The Chronicle

Dear Parents 
 
Welcome back and happy New Year to you all!  I hope that you enjoyed a wonderful Christmas or holiday time with your families and were able to spend some welcome time, relaxing at home or on holiday with loved ones.  The pupils have settled back into their first week at school and seem very happy to be reunited with their friends and into the school routine. It’s always lovely to see the smiling faces and to hear their stories. I especially welcome our new pupils and trust that they will enjoy their time at Crackley Hall whilst making excellent progress along the way. 
 
One of the main events this week is Young Voices and, although I am not able to attend, I hope that it will be a fantastic evening, as usual, with the children singing beautifully. I am eagerly looking forward to hearing more about it on Monday. I would like to express my heartfelt thanks to Mrs Olden for coordinating our participation and to the office staff for ensuring that all parents received the necessary merchandise, tickets and seats on the parent coach. If you were able to join your child at the event, I hope you had a memorable time and thank you for supporting our school.  
 
Thank you for your unwavering support in ensuring a smooth start and end to each school day. Your cooperation has had a positive impact on our school community, and we are grateful for your continued adherence to drop-off and collection routines and timings. On occasion, as there was this morning, there is congestion if families leave their vehicles in the lower car park for too long. I would respectfully request that parents vacate the lower car park as soon as possible after dropping off their children in the morning. Our ultimate goal is to create a safe and inclusive environment for our pupils and parents (and neighbours). 
 
In challenging times, it is essential to find sustainable solutions that benefit everyone. Our pre-loved school uniform programme is a testament to our commitment to promoting an environmentally conscious lifestyle while providing affordable school uniform options for families. The hard work and dedication of Mrs Jo Ward, along with Mrs Carly Lee, ensures that all donated items are of the highest quality, positively impacting our community and the world around us. Please do consider using this facility, through donations, purchases or sales, or even offering to help where possible. 
 
I would like to express my gratitude for your generous donations of books for the upcoming PTA Pre-loved sale on Thursday 25 January. Your continued support is helping to encourage a culture of sustainability where books are not just read once and then discarded, but instead, they are being shared and enjoyed multiple times. By donating these books, you are making a positive impact on the environment by reducing the amount of waste that ends up in landfill. Moreover, buying pre-loved books promotes a sense of adventure and exploration by encouraging our young readers to try new authors and genres without worrying about the cost. I want to thank you all for your support, not only for assisting the PTA in raising money but also in this journey towards a more sustainable future. 
 
Please remember, your Aftercare bookings need to be renewed each term. If you need Aftercare for the Lent Term, simply make a new booking by emailing aftercare@crackleyhall.co.uk  or receptionist@crackleyhall.co.uk. 
 
Congratulations to our stars of the week: Nursery - Jude and Monty; Rec - August and Joshua; J1 - Sebastian and Edward; J2 - Thomas and Wilf; J3 - William and Charlie; J4 – Sophie and Thomas; J5 - Soren and Shuvan; J6 – Ben and Josie-Jean. This morning a beautiful singing performance by Sloane in J3 entertained the school.  Very well done to the stars of the week in our various classes and to Sloane! Your hard work, dedication, and talent have paid off, and you have shown us what it means to strive for excellence. Keep shining bright and inspire others to follow in your footsteps. 
 
Congratulations to all our other pupils on their super achievements, with special mention to Patrick (J4) for raising £900 for cancer research. 
 
I wish you all a restful and happy weekend with your families. 
 
God bless 
Rob Duigan 
  
 

"Education's purpose is to replace an empty mind with an open one." - Malcolm Forbes. 

Please find attached the termly curriculum sheet for your child's year group:

Nursery

Reception

Junior 1

Junior 2

Junior 3

Junior 4

Junior 5

Junior 6

Due to club and activity changes, permanent Aftercare bookings are only valid for the current term. 

