The Chronicle

Dear Parents

This week’s Chronicle is being delivered early as we are closed tomorrow due to the bank holiday which will mark the 75th Anniversary of VE Day.  Whilst I will not be delivering a celebration assembly this week, there is still lots to share with you after another busy week of home learning.  Please do have a look through the Chronicle at some of the work and activities sent in by the children.

The work, photographs and videos that you have been sharing with me, and the rest of the teaching team, continue to be very uplifting and a wonderful way of keeping a strong connection with school.   Please do keep sending these in and we will publish as many as possible in the Chronicle.  I know that a number of children have had fun with their VE Day activities, including in dressing up in red, white and blue.

Although there isn’t an assembly tomorrow, I am pleased to let you know that our Stars of the Week are: Lewis, Alexander, Nieve, Theo, Ria, Isaac, Joseph, Miley, Willow, Leonardo, Harry, Rupert, Roshan and Sebastian.  Congratulations to all of you; Mrs Dyer will post your certificates straight away, so do please look out for them.  The happy birthday video can be viewed in the Chronicle and I would like to wish Isabella, Emily, Lily, Mairen, Fleur, Thea and Ryan a very happy birthday even though they may not be able to celebrate it the way they had planned this year.  House points have been counted and I am pleased to be able to report that the totals are: Mars 326, Saturn 328, Jupiter 403 and Venus 424.  Congratulations to Venus House!

Our teachers have been astounded by the ingenuity and enthusiasm of the children and have awarded Junior Da Vinci Awards to the following pupils: Beatrice, Freddie, Henry, William, Ralph, Ted, Leo and Esme.  Well done everyone and you will be able read more about their efforts later in the Chronicle.

We appreciate the work of our Mathletes and we acknowledge the following pupils this week: Lawson, Evie, Theo and Mitchell.  Keep up the good work!  Our RE Book of the Week is awarded to Jorja (J6) for her thoughtful and personal reflection and speech on ‘Seeing is Believing’ based on the story of ‘Doubting Thomas’.

Whilst we continue to work hard in all areas of home learning, I realise that some children are finding it tougher that others to engage with the programme.   Please do continue to liaise with your child’s form teacher in the first instance and to seek alternative ways of accessing the curriculum.  We will try our best to be flexible and creative through this time.  We can also follow up, if necessary, with a joint ‘phone call to your child, with you present.

I am aware that some families have not yet received a ‘phone call from their form teacher this week; the staff are working through their class lists and will be in touch as soon as possible.  The purpose of these regular calls is to briefly touch base with all families so that we are better able to support your child’s well-being and learning.

I hope that following the Prime Minister’s announcement on Sunday, we will know more about future plans concerning pupils returning to school.  In the meantime, I wish you an enjoyable extended weekend and please share any photographs of your social distancing celebrations tomorrow.  I hope that you are all able to enjoy a restful and happy long weekend and that we do get some sunshine, at last part of the time.

God bless

Cyber-crime – please be extra vigilant

Parents are asked to be vigilant when reading emails relating to the payment of school fees and any other items to the Foundation.

We continue to receive reports regarding spam emails.  The latest scam offers a large discount on fees for the coming academic year if paid immediately.

This is probably trying to take advantage of the fact that some independent schools have offered discounts for this term and that parents may therefore be more open to such a suggestion. You can always protect yourselves by only making payments to us in line with our normal, published methods.

As advised, there has been no change to the bank details of either Princethorpe College, Crackley Hall or Crescent and there is no intention to make any changes in the foreseeable future. Any electronic notification that appears to be from any of the Foundation schools changing these details may be fraudulent.  Our bank details are available on the Parent Bills, the Online Payment Portal and for Princethorpe in the Information Booklet 2019 – 2020 for each school, and only those details should be used.

Please do not hesitate to contact me or my colleagues in the Bursary if you are have any doubts about the correct details or indeed if anything appears suspicious.

Eddie Tolcher
Foundation Bursar

Happy birthday to Isabella J4,  Emily and Lily in J6, Mairen in J3, Fleur and Thea in Reception and Ryan in Nursery.

As a child of a key worker, Isabella was here at Crackley Hall on her birthday and was able to enjoy a socially distanced cupcake with the other children of our key workers.  

Mrs Convey helped Thea celebrate her birthday by lighting a candle, decorating a banner and singing 'Happy Birthday' to her.  Thea even managed to blow out the candle all the way from the Isle of Wight.

We hope you all enjoy this pre lockdown video of Junior 4 singing Happy Birthday.

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

The Foundation’s senior school Princethorpe College has set up a Twitter account to provide helpful advice and guidance to parents of pupils at the school.  Much of the advice is not specific to secondary aged children so we are inviting all members of our wider school community to follow the account. 

Run by Princethorpe College’s Deputy Head Pastoral, Mrs Beth Sharpe, it is sharing information and links from a variety of official sources and includes useful learning resources as well as advice to keep us all mentally well and safe.

Search for @Parenting@Princethorpe to follow the Twitter account.

Brother and sister, Seb and Holly, decided to cheer up local residents by gifting books that are no longer needed by their family.  So far they have managed to gift several boxes which have been gratefully received by parents and children who have seen the books on their daily exercise.  One little girl even read one of the gifted books and then returned it with a thank you note.  Parents and children have been excited to see this very kind gesture whilst out walking.

Well done Seb and Holly for thinking of such a great idea!

Please click on 'View Gallery' to scroll through a few photos of our pupils and the many varied activities they have been busy with at home this week.

Keep it up everyone you are doing amazing work!

