The Chronicle

Dear Parents

Despite it being a very cold start to the day, the children have enjoyed playing in the autumn sunshine today and the weather held for the Macmillan Cancer Support event this morning.  Dressed in green and braving the early morning chill, three kind PTA members greeted parents on arrival with their collection buckets.  Together with the money collected in school they have managed to raise over £600 which, I think you will agree, is a super achievement considering the restrictions placed upon the school.  Thank you for your generosity, we will announce the final amount next week and inform the charity of the good news.

Another charitable cause will soon benefit from the kindness of our Crackley Hall families; The Sisters of Mercy will be sent a cheque for £2,322.90 which was raised during this year’s Skipathon.  Mrs Simmonds was in school this week with the Minnie Vinnies to explain how this will be helping others in Nigeria.  More details can be found later in this edition.

We welcomed Father Kevin to school this week to perform the Blessings of the Stones service for our Reception children.   Children were invited to paint a stone each which was then blessed and placed in the Prayer Garde, near the Abbotsford Outdoor Classroom.  We would normally be able to invite parents to watch this event but this year we will share the occasion by a Vimeo link.

I hope that you were able to watch the assembly this morning where I congratulated the following stars of the week: Grace, Rory, Teo, Beatrice, Evelyn, Isla, Molly, Kate, Amalia, Dexter, Joseph, Woody and Noah.  Noah was also awarded RE Book of the Week. Well done to you all.

Venus were the leading house this week closely followed by Saturn, then Mars and Jupiter.  Well done to Louis, Austin and Isaac on their super achievements.  We wish Isaac the very best as he works hard on competing the very best tennis players in the country as part of the Warwickshire training squad.

I hope that you found the C-19 document circulated earlier this week helpful.  This provided answers to some of the frequent questions that are being asked regarding whether to send your children to school in the event that they maybe unwell or if another family member has been told to isolate.  If you have not received this document, please let the school office know.  I will continue to work closely with the other Foundation Schools, Department for Education and The Department of Health and Social Care to ensure that Crackley Hall follows the latest guidance.

We will no longer be holding our planned Open Day on 8 October and will be looking at alternative ways of ensuring that the school continues to enrol pupils during these times.  It is likely that this event could be moved to an evening or a Saturday.  Any visitors to school are asked to comply with the track and trace measures, wear PPE, confirm that they do not have any symptoms or live with anyone who has symptoms.  In addition, we will not be inviting children for taster days as this will impact on the existing class bubbles.  Other measures are also in place.

I hope you enjoy reading the rest of the Chronicle this week and you have a happy and restful weekend with your family.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Please be advised that The School Photography Company will be taking class, sibling and individual photographs on Wednesday 30 September.  It would be appreciated if children could wear their winter uniform, wherever possible.

The photographs will take place in the Hall.  Children who attend the nursery on that day will also be able to have their photograph taken.  Unfortunately pre-school siblings will not be able to come into school.

Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the School Office.

Monday 19 October - Friday 30 October 2020

The Crackley Hall Holiday Club will take place during both weeks of the October half term holiday. It will commence on Monday 19 October and run until Friday 30 October.

More details to follow in next week's Chronicle.

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Crackley Hall pupils have raised a whopping £2,2320.90 for the Sister Mary Aloysius College Of Mercy in Nigeria.

Back in February Crackley Hall’s pupils took it in turn to hop, skip or jump in a charity skipathon, organised by Crackley’s Mini Vinnies, the junior arm of the St Vincent de Paul organisation, a charity who work to make a difference to underprivileged people’s lives.

Mini Vinnies’ Co-ordinator, Mrs Dolores Simmonds explains, “Children at the school enthusiastically took part in the skipathon to support the Sister Mary Aloysius College of Mercy in Nigeria. It is a school funded completely by donations and named in thanks after a Sister of Mercy. The Minnie Vinnies chose to support the charity because our school has links with the Sisters of Mercy, as Sister Philomena, who is in charge of the Sisters Of Mercy order, was once Headmistress here.”

