Making Christmas decorations

The children seen in the above picture made their own decorations for their school’s Christmas party – during their arithmetic lessons!

The arithmetic was not neglected, however, as the children received plenty of practice measuring the decorations and working out how to arrange them in the school room where the party was held.

The children are pupils of Little Torrington Church School, and when the picture was taken they had been decorating the room where the party was held on Tuesday.

Gifts at the party were distributed from a gaily decorated Christmas tree by Mrs G F Stevens-Guille. The gifts had been bought from money raised by holding ‘beetle’ drives in the school room during the past two months.

A special guest at the party was the school’s former headmistress, Mrs L Parsons, who retired last year, and now lives at Hatherleigh. The school is also to lose its present headmistress, for Miss S I Fairbass, who took over the post in April of this year, will be leaving the district at the end of the present term to take up another post in Yorkshire.

The two adults seen in the picture are Miss Fairbass and Miss Balkwill, another teacher at the school.

Article dated 28 December 1956