Crackley Hall has been invited to help brighten the windows of the Castle Medical Centre in Kenilworth.  They have contacted us with the following message:

The past weeks have been a challenge for all of us, and when normal services resume and our doors open again we want people to know they’re in a safe environment. We think that brightening up our windows by our main entrance with beautiful masterpieces might help and put a smile back on our patients faces.

We would be incredibly grateful if you could decorate some butterflies for us? If you are willing and have the time, the butterfly template (link below) should be printed and coloured.

Butterfly

The Key Worker children have been busy decorating butterflies for Castle Medical Centre. If you would like to help the practice, then please send your butterflies directly to the following address marked for the attention of Ms Herbert, Assistant Practice Manager:

Castle Medical Centre
22 Bertie Road
Kenilworth
CV8 1JP

Lots of lovely lockdown learning has been taking place with Crackley’s pupils continuing to show plenty of diligence and commitment to continuing their studies.

Junior 1 pupils have been amongst those going the extra mile! Especially Evie who has been reading to her Nana in Barbados. Well done also to Jessie for saying her prayers and keeping the faith and to Charlie who sent in super photos of the croissants he made as part of his language learning topic. Mrs Hardwick was really impressed with Grace who not only learned her continents but then taught them to her sister as you can see in the clip here.

Then in Junior 2, Ted has been practising his drawing skills with a happy heart, whilst Blythe built a Motte and Bailey castle to go with the History topic on Castles. Mrs Holmes was very impressed with Arthur’s superb example of pictorial maths’ problem solving for multiplication and division and with his lovely prayer.

Our Junior 3 pupils have been busy too. Mr Stedeford tasked the children to build the development of a settlement from village to town to city and he was very pleased with Ralph and Chloe’s work and awarded both a JDV. Then both Carter and Theo wrote super stories, the children were writing from a plan they had created the day before. Their main learning task was to write using paragraphs, and they had free reign with the story content. Both boys produced excellent pieces of work. Finally Jason impressed us all with his super lawn mower invention, have a look at him here.

Keep it up everyone, stay focused and motivated and remember your teachers are here for you.

Sharing a book together is great fun and it also helps children really engage with their learning. Reading is part of daily life here at Crackley Hall, no matter what year you are in. Reading together helps children enjoy a wider range of different stories, develops language and literacy skills, kick starts their imaginations and strengthens social skills.

Keeping reading is important for all the children especially in the current lockdown. So for a special treat here is Mr Cottrill reading the Legend Of Podkin One-Ear, a wonderful adventure tale of warrior rabbits, written by Kieran Larwood, and winner of the Best Story Blue Peter Book Award.
It is a fabulous story suitable for children in Key Stage 2. So if you haven't already, why not settle down to enjoy this special sparkling story. The first chapter can be listened to here.

And watch out for the next instalment which will be shared with you all very soon.

Mrs Hill has provided the following information regarding SeeSaw:

Form teachers (Junior 1 upwards) will continue to upload the weekly curriculum overview to the General Class information folder in your child’s SeeSaw account. Parents who have linked to the SeeSaw families App will be able to view this. All pupils are able to view the weekly overview through their class account. We strongly recommend downloading the weekly overview as it advises the children (and parents) about live sessions, and the key learning objectives for the week.

The revised class timetable as of 4 May (updated in response to the parent questionnaire) - can be found in the same location.

Congratulations to those students who achieved a Da Vinci award this week. 

Beatrice in J2 wrote and performed her very own poem which she shared with Mrs Holmes. Beatrice's poem

Mr Stedeford has awarded Freddie a Da Vinci for his sporting achievements.  Freddie has also shared a video with us which can be viewed by following the link. Freddie's sporting achievements 

Henry and William joined forces and worked together creating a scarecrow. They have been awarded a Design and Technology Da Vinci for their design, sewing and creative skills.  That's a fantastic looking scarecrow boys!

Ralph in J3 achieved a Da Vinci award for his recent exeptional work in Geography and Ted in J2 was awarded his certificate for his History project.

Also, very well done to Leo and Esme in J3. The children were tasked this week with setting up an obstacle course or skills challenge in their garden. Esme was clearly inspired by her dad who has previously been a contestant on Ninja Warrior! Both children went above and beyond and have both earned a Junior da Vinci as a result. You can watch Esme's Challenge here.

Congratulations to our Mathletes this week: Evie in J1, Theo, Lawson and Mitchell in J3.

Under usual circumstances, the ISA triathlon would be held during the first week of May and is the highlight of the sporting calendar for Soren in J6. 

Although he was disappointed that it was cancelled this year, this wasn’t going to stop him completely.  On Sunday 3 May, he completed his very own triathlon taking into account the distances for his age cateogry: 200m swim, 3k bike and 2k run.  The whole family had great fun and he managed to complete it all in a very speedy 24 minutes and 9 seconds.   

Congratulations Soren, we think you are a winner! 

Nursery children have been as busy as ever this week and have enjoyed various activities.

The Nursery Newsletter from Miss Lisa can be viewed here Nursery news.

Every week Mr Cottrill pops into Little Crackers to share a story with our littlest learners. Nothing beats reading a book together, and the benefits of shared story-time for supporting language, creative and social skills are very well documented.

Mr Cottrill has been really missing story-time with the nursery children so here he is reading Alfie’s Feet by Shirley Hughes, one of his favourite children’s series. The imaginative illustrations evoking wonderful memories from his own childhood. It’s such a lovely story too, so why not sit down with your little ones and enjoy this enriching experience together.

Follow the link to watch Mr Cottrill reading Alfie's Feet here.

Don't forget that Little Crackers Nursery is also hosting three live story sessions each week at 1pm on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, through TEAMS, open to all the nursery children across the Dormice, Hedgehog and Badger groups.