Pupils at Crackley Hall took turns, one form at a time, to skip, hop or jump. Supervised by Mrs Simmonds and their teachers they skipped, jumped and bounced their way forwards and backwards across the school hall. Their energy was infectious and together they collected an amazing £2,232.90.
The money raised will be used by the Sister Mary Aloysius College of Mercy in Nigeria to help fund teachers enabling more children in Nigeria to benefit from an education.

Mrs Simmonds continued, “Well done to all the skippers who took part and a big thank you to those who generously donated to the skipathon. Sister Philomena will be delighted to receive the cheque.”

On Thursday 24 September we welcomed Father Kevin into school. All the children in the Reception class had been invited to decorate a small stone and first thing on Thursday morning they gathered to take part in a Blessing of the Stones service.

The service included music and prayer and took place outside in Crackley Hall School’s St Joseph’s Prayer Garden where Father Kevin, ably assisted by Mrs Jackson-Mayne, shared with the children how each stone symbolises their unique contribution to Crackley Hall School.

Intended as a place for prayer and reflection, this special location within Crackley Hall's confines continues to offer a peaceful place for students and staff throughout the year.

Under the cross is a box that contains stones laid by the children of the school, each stone is individual, it represents a member of the Crackley Hall community and provides a lasting legacy of the children’s time at Crackley Hall School.

It was lovely that Mrs Simmonds and Mr Duigan were also able to join the service.

Huge thanks to Crackley's PTA for organising Crackley Hall’s annual Macmillan Coffee fundraiser this morning, Friday 25 September.

At drop off parents took advantage of the refreshments service on the school field and donated generously to the car park collections. Then in return for their own donation the children rose to the challenge to wear green and were more than happy to consume their own tasty treats.

Macmillan Cancer’s coffee morning, is one of the UK’s longest-running fundraising events, last year the coffee morning raised £27.5 million for the charity but this year they are expecting the event’s total to down by two-thirds.

Many thanks to parents, pupils and staff for their contributions. It was a great morning of fundraising for a very worthy cause with over £600 collected. The total will be confirmed in next week’s newsletter.

Don’t worry if missed out on the collections this morning as you can still donate, just follow this link which will take you to the PTA collection page https://thyg.uk/BUU004324912 

We were also impressed to hear that Crackley pupils have taken the cause to heart and have been fundraising at home. Daiya in Junior 2 held her own bake sale. She really enjoyed making banana bread, cupcakes and biscuits and selling them to family and friends. She raised an amazing £21.50. Well done Daiya!

With this week being the UK’s Official Recycle Week 2020, Patrick from Junior 3 has been out and about with his Mum and Dad collecting rubbish from our local streets. They were very pleased to report that there was very little rubbish close to the school but plenty in the streets around and between them they collected two large buckets of rubbish.

Patrick has been taught from a very early age to be aware of sustainability and the environment and to be sure not to throw rubbish out of the window or to just drop it in the street.

Patrick’s family is from Germany and in their village of 8,000 residents they litter-picked every year in the springtime with groups from nurseries, schools, music societies and sports clubs all coming together to tidy their local environment

See the link attached for more information:

 https://www.recyclenow.com/recycle-week-2020?_ga=2.252443401.1413188079.1600973723-1402374831.1600868441

Congratulations to Patrick and his parents for a job well done!

On Saturday 19 September, the Foundation's senior school, Princethorpe College, welcomed Crackley Hall's Junior 6 children.

In a carefully planned morning session, following government COVID guidelines, the children had the chance to explore life at secondary school.

They began with a warm welcome from Headmaster, Ed Hester, before they were split into groups to take part in sample lessons in Psychology, Music and Science. In a break between lessons there was even the opportunity for a legendary Princethorpe cookie, along with a good run around in the warm September sunshine.

It was great to see so many of them all enjoying their taste of senior school life!

Many thanks to the staff who supported this event.

We were pleased to hear that Isaac has taken the new tennis season by storm and that following an accident in the summer holiday he has come back to the courts stronger than ever.