If you require either permanent or occasional Aftercare for the Lent Term, please make a new booking by emailing:

aftercare@crackleyhall.co.uk or receptionist@crackleyhall.co.uk

If you need to make a same-day Aftercare booking - please ensure you contact the school office no later than 1:00 pm that day. Any requests made after 1:00 pm will only be authorised at the Headmaster's discretion.

If you have booked an Aftercare session, letting your child know would also be helpful.

Any children not collected from the carline, for example, if parents are stuck in traffic, will be taken to Aftercare at 4:15 pm, when carline finishes and charged accordingly.

Aftercare runs from 3:15 pm until 6:00 pm, with charges being £5.00 per hour or part thereof.

Childcare vouchers can be used as payment or part payment for Aftercare.

The school office closes at 5:00 pm, please call Aftercare directly on 07732 036625 for collection. 

Welcome to 2024 and the Lent Term House ‘Art’ competition!

Don’t worry if you weren’t successful last time, you can try again……and again!

This term, our theme is ‘SUSTAINABLE PORTRAITS’ 

Ms Holmes challenges you to create a portrait of yourself, or someone else, maybe someone you admire using recycled and sustainable resources. (The image shown is to give you an idea only of how you could achieve this). House points will be given for entering, for innovative ideas and for overall creativity.

Entering  –  5 house points

3rd prize – 10 house points

2nd prize - 20 house points

1st prize  – 25 house points

Work should be your own and no larger than A3.

You should demonstrate clever use of recycling and reusing resources. Work should be brought into school to Ms Holmes by Thursday 21 March.

Sustainability is key.

Professor Penguin is conscientious – a trait we should all be working towards. Creating sustainable artwork is a fabulous way to show how YOU can contribute to the planet’s future.

Please click here for further information.

Good luck everyone, can’t wait to see what you come up with!

Get CREATING!

If you are in Years 3, 4, 5 or 6 we have an exciting STEAM competition for you to enter.

There are two separate competitions, depending on which year group you are in:

Years 3-4: Design and build a device that can propel a soft toy a long distance.

Years 5-6: Find a way to drop a raw egg from a height of at least 2m without it breaking.

Entries can be individual, or a group of maximum six pupils.

Entries can be presented in any language, provided an English translation is given.

Each entry should come in two parts:

- A summary (word document, maximum two pages) to explain the project, the problem that you are trying to solve or investigate, and the outcome expected.

- A creative presentation (any format; PowerPoint, video, drawing, flyer…) to demonstrate the process, explore the project, highlight the stages, and introduce the design and the outcome.

Please name your files with the school name followed by the project title e.g. SchoolName_ProjectTitle and send them to Mrs Hardwick by Friday 26 January.

Videos must be uploaded to a sharable site such as YouTube, Vimeo or Google Drive, and the URL link copied into the entry form. We cannot accept videos as attachments or download/WeTransfer links.

For children who require any medication, the Office requires a completed Administration of Medication Form before this can be administered. A copy is attached for your convenience. 

Administration of Medication Form

Please ensure that ALL medication brought into school is in date and labelled with your child's name and form. If your child is on a pain relief medication, please ensure this too is supplied to the office. 

All medication is to be handed to the School by an appropriate adult and not given to the child to hand in. 

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

Pupils in Junior 3 and Junior 4 received their LAMDA examination results this week and have been celebrating their super success. The youngsters achieved a 100% pass rate, with all the children being awarded the top grades of Distinction and Merit. They were delighted to be presented with their certificates in Celebration Assembly today.

Junior 3 and Junior 4 prepared for their examinations in their Drama lessons, they studied the Solo Introductory and Speaking Verse and Prose syllabuses where pupils are expected to recite poems from memory. Those who chose to, then took their LAMDA examinations at the end of November.

Drama teacher, Nicki Wildey said, “The children worked incredibly hard last term and fully deserve these results. I am really pleased and very proud of them all. All of Junior 3 achieved the top mark of Distinction as did 80 % of Junior 4. These are fabulous results.”

