Adventure Playground, City Farm and Eco Centre
Avoid the queues on the first few days of the summer holidays by registering for the new playground holiday year before Friday 17th July.
You will need to complete a new registration form 2015-16.
Remember that we offer additional childcare to fully registered children during school holidays from 8.30am to 6pm Monday-Friday.
Full details of our holiday playground sessions including pricing details are here
Our annual summer fete has a festival feel with entertainment, hot food and more. Our city farm, adventure playground and eco garden will all be open. There will be lots of fundraising games, crafts, our summer raffle and lots more. Entry by silver donation.
If you can volunteer to help, donate prizes/food, or do anything else to help us fundraise, please contact Charlotte on 01733 340605
Thank you to everyone who has helped to support them so far – we are glad we tried them and we raised a decent amount for our charity, but unfortunately it appears that we don’t have the audience to run the sales regularly.
• Free parking. Open between 11am-1pm
• Buy preloved good quality clothes and equipment at bargain prices for your family.
• Refreshments available, sold in aid of New Ark
• Cash only sale
BOOK A STALL…
• To book a stall telephone 01733 340605 or email fundraising.newark@gmail.c
• A minimum donation of £5 is payable to New Ark to secure your stall.
• All stalls to be pre-booked and paid for in advance
• Set up time is 10-11am only
• You will be given a table to display items on. You may also bring a clothes rails or blanket/sheet to display extra items on the floor
…
DONATE YOUR ITEMS
• At these events New Ark will be holding their own stall selling donated items.
• All money raised will be spent on buying new equipment and toys for New Ark.
Attention holiday playground members! Over Christmas/New Year we are running playground holiday sessions on three days only: Monday 22 December, Tuesday 23 December and Monday 5 January. Session times are 10am-12noon and 2-5pm. As usual, fully registered members may book additional childcare between 8.30-10am, 12-2pm and 5-6pm (NB on 23rd December we close at 5pm).
On Tuesday 23 December we will be celebrating Christmas with hot chocolate and cakes around a fire in our adventure playground. We would be grateful if parents could donate food for this event. Also please note that we close at 5pm on this day – there is no additional childcare available between 5-6pm on Tuesday 23 December.
We have decided to stay closed to the public on Monday 2 January 2015 while we clear out our long-neglected workshop area. If anyone is able to volunteer to help us from 11am onwards we would be very grateful – we regret that children are unable to come on site on this day, and our office will be closed.
Afterschool and playgroup term ends on Friday 19 December. The new term starts on Tuesday 6 January. Afterschool parents please read our separate post about registering for spring term.
If you want your child to come to our spring term afterschool sessions please do register them asap. This is especially important if you wish them to join the walkover from Newark Hill school on the first day of spring term. During the Christmas holidays our office is only open to accept bookings/payments on 22-23 December and 5 January. If you wish your child to be on the walkover on Tuesday 6 January, you must book them in with us by Monday 5 January 2015 so that we can ensure that we are adequately staffed for the following day.
There is no need to fill out another registration form if you are already registered for this year’s holiday or afterschool sessions – just see a staff member in the office. If you do need a registration form, please download one from www.newarkplay.co.uk/afterschool, along with copies of the walkover form for January if required.
Want to help with fundraising?
We need people to join our fundraising team. Anyone interested is welcome to drop into our next fundraising meeting on Tuesday 9th December 4pm-5:30pm. Your children are welcome to play in our adventure playground, supervised by our playworkers, while you attend this meeting. Give Charlotte a call on 01733 340605 if you have any questions, or email charlottenewark@gmail.com. We’ll bring the biscuits, you bring the ideas and offers of help! Items on the agenda include:
Have you noticed the brand new UPVC doors in our main building? If not then here are some of our playgroup children showing how pleased they are now that the main playroom has been made warmer and safer by the new doors…
The new doors have been installed thanks to a £7,440 grant from Biffa Award – a multi-million pound fund that helps to build communities and transform lives through awarding grants to community and environmental projects across the UK, as part of the Landfill Communities Fund (LCF).
As you may remember, last year we gained funding to improve our heating system, but the integrity of our external doors had also become compromised. Problems include poor insulation, reduced security and swelling in the rain – it made them difficult to open.
Charlotte Griggs, Operations Manager, New Ark Play Association Limited, said:
“The main New Ark building is 35 years old and over the past two years I have worked with organisations and local businesses to renovate the premises. The new doors will dramatically enhance the appearance, reduce heating costs, make the building more energy efficient and improve safety and security.”
