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2016-2017 School Year

Whole School Newsletter – End of Summer Term 2017

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Dear Parents and Carers,

We have had another exciting year at Manby Lodge where the children have done more, learnt more, become more and been the best that they can be.  Trips to Ladyland farm, Nower Wood and Wisley, visits from Zoolab, African drummers, Bollywood dancers, Hobgoblin Theatre and  Flat Stan first aid training are just a few of the exciting activities that  have taken place this term.  You may also have noticed the new Reception play area  which the children are absolutely loving. There is never a dull moment at Manby Lodge!

Kindest regards
Mrs Creasey

FOML

Iwould like to take this opportunity to thank you for your support, we believe that a strong parent partnership is extremely important to the success of Manby Lodge.
The recent School Ball was a resounding success and will allow us to purchase resources for the children that we would otherwise be unable to afford. Our thanks goes to all involved but particularly to Mrs Bailey who led this event. A huge thanks also to the Co-Chairs of FoML Mrs Waddington and Mrs Currie, Vice-Chair Miss Lock and Treasurer Mrs Dury.

Goodbye & Good Luck

Sadly we say goodbye to Mr Davis, Mrs Hutton-Wilson and Mr Cook. We would like to thank them for the wonderful job that they have done teaching and supporting our children and wish them all every success in the future. We wish Mrs Gilchrist lots of luck as she begins her maternity leave and we look forward to meeting her new arrival.

We also say goodbye to our Year 2 children. We wish them all the best in their new schools. They have been a fantastic year group, great ambassadors for the school and their new schools really are very lucky to have them. We shall miss them.

All that remains is for me to wish you and your family a wonderful and well-earned summer break. The new school year starts on Wednesday 6th September and we look forward to welcoming our children back refreshed and ready to learn.

With very best wishes,
Mrs Creasey

Reception

It has been a busy and exciting final half term in Reception. We started the half term with a trip to Ladyland Farm where the children got to hold and feed lots of different animals and have a tractor ride across a bumpy field.

We had International Week where the children took part in workshops to learn African Drumming and Bollywood Dancing and each class learnt about a different country; India, Japan and Iceland.  We also spent time learning about countries that have a close connection to children in our classes.  We had a visit from Zoolab, where the children got to hold giant snails, lizards and snakes.

In the creative areas, the children have explored shade and learnt about sculpture where the children have had the opportunity to create their own 3D sculptures with pipe cleaners, beads and buttons. We have also learnt about Kandinsky and created our own art inspired by his work.

In our outside learning environment the children have helped to create plans and share their ideas for the exciting new area that has recently been completed.  We have built a moat in the digging area and enjoyed building dens and castles with the construction blocks.

In the investigation areas, we have been learning more about magnets, healthy eating and different materials. We have also enjoyed playing in our new grossification motorskills area with our new equipment.

Year One

We have had another fantastic term in Year 1! We have experienced fairy tale magic and found a beanstalk in the school hall which inspired us to write our own version of Jack and the Beanstalk.

This half term in Maths we have been learning about measuring and comparing weight, length, capacity and time.

In Science we have been learning all about living things and how they grow and why they are important to us. We planted our sunflower seeds and we look forward to seeing whose sunflower grows the tallest over the summer!

In Art we have learnt about Marianne North and Georgia O’Keefe and used their art work to create our own.

We have learnt about the 4 countries which make up the United Kingdom. We have learnt lots of facts about each country.

Year Two

Year 2 have had a very busy half term! Following on from our fabulous trip to Nower Wood the children have been learning about different habitats.

The children went “WILD” for the half term and kept a daily diary of wildlife activities that they did each day. They all planted sunflowers and took them home to watch them grow.

Lion and Tiger Class designed a “Bug Hotel” and brought in bottles, sticks, card, straw which they used to make a luxurious home for minibeasts!

Year 2 also took part in a “Flat Stan First Aid Course”. They learnt how to call for help, deal with burns and had great fun practising how to bandage arms, legs and heads!

The highlight of the term has been our leavers play “The Bee Musical “. The children have sung, made props, danced, choreographed and acted! They also learnt a lot about bees and especially enjoyed watching the bees’ waggle dance.