Preparing for the LAMDA examinations is a fantastic way for all our pupils to develop their communication skills. To achieve their top results pupils will have demonstrated excellent diction, clarity and expression. 

Huge congratulations to them all.

Pupils from Juniors 4, 5 and 6 are joining thousands of other local school children to sing their hearts out at the Young Voices concert at the Resorts World Arena in Birmingham.

Following a rehearsal this afternoon, the children will be performing this evening. We will share photos and a write up in next week’s Chronicle.

Junior 4 pupil, Patrick has astounded us all with his generosity. Kind-hearted Patrick has just donated £800 to Cancer Research after deciding to sell one his calves at Melton Mowbray Market. Patrick came up with the thoughtful idea himself. He took a trip to the cattle market this week and was allowed to stand next to the auctioneer as the sale took place. His selfless act so impressed the market that they decided to add an extra £100 to his total. We are so proud of Patrick for his amazingly kind act.

It was lovely to welcome our Stay 'n' Play toddler group back to school on Wednesday morning for the first of this term's regular sessions.

As always we have lots of special activities planned for the group, starting with Forest Fun next week in our very own Windmill Wood.

• Wednesday 17 January 2024 - Forest Fun
• Wednesday 31 January 2024 - Come and visit Nursery
• Wednesday 6 March 2024 - Sports Skills
• Wednesday 13 March 2024 - Easter Crafts

New mums and tots are always welcome, for more information about the group or the special activities please email Jenny Vaughan at staynplay@littlecrackers.co.uk.

Miss Lucy, who is part of our Nursery team, popped into school on Wednesday to show us her new bundle of joy. Baby Nova was born on Tuesday 12 December and weighed in at 5lbs 9ozs.

Both mother and baby are doing well.

Many congratulations from us all!

The latest edition of Princethorpe’s annual review was published over the Christmas holidays. It tells the story of their school year, term by term, reflecting on the whole host of activities, achievements and successes that pupils from Year 7 through to Upper Sixth took part in. It gives a great insight into life at the Foundation’s senior school, Princethorpe College.

You can find a copy of it on their website here: https://www.princethorpe.co.uk/publications

It won't be long before Crackley Hall's Review of the 2022/23 school year is available too, it is at final proof and we are hoping to have it with you by the end of January.

Discover the Lent Term calendar for Crackley School and unlock a world of exciting events and activities that will enrich your life.

With this tool, planning your schedule has never been easier. We strive to maintain the integrity of this published calendar, but should any changes arise, we promise to keep you informed through electronic communication or the weekly Chronicle.

Keep yourself updated with all the school events and activities via the school website www.crackleyhall.co.uk or SOCS.

Click here to access Crackley Hall School Lent Term Calendar 24 and unleash the possibilities that await.

We love to celebrate our pupils' talents, so every week in Celebration Assembly we hear of the childrens' successes and achievements and we watch performances by some of our pupils. Here are photos from this morning.

A huge well done to all!

In Science this week, Junior 6 began their new topic exploring how living things have evolved over time from single celled organisms to the present day. The children were tasked with laying out a timeline of the history of life on earth beginning at the first signs of life. We were amazed to find out how recently human life has been present on our planet compared to the incredible amount of time that the earth itself has existed. We learned that the first single celled organisms arrived on earth 3,600 million years ago, the first multi-celled organisms appeared 700 million years ago, and modern humans only appeared a staggering 0.2 million years ago! Well done children, you showed real curiosity as you investigated our planet's evolutionary history.

This week, the children in Junior 5 have been busy undertaking their termly assessments. Thankfully, they have all taken it in their stride and felt that it has been rather a chilled start to the new term. It has been so lovely seeing our children again and hearing all about their Christmas breaks. We also started our RSHE this week, talking about the different pressures we can be put under. The children shared their ideas, opinions and knowledge openly and respectfully, as always.

