The Chronicle

Dear Parents

Welcome to the penultimate Chronicle of this half term.  It is incredible how this half term has flown by.  The really good news is that we have been able to return to many activities in school, within the present restrictions.  We would like to return to more of the communal activities as soon as possible, for example, Celebration Assemblies on Fridays.

We are managing the ongoing cases of Covid within school and notifying close contacts, as and when necessary.  Reported cases are beginning to reduce but it is imperative that we continue to be vigilant for symptoms.  I appreciate that certain year groups have received numerous emails, sometimes on a daily basis, from the school office regarding close contacts and I would like to thank parents for their understanding in this regard.

Our ‘controlled’ open day was a great success yesterday and I would like to thank Mrs Jenny Vaughan, Miss Flowers, Mr Sansum for his catering and all the staff who contributed to the organised tours.  The event was well managed to ensure that we did not pose any unnecessary risk to children and staff in school.  We received many positive comments about the school in general and the happy, well behaved and enthusiastic children.  I hope that I will be able to call upon our stewards and prefects to assist in open events at some point next year.

Next week will be Mr Peters’ last week in After Care as he reduces his working commitment in school to focus on his rugby career.  I know that Mr Peters has been a very popular member of our After Care team but he will not be leaving us completely and will hopefully be able to assist on the sports field and in the classroom next term.

There has been an overwhelmingly positive response to the call for clothing for the Coventry Refugee and Migrant Centre and I was on hand this morning to assist with the collection.  Thank you to everyone who contributed and made a difference to this charity.  There was also a wonderful array of hats being worn into school today. Hats On for Mental Health has been championed by Mrs Burley and everyone in school was encouraged to wear a hat into school today.  As you will see from the photographs later in this edition, Crackley Hall rose to the challenge!  The donations for non-uniform day will be shared between Coventry Mind and the school PTA.  Whilst it is a fun way to bring awareness to the importance of mental health, the children are very aware of the impact and need to share any concerns about their own mental health at all times, not just this week.

Next week, on Tuesday and Thursday, class teachers will be hosting online parent evening meetings.  If you have not been able to book a meeting yet, please do get in touch.  The rescheduled school photographs will take place on Tuesday so please remember that full school uniform should be worn for this occasion.  Any child taking part in sports activities should bring their kit into school.

There are still spaces in holiday club and a schedule of planned activities will be available early next week.  Holiday club is open every day, should there be sufficient need, from 8.30am until 5.00pm.  Unfortunately, due to low take up on Friday 29 October, it may be necessary to cancel this particular day.

I have, this week, received an update on the licence from the Really Useful Group regarding our summer production of Joseph.  Please keep a look out in your emails next week for a link to booking a streamed performance on 13 and 14 November.  More details will follow but it is hoped that families will be able to gather in the comfort of their own home to watch Joseph.  There will be a limited number (restricted by the licence) of DVD’s available of this recording and a copy can be reserved at the time of booking the streamed performance.

In assembly this morning I congratulated our Stars of the Week who were Bracken, Elliot, Oscar, Rory, Leyton, Francesca, Lexi-Jean, Evie, Harry B and Harry A, Lucas, Kit, Amelia and Mikey. For those of you who watched the assembly, you will have also enjoyed a performance from Esme in Junior 5.  Well done to everyone!

Best wishes to our Junior 6 pupils who will be taking one of their Year 7 entrance examinations on Saturday.  I wish everyone a happy and relaxing weekend with friends and family.  It looks likely that we will have some good weather, so do make the most of it outdoors.

God bless,

Mr Duigan

Due to Parent Evenings taking place next week, the following clubs will be cancelled on Thursday 14 October:

Football Club - J3/J4

Netball Club - J3/J4

Holiday club will be running again during the Autumn Half Term holidays, from Monday 18 October until Friday 29 October 2021. 

Holiday club will be open from 8.30am to 5.00pm and will cost £30 per day. Hot lunch will be provided.

To make a booking, please log on to My School Portal, and select the Clubs and Activities option.

Our Stars of the Week this week are:

Congratulations to them all!

What a really wonderful effort from everyone today for the PTA's non-uniform fundraiser for Coventry and Warwickshire Mind. Just have a look at the gallery to see pictures of all the wonderful hats!