Whole School Newsletter – End of Spring Term 2017

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Dear Parents and Carers,

Yet another very busy half term has flown by and everyone has learnt more, done more, become more and have been the best they can in true Manby Lodge style! Our Rocksteady concerts by the children were fantastic and I continue to be amazed at how much they have learnt and how talented they are.

Thank you to the FoML who over the last half term have organised a quiz for the parents, a disco for the Reception children and arranged for the farm animals to visit us.

Over the Easter break a new fence will be installed around the area covered by the new canopy. This will enable us to provide the best outdoor learning environment that we can for our Year 1 children. The Year 1 classrooms and Tiger class will be accessed by gates that will be part of the new fencing.  I am also delighted to inform you that the school has been able to secure some funding to provide an all-weather surface for  the area in the Reception learning outdoor environment next to the car park which is currently unusable due to the quality of the ground.

I wish you all a very Happy Easter and look forward to seeing you all back at school on Tuesday 18th April.

Kindest regards
Mrs Creasey

Thank you!

Thank you to everyone who took part in Red Nose Day, we raised an impressive £262!

Absence Request Reminder

If a family needs to request absence in term-time then an Absence Form must be filled in and returned to the school office prior to the leave date. Each request will be considered separately and a decision made based on the reasons for each request. Holiday will not be authorised during term time. Please refer to the Attendance Policy which can be found on the school website. Thank you

Parking

Please remember to park considerately and safely. Please do not park across residents driveways or in Barrington Lodge parking bays.

Parking on the pavement is incredibly dangerous for our families as this means that they may be forced to walk into the road to pass. The safety of our children is of paramount importance and a priority. Thank you for your support on this matter.

Reception

We have had another successful half term and all the children have worked really hard. We really enjoyed welcoming families to our Mother’s Day cream tea. The children had fun making scones, learning to follow the recipe and measuring the ingredients.

In our Literacy we have revised all phase 3 digraphs and trigraphs and continued to work on our blending and segmenting skills. We have been learning about the structure of stories identifying characters, settings, problems and solutions in familiar stories.

In our Maths we have continued to develop our counting skills and we have been learning about addition through games and practical counting activities including the use of the Learnpads. We have also explored measuring length, developing our understanding of how to measure accurately and using the vocabulary of length.

In our creative areas we have been learning about collaging with different materials. We have also spent time learning about observational drawing.

In our investigation areas we have explored magnets and investigated materials which are magnetic and non-magnetic. We have also explored our senses of smell and touch through exploring and investigating different scents and textures.

Year One

This half term in Maths we have been learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. We have also learnt about measurements where the children compared length and capacity.

In English we have been learning about non-fiction books. We learnt about the features and used these to create our own animal book. We have also learnt about fantasy stories and written our own.

In our Science lessons we have been learning all about animals. We have learnt about nocturnal and day time animals and been to the zoo to find more information.

For History we have learnt about the Titanic which the children have really enjoyed! We learnt lots of facts and used these to create an article.

This half term within Design and Technology we have planned, modelled and evaluated clay animals. We looked carefully at shape and texture. We then mixed paint to paint our models.

Year Two

This half term we have been learning about the feature of poetry such as rhythm, rhyme, verses and patterns. We wrote our own poems using rhyming couplets. We then revised the features of non-fiction texts. We used information books to gather information about an animal in order to create our own non-fiction posters. Finally we invented our own mixed up animals and wrote information sheets about them!

Within Maths we have learnt about fractions of shapes and amounts. We have been practising telling the time to the quarter hour and to the nearest five minutes. We found it quite tricky to remember if a time was called ‘past’ or ‘to’ the hour. We learnt about estimating answers to number sentences eg. 43 + 33 will be less than 100. We have also reinforced our mental and written strategies for solving 2 digit addition and subtraction questions.

Our topic this half term has been ‘Living things and their habitats’. We learnt about a variety of habitats and why certain animals were suited to them. We enjoyed looking around our school grounds for examples of animal habitats. We classified animals according to what they eat using the terms herbivore, omnivore and carnivore. We used this to help us create food chains.

Within Art we have learnt about some Impressionist artists and have attempted to recreate some of their works and techniques.

Whole School Newsletter – Spring Term 2017

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Dear Parents and Carers,

We have reached the end of another busy half term and everybody has worked exceptionally hard.

