On Friday 28th June we celebrated Armed Forces Day in school by welcoming our families for a lunchtime picnic prepared by our amazing kitchen staff and an afternoon of informative workshops led by members of our wider school community, with representatives from Navy, Army and RAF.
Our children dressed in patriotic colours of red, white and blue, or in uniforms such as Cubs, Beavers Brownies etc, to celebrate the occasion and some made hats and ribbons to wear.
The afternoon workshops gave our children and families an insight into the work of the armed forces with a range of current serving and veteran members leading workshops about their roles. The workshop included; pilots sharing their experiences with opportunities to try on helmets and other uniform items, cadets sharing team building skills and teaching our children how to salute, a very informative drone workshop about the use of new technology to support delivery of materials, air traffic control experience and demonstration, the experiences of a veteran navy officer with some first hand experiences and a design technology making and testing workshop led by school staff.
The helicopter made an appearance by flying over at the start of our picnic, after unfortunately being unable to land and participate in the afternoon – next time!
A huge thank you to the service personnel who gave up their time to prepare workshop sessions and deliver them skilfully to all of our children, catering for the varying age ranges and developing curiosity in our learners. Adults and children alike learned a great deal from the sessions, both about current roles and historic legacies.
At Hodnet school we have 186 pupils, 26 of them are from service families. This number has increased over the past few years and is expected to increase further in September. We feel it is important to share experiences and celebrate our school community, we all enjoyed and benefitted from the Armed Forces Day celebration and are thankful for the opportunities to learn about the work of the Armed Forces in our locality.