Parent Community

Dear Parents and Carers,

We have arrived at the end of another academic year. Time does fly! Summer holidays are just in sight.

To close the year we wanted to express our deepest gratitude to everyone at Manby Lodge Infant School who have helped us this academic year to raise an incredible record breaking £34,000!

Every parent and carer automatically becomes part of Friends of Manby Lodge at the beginning of their school journey in Reception.

From this amazing community we have been able to fundraise this fantastic amount which comes from every single donation, every volunteers’ time and effort, every prize donation, our events committees, match funding and more.

These funds are invaluable to enrich the children’s school environment and learning experience. We try to ensure every child benefits from this within their time at school and help benefit those that come after.

We hope that you have enjoyed our numerous events from pop up shops for Father’s and Mother’s Day to our Christmas and Summer Fairs.

We always love putting on our parent/carer only events too where we get an opportunity to chat and socialise across the school community.  Always a fun night at our annual quiz, a big thank you to our new Reception parent Paul Young who stepped up to host the evening this year and as always the legendary Gemma Ruse who supported and also hosted our Summer Ball.

Money raised from this year and previous years have allowed the school to install a sound cloud in the school hall to help reduce the noise; development of the old garage; new interactive screens for all classrooms; Senco equipment; pantomime shows at Christmas; class wishlist; ice cream treats for everyone and so much more!

Finally we want to thank Miss Morris, office staff and Steve our caretaker in helping us with all our fundraising events – their support is always so appreciated.

We know it’s been a tough year with cost of living and things across our daily lives costing more so we do very much appreciate your support and generosity in these times, enabling us to give the children their very best Manby Lodge experience.

Have a wonderful summer whatever your plans.

Wishing you all the best,
Jacqui Brand & Rachel McIlroy
FOML Chair & Treasurer

Happy New year!

We hope everyone enjoyed a wonderful time with loved ones over the Christmas break.

We hope all the children loved watching the Pantomimes we were able to put on for them. A performance company visiting the school for Reception and year 1, and year 2 taking a trip to the theatre in Woking to watch Peter Pan!
We are so grateful to be able to give them a special treat to end the year.

All your incredible donations through the year enable us to do this so thank you!

Welcoming in a brand new year, we are excited to plan our events for the spring and summer term for 2024!

To kick start our year we are getting a positive energetic start with our active challenge.
A sponsored event that challenges each class to get outdoors. Working together to get our class mascots around a local 24k circuit.

In our Spring term we shall be looking forward to our Manby Love events in February, pancake competition and Mother’s Day shop and more.

Hope the children have settled into the first week well and we look forward to seeing them at our events.

Just a reminder we have lots of Preloved uniform available so please do reach out if you need anything.
foml.preloveduniform@gmail.com

Much love
Jacqui and Rachel

Summer Fair

FoML would like to thank everyone who came along to our Summer Fair this year! There was such a great atmosphere in the gorgeous sunshine! Lots of yummy food and drinks were enjoyed and everyone had lots of fun at all the different stalls including hook a duck, pick a lolly, tombola, face painting and loads more!

A big thank you to all the volunteers that helped with the organising and with running stalls on the day! We managed to raise a fantastic £4,245.44 for our school.

Feb 2023 Manby Love and Year 1 Bake Sale

We had two fantastic fundraising events in February, Manby Love and our Year 1 bake sale.

We absolutely love our Manby Love display this year! We had so many amazing love heart creations from the children and gorgeous messages for the people they love! We raised a brilliant £176.36 thanks to all the donations.

We also raised a fabulous £290.21 from the February bake sale! The yummy cakes were a real treat before the half term break. Thanks so much to everyone who made cakes, helped on the stall and came along and bought the cakes and love heart balloons.

In light of the recent Turkey and Syria earthquake, our school, along with Friends of Manby Lodge, has donated all proceeds from Manby Love and 50% of the proceeds from the Bake Sale to the Red Cross Turkey-Syria earthquake appeal.  With match funding from DeepMind we were able to donate a brilliant £700!

Dec 2022 Keepsakes Initiative

The Self-Portrait Keepsakes initiative was a massive success.  We absolutely love all the portraits, well done children and teachers!  Thank you to everyone who purchased a keepsake, we managed to raise just over £1,000 for our lovely school!

We still have limited stock available to purchase, so if you didn’t get one, or want to get more, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us!

FoML Team

Dec 2021 Christmas Fair

FoML would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who donated, helped, and came to the Christmas Fair on Saturday.

It was the busiest fair we’ve ever seen, and there was such a lovely atmosphere. It really highlights how amazing our school community is, and hopefully lots of happy memories were made.

We are delighted to confirm the fair was indeed a RECORD BREAKING event, and raised a massive £5400 for our school.

Once again, a massive thank you to our wonderful Christmas Fair Team, Class Reps and our fabulous Manby Parent Community. None of this would be possible with you!

As we reach the end of Summer term, we wanted to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us, and helped to raise an *incredible* £19,500 for our wonderful school.

While it’s been an eventful year (often for the wrong reasons), it hasn’t dampened the amazing spirit and togetherness, that makes the Manby Lodge community so special.

There is so much to celebrate. A record breaking class fundraiser and raffle, as well as the generous ad-hoc donations received. The Pumpkin Display, the Easter bonnet competition, tuck shops, mufti days, end of term baking gifts, and of course the now famous ice-cream van. We’ve all pulled together to make an unprecedented year feel more normal, and we should be very proud.

As always, every penny raised goes back to the school, and this year almost £20,000 has been spent. As with everything, spending has been heavily influenced by Covid. Almost £8,000 was used for online subscriptions (such as Twinkl and Reading Eggs), which I’m sure you’ll agree have never been more important. We also contributed £1,600 towards new books, £1,200 towards the reception and year 1 school trips, £1,516 for the new school benches, and £2,000 to the school enrichment fund. We’ve also paid for new indoor play materials, entrance mats, leaver’s treats… and so much more.

We hope everyone has an amazing summer, and will be keeping everything crossed that next year is full of school fair mulled wine, (not zoom) quiz nights, Summer balls, live auctions, and everything we’ve missed out on for too long!

FoML 🌈

*Every Manby parent is automatically a Friends of Manby Lodge member. If you’d like to take a more active role, please do get in touch. You’ll be welcomed with open arms (providing we’re still allowed to hug!)

Email; friendsofmanbylodge@yahoo.co.uk or contact us through our FoML Facebook group