On Tuesday 7th February the school took part in Safer Internet Day. It is incredibly important that we teach our children how to stay safe online and one way the school does this is through SMARTY. To support you as parents I would like to invite you to a an Internet Safety Presentation for Parents run by the Lucy Faithful Foundation to be held in the evening at St James Primary School on 16th March. Some of our parents attended last year and they found it extremely valuable. It is important to recognise that even though our children are very young they still can be at risk when using technology so we do need to teach them how to stay safe and make the right choices. Further information regarding this event will be sent out after half term.

On Thursday 9th February the children and staff enjoyed taking part in the sponsored dance. Thank you to FoML for organising this. We are very lucky to have such supportive parents at Manby Lodge and I would like to take this opportunity to thank all of our parent volunteers. We are always happy to have more, so please contact your Class Teacher if this is something you would be interested in doing.

I hope that you all have an enjoyable half term and we look forward to seeing you all back on Monday 20th February.

Kindest regards
Mrs Creasey

Reception

This half term we learnt about Chinese New Year and the story behind the celebration. In our outside small world area the children retold the story and in P.E. we learnt dances inspired by a Chinese New Year parade. In the creative areas we have been learning different printing skills and the children had the opportunity to create their own stampers to print with and tried monoprinting. In the classroom, the children have also helped to choose and create role play and small world areas. Our role play areas have included a greengrocers, a vet, a supermarket and a Chinese restaurant.

In maths the ‘Muddle Monkey’ visited the classroom and changed our number lines so we practised ordering numbers from lowest to highest. We learnt to find one more than a given number using objects and have now started to add two groups of objects together and record our calculation. This half term we have also learnt about weighing and practised comparing objects around the classroom and used cubes to measure the weight of objects.

We have started Phase 3 in our phonics which means the children have been learning lots of new tricky words, digraphs and even some trigraphs! We have used our new sounds and segmenting skills to write lots of Nosey News and used our blending skills to share our news with the class.

Despite the cold weather, the children have been busy in the outdoor area during Independent Learning. They have discovered dinosaur bones in the sandpit, made their own recipes in the mud kitchen, designed and built obstacle courses and chalked pictures and words.

In our Investigation Areas we have learnt about different materials. The children practised matching and sorting materials into wood, plastic, metal and glass. We have also explored sounds in our Investigation Area and as part of our learning we have visited the music room to explore different instruments. We have practised making quiet and loud sounds using different musical instruments.

Year One

This half term in Maths we have focused on place value, addition and subtraction. The children have been partitioning numbers into tens and ones. We have also learnt to tell the time to o’clock and half past.

In English we have been learning about stories with repeated phrases. One of the stories we focused on was ‘We’re Going on a Bear Hunt’ and we had an exciting time re-enacting the story. We have also learnt about Zog, and written character descriptions using adjectives and conjunctions.

In our Science lessons we have been learning all about animals. The children have explored the different animal groups and looked at features of each group.

In Geography we have been learning about different climates. We have created the Arctic, Desert and Rainforest using materials. We compared the 3 climate zones and also compared their houses.

Within Art, the children have looked closely at animal print. They have observed the fine details of the shape and texture to sketch their own. They have also mixed paint to create the colours they needed for their print.

Year Two

We have been reading The Twits, George’s Marvellous Medicine and The Enormous Crocodile by Roald Dahl. The children have all thoroughly enjoyed this topic – and so have the teachers! The children took part in lots of exciting drama lessons recreating Roald Dahl’s tricks and descriptions. Through Roald Dahl’s stories we have been inspired to practise our descriptive writing and to get creative by inventing our own marvellous medicines. We have also focused on improving our reading comprehension skills.

This term we have learnt about money and geometry. We have practised adding different amounts of money and finding change from given amounts. We have learnt about the names and properties of a range of 2D and 3D shapes. We have learnt to identify and count vertices, edges and faces.

Our topic this half term has been All Around the World. We have learnt to name the 7 continents and the 5 oceans. We have been very interested to learn facts about many countries across the world including Japan, China, Australia and Brazil. We have also enjoyed learning about the art work from these countries and tried to recreate some of them using different techniques. In Science we have learnt about the life processes of all living things and identified things that are alive, no longer alive or have never been alive.