Crackley certainly enjoyed taking part in 'Hats On For Mental Health'.

You can find out more about Coventry and Warwickshire Mind here: https://cwmind.org.uk/

Next Wednesday 13 October Father Kevin will celebrate the Harvest Mass with Junior 5.

Please could donations for the Coventry and Leamington Food Bank be sent into school via the Form Teacher during the course of next week. Tins, packets and jars would be very much appreciated. 

Food Donations can also be left in the Front Porch.

Our collection this year is particularly important as we hear of many more families, who live in our area, are struggling. 

Every year the Independent Schools Association (ISA) hold an Art competition and Crackley Hall always takes part. It is a great way to celebrate the outstanding artwork produced by pupils in the school.

Some of the super work submitted into the regional round for this year’s competition includes work by last year’s Junior 1, Noah Cowlishaw. Beatrice Parizzi, Isabel Reddish, Millie Lammas, Theo Hamblett and last year’s Junior 2.

I am sure you will agree their art is amazing.

A huge well done to them all and good luck for the competition!

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

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Burley's class is Sophia-Rose

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Glen-Root's class is Tristan

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Holmes's class is Jacob

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Van Zyl's class is Felix 

Mathlete of the week for Mr Stedeford's class is Josh

Mathlete of the week for Mrs Robert's class is Elora

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

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

Well done all!

Please find further information about the CISC Christmas Card competition below. Entries are to be in school by Tuesday 2 November. 

Competition Details

The ISA Comic Strip Competition encourages pupils to create their own storyboard or cartoon as a means of exploring a topical subject.

This year, pupils in Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 are invited to create comic strips on the theme of Zero Waste.

So come on all you Crackley creatives, get your thinking caps on and your pencils ready and get sketching.

The deadline for entry to the competition is Thursday 16 December 2021.

Please click here for further details. 

The last two weeks have been very competitive for Junior 6 on the sports field. There might not have been any external fixtures but we managed to create a real competitive edge internally. Last week saw the J6 boys compete in House Rugby, while the J6 girls battled it out on the new AstroTurf in House Hockey. Jupiter ended up triumphant in both hotly contested tournaments. This week, the J6 headed to the sports field and played a mixed touch rugby tournament. The boys took on the leadership and coaching mantle to help guide the girls through the first game. Following that, the girls came into their own and put in some fantastically timed tackling. This then led into equally competitive football! The girls relished the opportunity to try different sports.

Linking the creation topic in RE and reflecting that kindness is a sign of God’s love for us, we embraced how we could do a kind deed each day in October through making our own kindness calendar. Ideas ranged from giving a kind comment to as many people as possible; making a gift for someone who is homeless or feeling lonely; leaving a positive message for someone else to find; calling a relative who is far away to say hello and to have a chat with. We were unanimous in recognising that when we are kind, everything gets better. We help others, we help ourselves and we encourage others to be kinder too. We appreciated that every act of kindness matters. Concluding our Aztec in Art topic, where we designed an Aztec brooch or headdress using an array of detail and colour, we showcased our completed work in vibrant, radiant and vivid colour. Don’t they look amazing?!

J4 have explored the concept of ‘pitch’ this week, as part of their Science topic on ‘Sound.’ They all made and beautifully decorated their very own musical instruments - straw panpipes - which were made to demonstrate that pitch can vary. They discovered that their longest straws created the lowest pitch and the shorter ones, the higher pitch. We are sure that Mrs Olden would be impressed with their musical creativity! Let the panpipes play on! 

This week Junior 3 have been so excited to begin learning about Wangari Mathaai as part of ‘Black History Month’. We read the story of The Tiny Seed and discussed how one small act of kindness and compassion can grow, like a tiny seed, into a movement that changes the world. We thought about all the attributes that Wangari had that made her successful, happy and a wonderful role-model to us all. We were very pleased to see that many of these attributes are the same ones we are working towards on our Crackley Compass. We have also loved finding out about the Kenyan artists, Elisha Ongere and Sarah Shiundu, both of whom create art inspired by their homelands. We were thankful to Daiya for also sharing her wonderful story of Sulwe; a little girl who teaches us that it is important to ‘feel good about yourself being beautiful on the inside as well as the outside.’

