Community events

As part of the multi-faith week each class was visited by Wesam, a local Muslim, who came into school to talk about her faith and to explain how she worships. Each class took part in a practical workshop and had the chance to ask her questions about her Islamic faith.  

This year’s harvest celebration raised money for CAFOD’s ‘Wear it Bright’ campaign and collected produce for the local foodbank.

To celebrate the harvest of apples from our school orchard, St Mary’s held an Apple Day where children took part in apple tasting activities and used an apple press to produce their own apple juice. Each class also produced printed artwork around the theme of apples.

We have developed a new ‘wellbeing garden’ on the school field, with the help of the Abbey Gardening Department.  The school kindly received a donation from a local family, which has enabled the school to embark on this project.  The school’s Mental Health Ambassadors came up with an action plan for what they would like… Read more »

Children from each class attended a book festival at the Abbey. We attended different workshops led by authors of a range of children’s books.

Pupils in Venford designed and created their own scarecrow from recycled materials and entered this in the Devon County Show.

Following Venford’s work on recycling and protecting marine habitats, a beach clean was organised in the holidays at Dawlish Warren.

St Mary’s is taking part in the South Devon Wildlife Champions scheme, which is organised by Devon Wildlife Trust.  Maya from the Trust came into school to launch the project with a special assembly.  The Wildlife Champions project encourages pupils to engage with science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) through outdoor learning.  St Mary’s will… Read more »

St Mary’s has been visited by two Shetland ponies, called Milly Magic and Elegant Grace. Pupils learned how to care for the ponies and even had the opportunity to carry out some grooming.  Some people learnt how to lead the ponies using reins.  We are hoping that the ponies will come back to St Mary’s… Read more »

To celebrate Fairtrade Fortnight, pupils organised a Fairtrade Sale selling fairtrade snacks and using fairtrade products to bake cakes.