Whole School Newsletter – Autumn Term 2016

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Dear Parents and Carers,

Another term has flown by and everyone in the Manby Lodge Family has worked exceptionally hard. We have had an incredibly busy term beginning with the big move in September, followed by a visit from Ofsted and our Grand Opening! Throughout all of this the children have excelled themselves and I am very proud to be Head Teacher of Manby Lodge.

I have also had the pleasure of sharing both the Christmas Performances and the Carol Concert with you and your children.

A fantastic time was had by all at the Christmas Fair. It was a wonderful event; Mulled Wine, Father Christmas and the animals in the stable were just a few of the highlights. It truly was a “Winter Wonderland.” The incredible amount of £4,200 was raised. Well done and a huge thanks to the FoML.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your support that you have given the school over the last term. I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and I look forward to seeing you all on January 3rd.

Kindest regards
Mrs Creasey

Key Date

School returns on Tuesday 3rd January.

Thank you and Goodbye. We are very grateful for the help that we have had from our visiting German student teachers, Miss Dahlke and Miss Reinke. Both are leaving at the end of term and we wish them luck as they continue their studies at home. We also say goodbye to Miss Andre our teaching practice student who has been working in Lion Class this half term.

Reminders

Holidays: As per the DFE guidelines no holidays will be authorised unless there are “exceptional circumstances”. You may be liable for a fixed penalty fine.

Please see the Attendance Policy which can be viewed on the school website.  Surrey school  term and holiday dates can also be found on the school website under the ‘Parents’ tab.

Reception

We have had a very successful and exciting half term. The children have been working very hard on their blending and segmenting skills in our literacy work. They have used these new skills to create labels and signs in our role play and small world areas.

Our class mascots went missing, we had to make posters to help us find them.  We have had a volcano in the small world, a hairdressers, a hospital and a vet’s surgery in our role play.  In maths we have been learning about 2D and 3D shapes, length and developing our counting skills.

As part of our outside learning the children have been involved in setting up a car wash, cinema, water channel, and we have used our mud kitchen area to develop language. The children have also enjoyed making their own shows and singing songs on the stage.

Our Christmas concert was a great success. The children worked hard to learn songs and perform on stage for the very first time.  We have learnt to use the cameras to take photos of our learning and put these in our special books as a record of our achievements.

Year One

This half term in maths we have focused on addition, subtraction and place value. The children have very much enjoyed using marshmallows and Twiglets to partition numbers into tens and ones.

In English we have been learning about the features of non-fiction books. We have written headings, captions, labels, facts and lists. We have also received a very exciting letter from Father Christmas asking us to write instructions to make reindeer food.

We have focussed on Samuel Pepys and The Great Fire of London for our topic this half term. As part of their learning, the children have made some houses of which we have used to re-enact the Great Fire.

The children have designed, planned and evaluated glove puppets. Thank you to the parents who supported the children when sewing. They look truly amazing. We are looking forward to another magical half term with our wonderful children in Year 1

Year Two

At the beginning of the half term we learned about poetry focussing on firework poems. We learned about the use of verses, rhythm, rhyme and repeated phrases and patterns. We used onomatopoeia words to create our own firework poems.

We have been reading and exploring a range of fairy tales and traditional tales this half term and identifying their key features. We have examined the structure and the language and used this to compose our own alternative fairy tale.

Within maths we have focussed on multiplication and division and the relationship between the two operations. We learned about the use of arrays and repeated addition to solve multiplication and to draw sharing circles to solve division. We have begun to look at data handling including tally charts and bar graphs.

Our topic this half term has been Famous People. We have compared and contrasted the lives of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth and learned about the lives of Florence Nightingale and Mary Seacole.

In Science we have learned about changing materials and their uses including making a fruit cake. The Values we have covered this half term have been Co-operation and Thoughtfulness. We also enjoyed a fantastic Christmas Craft Morning.

Philip Hammond MP officially opens Manby Lodge Infant School

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Conservative MP for Runnymede and Weybridge, the Rt Hon Philip Hammond officially opened our new school on Friday 9th December. It was a wonderful celebration and an opportunity for us to thank the Manby Lodge Community and all those involved in the project.