Two weeks ago he won the U8 Boys Tournament at Leamington Tennis Club, winning all seven of his matches, he followed on last weekend by winning the Kenilworth U8 Boys Inter-Club Championship, winning all six of his matches and only conceding five points in the final. He then represented the club the following day, winning all four of his matches to take Kenilworth through to the next round.

All of his hard work and dedication paid off, when he received an invitation, to again train with Warwickshire County U8 boys, which seals his place in the top eight in the county!!

Well done Isaac.

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Wildey's group is Oliver

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Holmes class is Evie

Mathlete of the week for Mr Stedeford's group is Isaac

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Hardwick's class is Charlie

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's group is Jack 

Mathlete of the week for Mrs VanZyl's group is Blythe

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Lammas's group is Alex

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Robert's group is Alfred

Well done all!

Please find attached links to useful tips and advice for families using Seesaw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2UgfXZyjDs

https://help.seesaw.me/hc/en-us/categories/115000881123-Families

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xl-pOBO2zSLasXPd52A_wZP7V3Qbm1jG/view

Please click on 'View Gallery' to scroll through a few photos from this week's events.

This week, Junior 6 have been working hard in English to engage their imagination in order to develop their writing skills. Ask any Junior 6 child and they will be able to give you a setting for a spooky story, using some extremely imaginative descriptive language! They have set Mrs Vaughan and Mrs Horan up for a few sleepless nights with horror filled nightmares! To settle the nerves, Junior 6 then worked on creating a calm and peaceful setting for their story, showing equally well-developed imaginations. The deserted asylums and eerie, misty grave yards in the dead of night were replaced with sun-filled sandy beaches, wave-lapped shores and swaying palm trees.

In Science, they have worked hard to understand the ‘ins-and-outs’ of the digestive system! Don’t ask them for too many details! They have developed an understanding of different food groups, devised well-balanced plates of food and established how diet needs to vary depending on the demands of different people or jobs. Altogether a productive week!

Junior 5 have been whipping up a storm in their Music lesson today, to the backdrop of Benjamin Britten’s ‘Storm’ Interlude. The dramatic piece of music provided ample material for pupils to create their own storm masterpieces.

Adapting her lesson to adhere with current social distancing measures, Head of Music, Mrs Susan Olden, explained how pupils were encouraged to think outside the box and use the limitations to their advantage. They utilised their chairs as a drumming base to tap out a rhythm, adding pens and pencils to serve as drumsticks. Pupils followed the lead from Mrs Olden at first, before splitting off to work in smaller groups.

We have also been extremely busy in Maths, we have continued to look at numbers up to a million; rounding them and making sure we can read their place value. In English, we have learnt what an explanation text is and what its features are. More excitingly, we have each designed our own spaceships. We drew and labelled them and then wrote a piece explaining how they fly, and how we are able to breath in space! This links perfectly with our science topic of ‘SPACE’ where we are learning about the solar system. In Art, we have just completed our Christmas cards and really hope our parents love them as much as we do and order lots of packs to send to families and friends.

Year 4 have been playing some familiar songs on their recorders during their music lessons with Mrs Olden. 

They have also been learning Young Voices songs for their shared performance at Young Voices at the Resorts World, Birmingham in June 2021. 

Joining the world’s largest children’s choir in the world, they will be celebrating 25 years of Young Voices with songs by the Beatles and the Muppets, to name but a few. 

Vikings are also on the agenda in Year 4 with Nordic music that will take you back to the old days when Vikings sailed across the cold seas and when Nordic people lived in longhouses with fireplaces to protect them from the bitter cold.  The music associated from this culture is now being shared with Year 4.

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Year 4 have also had a busy week learning about the different types and functions of teeth, how to write an amazing character description, continuing their knowledge of when and why the Romans came to Britain and that is just a few subjects! 

Mr Vaughan and Mrs Burley loved putting them through their paces with some land training in what would have been their swimming lesson - they will be fit and strong to resume swimming when the time comes.  

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During their RE lesson J4B enjoyed learning about The Holy Trinity this week.  By making a spinner they demonstrated that the Holy Trinity represents – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Just as the colours and the words all merged into one when they spun their spinners, God is three persons in one God. Through the Holy Trinity God has an understanding of our lives and has a greater capacity to love us.