Junior 4 have been busy raising the roof in preparation for this evening's performance of Young Voices. With words and actions to the tunes, Moana mash-up and a Pop-Medley 2024, we are all excited about our first stage performance at the Resorts World Arena. To complement Junior 4's Anglo Saxon topic in History, in Art we have been learning about weaving; starting with basic paper weave, before moving on to experimenting with different warp patterns. This will later lead to weaving with frames, wool and threads. 

Junior 3 were celebrating a wonderful start to 2024 this week, with the news that they had each achieved the highest grade of Distinction in their LAMDA exams! We usually have a very high percentage of children achieving a Distinction, but only once before has a whole year group achieved 100% Distinction! The children were very proud of themselves and there were plenty of smiles during their drama lesson on Wednesday when the children were told their results. The children then added their Mastery and Practice Junior da Vinci stickers to their mark sheets as their reward for all their hard work in Drama last term. Well done, Junior 3!

We are very glad to have Junior 2 back in school and proud of how well they have all settled back into the routine. We have been busy in Maths learning about 2D and 3D shapes this week. In English, we read The Magic Paintbrush by Julia Donaldson and the children have shown great creativity in retelling the story on a story map. Linking with this beautiful story, we have been using atlases to locate China on a map. Children have located and colour coded China on a world map before labelling the capital city and other major cities, rivers and landmarks. Great work, Junior 2!

We welcomed Junior 1 back with a breath of fresh (cold) air this week, which linked in nicely to our new science topic of Polar Places! This began with looking at what sort of activities we can do in the winter and how we can keep ourselves safe, especially around frozen water, which has potential dangers. We also looked in detail at how snowflakes are all unique and had a go at creating our own paper cutouts of them. In English we have begun to study a new book – Mrs Armitage on Wheels – with lots of hilarity especially when adding actions to the story to help us remember it. Geography has seen us start to look a little more closely at where we live in the world as we begin to study the United Kingdom, finding it on maps of the world and Europe, and seeing how small we are! Transport is our new focus in History, where we began to compare old and new types of transport, before we delve deeper into what was invented when and by whom.

This week, Reception have come back to school with such enthusiasm and gusto! They are so grown-up and are flying with their learning already in 2024. We have started our ‘Amazing Animals’ topic, finding out about animals that live under the sea. The children loved finding out facts about different animals and shared the information that they found with one another in small groups. What a super start to the New Year!

This week, in Dormcie the children have started their new topic, Transport. We have been listening to and looking out for different forms of transport all around us.

In Badgers and Hedgehogs during circle time, the children were excited to tell each other about their various festive celebrations – some of us passed a toy teddy around to ‘Tell Teddy’ and some of us shared our holiday news outside around the campfire.

Our topic over the Lent half term is, ‘People Who Help Us’ so we have been exploring the role of Fire Fighters. The children have enjoyed working collaboratively to build and roller-paint a big cardboard fire engine to sit inside during our imaginative role play. In the outdoor learning area, the children have pretended to be firefighters by saving people from the floods and putting out lots of imaginary fires. Inside, they have learned a funny firefighter action song and solved riddles to work out which fire-fighting equipment was being described, as well as doing lots of topical counting.

During RE, the children have been introduced to the special celebration of Baptism. First we acted out the ceremony using a baby doll and then with the children themselves taking turns, which was great fun. Then Miss Mary kindly brought in some very precious artefacts from her own sons’ Baptisms, as well as the photos of their real life ceremonies, which we were delighted to share.

Mr Duigan led the Monday Mission assembly on our return to school from the Christmas holidays. He explained the meaning of the word Epiphany, also known as the Twelfth Night, which marks the day Jesus was revealed to the world, and which is celebrated on 6 January. It is the time when the Wise Men, or Magi, travelled from different parts of the world to celebrate the birth of Jesus by bringing Him special gifts. It is also a reminder for us to consider the gifts and talents which we too could offer to Jesus. Mention was also made of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord, when John the Baptist baptised Jesus, and the Feast of the Holy Family, which is celebrated on the first Sunday after Christmas. 

