The exhibition is to formally open on the 17^th February and runs through until the 24^th of March.  Please pop along and have a look.

The pupils along with other local residents were given the chance to create mini-me ceramic figures of themselves. This was to celebrate the very first building the Museum was housed in, known locally as the Tin Tabernacle.