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Isabella played her cornet to us this week.  In English, we have been working on describing familiar settings and the Great Hall in Harry Potter has been one of them. When we learned that one of our pupils could play 'Hedwig's Theme' and 'Double Trouble' to name a few, we just had to have her play to us. To say we were blown away is an understatement. We wish her lots of luck in her audition for the National Brass Band in a few weeks.

Junior 3 have been busy exploring the wonders of the Stone Age as we begin to delve into our first history topic of the year. We have all enjoyed finding out about the famous caves at Lascaux, before creating our own cave paintings using recycled paper, pastels, chalks and lots of crumpling and ripping to create a realistic rocky surface. It was very messy but we had lots of fun!

We have also got off to a flying start with our mathematical topic on ‘Place Value’, using a variety of equipment to explore three and four digit numbers and using this to help us compare, order and solve problems.

Well done to everyone for such a positive start to the year – we are so proud of their fantastic effort and their cheerful camaraderie.

Junior 2 have been reading The Twits during class and Mrs Paphitis has extended the story into their Drama lessons.

After reading a few chapters, the children then discussed the characteristics of Mr and Mrs Twit. Working in groups, they 'interviewed' Mr and Mrs Twit about The Frog and The Wormy Spagetti focussing on body language, facial and vocal expression. Next week they will all be acting out the scenes.

Junior 2 have also worked on their Independent Writing. The children focused on the story of John Patrick Norman McHennessy by John Burningham, the boy who told lies.

The pupils had to think up and write their excuses for not doing their homework and we had ideas such as 'a Megalodon ate my English and a tsunami came along and washed my homework away!'

Junior 1 have been reading The Three Little Pigs in class and this has been extended to Drama lessons with Mr Vaughan.  The class made the most of the good weather at the start of the week and took their lesson outside.  

Even reading sessions with Mr Kefalas have been in the sunshine this week.

This week in Science we also carried out an investigation looking at how some materials can change shape. We had some dough and an elastic band and experimented on stretching, pulling, pushing, twisting and changing their shape.

This week Junior 1 have also finished off their caves in DT. First, they used Mod-roc to create the cave shape. When it was dry they painted it to look like stone. On the inside they drew pictures, just like the cave people did thousands of years ago. We put a candle inside to represent a fire so it lights up the cave and we can see inside!

Our Reception class have been enjoying exploring Forest School with Mrs Clark this week.  All dressed up ready to explore, they played rolling down the bank, balancing in the hammock and on the swing and climbing the branches.

We are lucky to have Crackley Wood as a back drop for our school and this is an excellent venue for our Forest School.

We have also been enjoying the book Monkey Puzzle by Julia Donaldson and discovered more about life in the jungle. The beautiful weather has given us the opportunity to do some of our lessons outside and we all loved exploring the different textures which can be achieved from bark rubbing.

Sequencing and sorting have been areas which we have investigated in our Mathematics lessons, and we thoroughly enjoyed making repeating patterns with shapes. We can’t wait to see what new experiences are in store for us next week!

please click on the link below for the weekly mission:

Weekly Mission

Harvest Week begins Monday 5 October 

Pupils are asked to bring in food donations (packets and tins please) to school during this week. These will be given to the class teacher who will put them in a box in the classroom. All donations will be taken to the Kenilworth, Leamington and Warwick Food Banks to help communities in need.

Junior 3 will participate in a Harvest Mass at 2.00pm on Monday 5 October. During this Mass Father Kevin will also bless the stones from any child in Junior 3 who has not added their stone to the prayer garden yet.

Please find information below:

Children's Liturgy

RE Book of the Week is awarded to Noah (J6V) 

This week left us all feeling rather sad as unfortunately we have to say goodbye to Miss Ashley.  She is leaving us to spend more time with her lovely family, but we wish her all the best with her future plans, and hope she will come back to say hello as she will be missed by us all, especially the children. 