There was a tour of the building for all guests highlighting the new facilities and the high quality learning environment that has been created for the children. This was followed by the Official Opening Ceremony, Mrs Creasey said:

“The completion of the new school facilities has provided an outstanding learning environment for our children enabling them to flourish and be the best they can be. This was a unique and challenging build in the fact that the new building had been built around us whilst the school continued to run as usual. The success of the build was due to the strength of the relationships between Manby Lodge Infant School, Surrey County Council, the building contractors and the architects. The ultimate aim of this project has always been to provide the best for our children. The school values of ‘Learn More, Do More, Be More’ and ‘Be the Best We Can’ are at the heart of the school’s ethos.”

Our school expansion has been part of Surrey’s countywide programme to meet a rise in demand for school places

and to ensure children continue to have the facilities they need for the best possible education. For us, this supported an increase in its published admission numbers from 60 to 90.

Linda Kemeny, Surrey County Council’s Cabinet Member for Schools, Skills and Educational Achievement, said:

“This extension to Manby Lodge will create an extra 30 much-needed places a year in Weybridge for the benefit of pupils in the area for decades to come and I’m delighted the new building and its first-class facilities are now fully in use.”

“We’ll continue to pull out all the stops to build the 11,000 extra school places that are needed in Surrey over the next five years but there is a £35million shortfall in the funds we need to create them at a time when our budgets are also under huge pressure from spiralling demand for adult social care. In light of the gap in our finances for school places, we want to see a fairer deal on funding for this mammoth task.”

New OFSTED Report

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Dear Parents and Carers,

As you know Manby Lodge was inspected by OFSTED on Tuesday 22nd November. I am now in a position to share the outcome of the inspection with you and I am delighted to inform you that Manby Lodge continues to provide a “good” level of education for the children.  Under the new OFSTED framework if the school is judged to be ‘good’, the feedback is written in the form of a letter which is attached for you to read. This letter will also be published on the OFSTED website.

There are many positive comments in the report which identify the strengths of the school. We are particularly pleased that the inspectors identified not only that children’s achievement is good at Manby lodge, but that we also have a highly committed staff team and that the personal development of the children is at the heart of the school’s work.

As a school, we are committed to providing the best education for the children and consequently we are continually self-evaluating our provision. I am pleased to inform you that the ‘next steps’ in the report had already been identified by us and form part of our school development plan for this academic year. We are rapidly working towards achieving our targets in this.

The positive outcomes from our inspection support all of the hard work and commitment that has taken place at our school. I would particularly like to thank all of my wonderful staff team, who have worked tirelessly to ensure that the school has continued to improve and develop, and the Governors for their support. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of the parents and carers for their continued support in helping us to achieve our aims and objectives. But, most important of all, I would like to thank the children who continue to excel in so many different ways.

Now, we must continue to all work together to build on these fantastic successes with a continuing commitment to high standards and strong working partnerships which will ensure that our children will receive the very best education that they can at Manby Lodge Infant School.

Kindest regards,
Mrs Creasey

Harvest, Canopy, and New Website!

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Dear Parents and Carers,

We have had a very busy Half Term and both the staff and children have been working incredibly hard.  I would like to welcome all new families to Manby Lodge; the children have settled well and have made lots of new friends.

Year 2 have enjoyed a visit to the Brooklands Museum, Year 1 have been on a historical walk looking at buildings in Weybridge and Reception have made soup and baked bread rolls to share with Mums and Dads!

Our parent’s evening has been very well attended. Thank you for taking time out of your busy schedules to be there.  We do value the partnership that we have with our parents.

Harvest

Thank you to all who joined us at the United Reformed Church to share our Harvest Assembly.  Thank you also for the generous donations of food for the Manna Society.  This has now been collected and is being used to provide meals for the homeless.  The children did a fantastic job and I continue to be very proud of them.

I  would like to thank FoML who have done an amazing job of raising £25,000 to enable the school to have a wonderful canopy across the back of the building. This will provide protection for the sun and rain for our children and enable them to access learning outside throughout the year. We are very excited and are looking forward to seeing it soon after Half Term.

I am delighted to announce the launch of our new website. We hope that you will find it informative and we will be using it to keep you up to date with all of our exciting learning at school. Please spend some time navigating the site; there are some new features such as the gallery and our twitter feed will be going live soon so keep a look out for this. There has been a huge amount of work behind the scenes and I would like say a particular thanks to Mr Waddington one of our parents who has created the site for the school and supported us through the process.

I  hope that you all have an enjoyable half term and we look forward to seeing you all back at school on Monday 31st October.

Kindest regards,
Mrs Creasey