Year 2 have been getting hands-on in so many lessons this week. In Science, we have been using play dough to create objects and then we described them using all the vocabulary that we have been learning in our Materials topic. We are proving to be super scientists and can use so many technical words to explain what and why we have done something. We have seen children create ammonites, pancakes, houses by squashing, twisting and stretching their materials. We are very excited to be making our own materials monsters next week.  Watch this space!

In Geography we have looked at aerial views of castles and have created our very own from Lego. Can you see any gatehouses, battlements, mottes, or other features of castles in the photos?  In English and Drama, we have been absorbed in acting out and planning our very own version of a well-known fairy tale. We will spend next week writing these. We are going to try to include role reversals, plot twists, alternative settings, or funny fairy-tale combinations. There is so much to look forward to each week and all of your teachers love how enthusiastic you are in your learning. 

Alma Thomas was the inspiration of our artwork this week to help celebrate October being the Black History Month. She was the first African-American woman to hold a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art. She loved to use bright colours, so we did the same and created our artwork using paints and corks to stamp with. We have also been busy in Maths learning how a part-whole diagram works and linking it to addition number sentences. Our English lessons gave us the opportunity to create finger puppets of The Three Little Pigs that we can now use with our straw, stick and brick houses that we made in Design and Technology. We had a lot of fun acting out the story using our new props and then writing to the wolf to tell him to leave the pigs alone!

The weeks are simply whizzing by in Reception, it’s hard to believe that half-term is nearly upon us! This week our ‘Wonderful Woodland’ displays are looking even more fantastic after we added the clothes peg dragonflies we made in our Art lessons. We have also done some brilliant labelling of owls and discovered that they have talons for their toes! In Maths we explored repeating patterns and enjoyed using corks and paint to create repeating patterns of our own. We also learned that repeating patterns can be heard in stories too – perhaps you’ve heard them in We’re Going on a Bear Hunt – ‘swishy, swashy, swishy, swashy’!

Each week Mrs Jackson-Mayne leads a ‘Prayer and Meditation’ workshop with a class.

Junior 5W were treated to a wonderful worship time with Head of RE, Mrs Jackson-Mayne, in the hall this week.  We talked about the sign of the cross to greet God with and compared this to the different types of greetings we have for each other. We even composed our own greetings in pairs!  We were reminded that prayer can be said anytime and anywhere.

During our talk we were each given a cup – our life – and each cup was different.  Some were chipped, some had patterns on, and some were different colours and shapes.  As we clasped our cups high up in the air, some became heavier to keep hold of and even heavier to grasp when some were filled with water! This water represented the problems we face, big or small, and how burdensome they can be. 

We were then encouraged to let God take hold of our cup through prayer and to let Him take over and comfort us and, like a chess board, God would guide us through our life.  We finished off with a calm and peaceful reflection.

Please find information below:

Childrens Liturgy

Activity Sheet

Please click on the link below for this week's weekly mission:

Weekly Mission

On Wednesday the U10 Girls played hockey against Croft. In both matches, all of the girls showed excellent effort and determination, as well as a lot of improvements in their ball control. The A team demonstrated an outstanding attitude and despite losing 4-0, they dominated the second half, only to be caught on the counter-attack twice. The score could have easily been 5-5! In the B team match, Crackley had a large proportion of the possession and eventually made this count, with Julia scoring the winning goal to make it a 1-0 victory. 

Childrens' Match Reports

On Wednesday, the Under 10s Rugby A Team played the Croft school.  We played well, man of the match was Jay (J5W) who scored 4 brilliant tries, but we sadly lost 11-9 on tries. We really enjoyed our first contact rugby game.

On Wednesday, the Under 10s Rugby B Team played the Croft school and the score was 8-6 to Croft.  We all played really well, man of the match was Lucas (J5L) Seb did some amazing tackling and Jack scored some amazing tries but most importantly we had fun.

Well done to all involved!