We have been printing with fruit this week, looking at the various patterns we could see in the seeds as we cut them up, then making different patterns on our paper.  The children chose the colour of the paper this time, and we simplified the images by using either black or white paint.  They look very effective on the walls!  Forest School stepped up to another level this week as the pre-school children were able to access the ‘big woods’ behind school.  Everyone had a wonderful time, exploring the tyre swing, the hammock, the den and the climbing trees.  Thank you Mrs Clarke – we can’t wait for next week! 

We wish you all a happy and safe weekend.

Newsletter

Firstly, the PTA would again like to wish all families a very warm welcome back to the new term at Crackley Hall 2020-2012. We are all absolutely thrilled to have the children back in their normal, happy routines at school surrounded by their friends and teachers. 

AGM & Ordinary Meeting

On Wednesday evening this week, the parents committee joined in on a virtual AGM alongside Mr Duigan, Mrs Lamas and Mrs Thomas to discuss events and ideas for the coming year. We would like to urge those who were not able to attend this meeting, we still very much need your help and support. The overall feeling of the meeting was that this year, more than ever, our biggest aim is to get as many parents on board as possible to help build our community to the best it has ever been. All ideas, suggestions, offers for volunteering, no matter how small, are greatly received and help to make our community as wonderful as it can possibly be. 

One of the main outcomes of the meeting was the delegation of various roles to parents across the PTA in order to make it a less daunting task for just a few parents. One of these roles was that of communication and as a result, a new email has been set up that parents may use to contact the PTA directly. The email will be managed by Donna Lakey and Carly Lee, both parents of children in Year 1. We would love to hear from you, so please save the email: PTAcommunications@crackleyhall.co.uk Not all roles were filled and there is still plenty of opportunity for parents to join in or split roles, so please do use this email to get in touch if there is something you would like to get involved in!

For much of the time during this meeting, ideas were shared regarding COVID friendly events that can be hosted this year in a desperate bid that there can be something in 2020 that does not have to be cancelled! Watch this space for more details, which we hope to include a family on-line quiz, book swap and 'drive thru' family events. We are sure that many of you have further ideas that can be shared so please get in touch with those!

We would like to encourage all parents to take a browse at the ParentKind website @ https://www.parentkind.org.uk/. This site was originally created to help assist PTA groups in schools but has since developed to offer support, tips and advice to parents regarding a plethora of school life and education. Crackley Hall currently hold a subscription to the site and the PTA use this as a base to store information regarding policies and upcoming events etc. It is hoped that a parent or two can come forward to help with the upkeep and running of the website, which has many pro-formas and templates already set up to make the PTA organisation more seamless. If you are interested in this role please contact Lucy Lamb at Chpta@crackleyhall.co.uk

Macmillan Coffee Morning – Friday 25 September - 8.00am

Our very first fundraising event of the year took place in a quite different format to what we had hoped, yet remained a success and we would like to thank each and every one of you for helping raise money for Macmillan.

Even better than the money raised was the great number of parents who came forward to help with the running on this event. Unfortunately COVID regulations meant that numbers were to be kept to a bare minimum, but please keep up your enthusiasm to help, as our events later this term will be requiring much more parent support! We are still counting but the figure is looking like well over £600 ! Thank you again.

Thank you again.

Second Hand Uniform

Thank you to our wonderful second hand uniform team, Nikki, Linda and Katie, for being ever patient and serving our wonderful school community with much needed pre loved uniform.

We have a £5 per jumper winter sale, a special deal due to the colder weather at the moment so please feel to contact them on ptauniform@crackleyhall.co.uk to arrange an appointment, or to simply check stock availability.

To offer this service, we rely on the wonderful donations from you. So if you have any good quality uniform your child has outgrown, please use the collection box in the school front entrance.  It will then be quarantined for 72 hours before being offered for sale.

All money raised from the PTA Uniform shop is spent on extras for your children throughout the year at school and helps the children’s time become even more special. 

To conclude this week's Chronicle message, we would like to reiterate that the success of the PTA and PTA led events within school, depends on as many parents getting involved as possible, and that this support comes in all different shapes and sizes.

All are welcome and we very much hope to hear from you soon!

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 in the Information Booklet 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

Parents, please ensure that all school uniform and sports kits are named.

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