Please click on the link below for this week's Weekly Mission:

Weekly Mission

Please find information below:

Children's Liturgy

Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year B)
Today we hear how Jesus named Simon, Peter, which means 'rock'. Names are very important – we all have one and God knows all of us by our name.

Activity Sheet

Please remember to check team sheets and find further fixture information on www.crackleyhallsport.co.uk

Please click here for the timetable of co-curricular clubs for Lent Term 2024.

Please click here to view the term dates for 2023/24.

Crackley Hall School Office
01926 514 444
Email: post@crackleyhall.co.uk
Postal address: St Joseph's Park, Kenilworth, Warwickshire, CV8 2FT
SATNAV: Use CV8 2FT

Office Manager/Headmaster’s Personal Assistant – Sharon Davis-Harris
01926 514 444
Email: receptionist@crackleyhall.co.uk

Little Crackers Nursery; Nursery Manager - Emma Birch
01926 514 456 - Email: post@littlecrackers.co.uk

After Care - David Johnson, Aftercare Manager
Collection contact no; 07732 036 625
Email: aftercare@crackleyhall.co.uk

Bills, Fees and Online Payment
01926 634 273
Email: georginamalin@princethorpe.co.uk

Registrar - Jenny Vaughan
01926 514 410
Email: admissions@crackleyhall.co.uk 
 
Princethorpe College General Office
01926 634 200
Email: post@princethorpe.co.uk
 
website: www.crackleyhall.co.uk
twitter: @CrackleyHallSch  
facebook: @crackleyhallandlittlecrackersofficial
instagram:@crackleyhall_littlecrackers

Please see the attached menus for the Lent Term. These rotate on a four weekly basis.

Week 1

Week 2

Week 3

Week 4

When dropping off in the morning, if you are using carline, please move round the roundabout before dropping off and do not leave your car unattended. Carline can cause traffic issues on the Kenilworth Road, so please be mindful.

If you are dropping off and wish to walk your child up to the school or are coming into school please use the Lower Playground or the Sports Field. Please remember to park considerately as parking is at a premium.

We would ask that if you use the lower playground at morning drop off, that you leave the school site promptly, as parking is at a premium, and it has been causing traffic congestion.

Please do not park on the Grasscrete Parking area or on the left hand side when you enter the school main carline, as these are both staff parking areas.

Where possible, please avoid parking on the local residential roads, and if you do, please park considerately and legally. 

When collecting in the afternoon, please adhere to the collection times, as if you arrive too early, this causes traffic congestion. If you are early, we would suggest parking on the Sports Field and walking up to school.

If someone other than yourself is collecting your child, please ensure you have notified the School Office by email/telephone no later than lunchtime that day. If you would like alternative collection arrangements to be permanent, please can you notify the School Office by email.

If you are unsure or wish to clarify any points, please call the School Office.

Please see below the carline locations and collections for the Michaelmas Term:

Please see below collection locations for after games lessons (but not clubs):

To order uniform please use the electronic form.

New Uniform Order 

Please also note the following items are stocked in the School Office and can be added to your account. Do pop in to collect any items.

Winter hats
Scarves
Gloves
Ties
Swimming hats
Hair bands
Hair scrunchies

School Uniform Shop 
Tel: 01926 634272
Email: uniform@princethorpe.co.uk

If your child is interested in taking music or singing lessons at school, please complete the below Expression of Interest Form and hand in to the school office

Expression of Interest Form

Please ensure that all items of school uniform, equiptment and sports kit are named.

Could you please regularly check all uniform and sports kits at home and if it does not belong to your child, please return the items to the School Office as soon as possible.

We regularly recruit for a variety of roles, please do share news of the vacancies with interested friends and family. Current vacancies include:
 
Crescent School

School Registrar and Marketing Secretary

Further information and application forms on all roles are available on the Foundation's website - www.princethorpe.co.uk/join-us