Lego minifigures are the people of Lego world and this week in Lego Club we transformed piles of bricks into an exciting and creative environment with the help of our awesome Lego Minifigures.  This got us thinking about the thousands of Lego minifigures which are available for Lego fans worldwide.  From Star Wars, Harry Potter, City, the Lego Movie, Jurassic World and Superheroes, to the hugely popular Lego Ninjago. We talked about our favourites and why they brought so much fun and authenticity to our creations, capturing new-play possibilities and endless imaginative ideas. We thought about how they fuel our thinking…to infinity and beyond!  Our favourites were definitely Star Wars, Harry Potter and Superheroes. Even Mr Stedeford entered into the spirit of the occasion and brought in his prized possession from home – which happened to be a framed Lego figure!  We also deliberated which is the rarest minifigure of all time and after some spontaneous research, discovered that a solid 18k white gold R2-D2 was the rarest one of all! It was also unanimously agreed that R2-D2 always protected his friends and that made him the true hero of Star Wars. How adorable!

This week has continued to be all about the Tiger Who Came to Tea!  The nursery children really enjoyed the story last week so we continued to explore the characters and storyline, and even enjoyed our own tea party – with a tiger who popped in too!  As their confidence, and knowledge of the story grows, we have seen our little ones begin to tell the story to each other, and even beginning to develop the ideas from the story into their own play.  It is lovely to see how a book can come alive in nursery!  We also welcomed many visitors during our Open Day on Thursday, and I was so proud of our children who not only coped with different faces in the room, but kindly encouraged one or two confident little ones who wanted to play.  I hope you all have a wonderful weekend, and we look forward to seeing everyone again on Monday.

Newsletter

It was watch out for the Badgers in the woods!

At Little Crackers our pre-school Badgers group took the opportunity to enjoy the outdoors last week; climbing on trees, sliding down trunks and keeping an eye open for the Gruffalo. Our little ones were managing risks, taking turns, observing their immediate environment and generally having a fantastic time this week.

Friday 12 November - 7.00pm to 9.00pm

Join us on Friday 12 November from 7.00pm to 9.00pm from the comfort of your own home for Crackley Hall's BIG PTA Online Family Quiz!

Tickets will be on sale next week!

A huge THANK YOU indeed to all of you who donated children clothes this morning! Half of the donations went to the Coventry Refugee and Migrants Centre and the other half to Acorns Children’s Hospice who were extremely grateful for your generosity!

We would also like to say THANK YOU to Steve and Joanne Mullaney from Mullaney & Co. Removals for lending us their van and doing charity drop offs for us, to Mr Duigan, Louis and Mr Cottrill for helping with collecting the bags, and finally to our wonderful PTA team for organising and helping with this event.

Following on from the success of last year's event, the PTA are excited to announce that this December will see the return of Crackley’s Christmas Light Trail

This will be a treasure trail of Christmas light displays provided by Crackley Hall’s parents and teachers. 

At each display there will be a letter which you will need to write down. Once you have completed the trail you will have all the letters for a Christmassy anagram which you will need to work out! 

Crackley families can drive around the magical trail, hunting for the letters, at their leisure over ten days starting on Friday 3 December 2021. Trail maps will be sent home with every child in their backpack or book bag.

There will be a prize for the winner and also a prize for the most popular light display as voted by all the participants!

In order to make this possible, we need lots of volunteers to provide a Christmas light display to be included on the trail map. Your displays can be as simple or as flamboyant as you like. We would just like as many households as possible to be included so we can create a really fabulous trail! 

If you live in Kenilworth and you can volunteer your Christmas light display to be included please email: 

Jo Ward at jofoskett21@hotmail.com

The deadline to be included in the map is Sunday 31 October. 

Once again thank you in advance for supporting this event!

We can’t wait to hear from you!

Don’t Panic! The Christmas cards are on their way from the North Pole! The elves are busy getting them ready for you. We will send further communication as soon as they have been delivered!

As always, 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 preloved uniform.

To offer this service, we rely on 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 offering 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 day become even more special.

Unfortunately due to the COVID outbreak at school, we are unable to go into school at present to be able to process any new orders for second hand uniform, we will advise you when we are able to restart this service.

Parents, please ensure that all items of 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.

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Kian (J6V) has lost his named sports jacket

Ryan (Rec C) has lost his tracksuit jacket

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We are recruiting for a variety of roles currently, as you will see below, so please do share with friends and family by word of mouth.

Further information and application forms on all roles are available on our website - Join Us

• Reception Teacher - Crackley Hall School
• Estates Assistant - Princethorpe College
• Caretaker - Crescent School