On Wednesday 4th May 2022, we celebrated the very first Monksmoor Park May Day Celebration with members of our school community. The children have learned about the May Day festival and each class focussed on learning a traditional Maypole dance in their PE lessons recently.

Nursery up to Year 3 planned to take a turn to dance around the Maypole to traditional May Day folk music. So far, the children had only practised indoors and not had to contend with the wind outside but they did a sterling job at keeping hold of their Maypole ribbons, remembering their routine and enjoying the experience of performing in front of a large audience. We were blessed with dry warm weather until the very last dance, from Year 3. Unfortunately, the winds had blown in grey clouds and a heavy rainstorm made us abandon the playground and seek shelter inside with a promise of Year 3 performing to their families on Friday afternoon instead.

We hope you will agree everyone did a magnificent job in showcasing their new dance skills and that you could see some wonderful examples of teamwork among the children. The children were taught about the structure of the music and were able to listen out for the different sections. Finding the pulse to a piece of music always requires focus and the children demonstrated they were able to do this through their dancing. Thank you to the teachers and teaching assistants for their practice and patience in not only teaching our children a new skill of Maypole dance but also having to learn it for themselves!

On the day, we observed the longstanding tradition of crowning a May Queen and we added a new tradition of our own, to also crown a May King! We were pleased to have our Chair of Governors Mr John Tippett do the honours and crown our first May King and Queen. We selected at random two children from across Reception to Year 3; as the school ages and we have a full complement of year groups we hope to have our Year 6 pupils be crowned King and Queen with the younger year groups taking on different May Day roles.

As a small and growing school, we really depend on the wonderful volunteers in our community. Thank you in particular to Mez and Revd. Dawn from Holy Cross Church, The Garden of Weedon, ALDI, Tesco and Waitrose who supported the PTA request for cakes and a huge thanks to our PTA who made all of the beautiful school coloured bunting and the floral decorations and gave their time to raise £166.40 during the shortened event.

Just like a family, traditions connect us and should echo our interests, values and beliefs. We hope that the traditions we are beginning now will always contain our school values and join us together in our learning and celebration.