Lisa Sachse, Parent/Committee Member, New Ark Play Association Limited, said:
“The new fire exit and external doors will create a safe environment for children to use, as the old doors are not practical and children struggle to open them. As the old doors have holes in them, it causes heat to escape out of the play room, but after the doors have been fitted this will no longer be a concern, creating a warm environment.”
Gillian French, Biffa Award Programme Manager, said:
“This work is an excellent example of how the Landfill Communities Fund can help improve facilities for the benefit of the local community. For more than 16 years community buildings across the UK have benefited from the scheme and the organisations that award grants through the fund look forward to supporting more in the future.”
Please help us fundraise this Christmas by doing your online Christmas shopping via easyfundraising. You raise a FREE donation each time you buy! It’s easy and won’t cost you a penny extra! Support us at http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/newark
We’ve found a great way to raise money for free, simply by shopping online through a website called easyfundraising (www.easyfundraising.org.uk).
Whenever you buy anything online (e.g. Christmas presents, groceries, clothes, books, train tickets, hotel rooms, etc.) you can raise a free donation for New Ark. There are over 2,700 retailers registered with the site, including Amazon, John Lewis, eBay and Tesco who will donate a percentage of what you spend to us to say thank you for shopping with them.
Here’s how it works:
1. Sign up – go to http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/newark and click on the button to sign up.
2. Shop – from the easyfundraising website, search for the retailer you’d like to shop with and click through to the retailer to make your purchase. This tells the retailer you came from easyfundraising. The price is exactly the same as if you’d visited the retailer directly.
3 .Get a donation – after you’ve made your purchase, the retailer will give you a cash reward that easyfundraising turn into a donation for Newark Play Association (our charity name).
No cost, no catch!
Please be assured that using the easyfundraising website will not cost you a penny. There are no catches or hidden charges and New Ark benefits from any donations you make once registered.
Thank you for your support.
We’re getting ready for our Christmas Bazaar on Saturday 29th November. Can you help with any of the following? If so please contact Nikki on 01733 340605 or email nikki_newark@hotmail.co.uk.
Now, more than ever, we need people to join our fundraising team. Everyone is welcome to drop into our next fundraising meeting on Tuesday 9th December 4pm-5:30pm. If you’d like to come please call Charlotte on 01733 340605 or email charlottenewark@gmail.com. Your children are welcome to play in our adventure playground, supervised by our playworkers, while you attend this meeting. We’ll be planning a calendar of fundraising events for 2015/16 and ideas pencilled in so far for the next year include:
After that our next fundraising planning meeting will be on Thursday 15th January, 1-3pm
Lots of cheers and thank yous in our fundraising news this month…
We are delighted to announce that our Indulgence Evening on Friday 7 November raised £679.52. Thank you so much to everyone who supported us – no matter how small or great your contribution we couldn’t do it without you 🙂
So far we have raised over £350 on our Little House moneybox fundraiser and will be announcing the winners of the decorating and most money raised prizes later this week. We know that a few people still have their boxes – please can you return them to us as soon as possible so that we can add up the final amount and work out if we have raised enough to buy a sunshade tarpaulin to put over our sandpit area.
David Wilson (husband of Linda Wilson in playgroup), gained £105 for us in sponsorship donations by running the Great Eastern Run. This will go towards buying a new carpet for our quiet corner, to help make it a cosy and inviting place to read books and talk. Hope you’ve recovered now David!
Nationwide Building Society customers helped New Ark to receive a £500 donation in the last Community Match scheme. Thank you to everyone who voted for us with their blue tokens.
We are super proud that Waitrose chose a New Ark playground regular, Lucas, to help open their new store in Peterborough recently. He also helped some of our staff to collect a cheque for £290, which was our share of Waitrose’s green token Community Matters scheme for October. Thank you also to Waitrose staff who are currently helping us to improve some of the facilities on our city farm – hopefully we can post some pictures of the improvements shortly…
We’ve recently heard that New Ark was chosen by Norwich and Peterborough Building Society to receive a donation of £100 as part of their Make a Difference Week. We’ll be attending a cheque presentation with local MP Stewart Jackson in a couple of weeks – keep an eye on our Facebook page for a picture.
We need people to join our fundraising team. Everyone is welcome to drop into our next fundraising meeting on Tuesday 9th December 4pm-5:30pm. If you’d like to come please call Charlotte on 01733 340605 or email charlottenewark@gmail.com. Your children are welcome to play in our adventure playground, supervised by our playworkers, while you attend this meeting. We’ll be planning a calendar of fundraising events for 2015/16 and so far the ideas pencilled in for the next year include:
After that our next fundraising planning meeting will be on Thursday 15th January, 1-3pm