Dear Parents and Carers
It is hard to believe we are already seeing early signs of Christmas in school when we are still at the start of November! We do avoid it (and the accompanying excitement) for as long as possible, so children can focus on their learning, but there are only a limited number of singing assemblies left for them to learn Carols; time left for them to learn their parts in nativities; and plans for festive PTFA fairs and film nights are necessarily advanced.
In the meantime, there are lots of other things happening in school. Before half term, we had a lovely Harvest Festival in the church with a packed audience. Thank you for your support in the collection made for the foodbank and to the volunteers who kindly delivered the food for us. The rousing rendition of Big Red Combine Harvester was a great way to end the half-term!
We said a fond farewell to our lovely cook, Jayne Green, who had been with us for several years. The process of recruitment is ongoing while Laura Carr, the Fierté Trust catering manager is covering. I suspect she likes working at Manor and feeding your children so much that she may be taking her time with the recruitment process! It is certainly great to have Laura at Manor, however short that time may be.
Another bit of staffing news is that we have appointed Lisa Newson to be a Teaching Assistant for two days per week. It may come as a surprise to some of you that Mrs Newson was not a TA already! She has been working in school voluntarily on a regular basis for some time now and doing a brilliant job. She will carry on with some of that voluntary work on a Tuesday and Wednesday but is now working full-time on a Thursday and Friday, for which we are actually paying her! I know you will join us in welcoming her to the Manor team (again!).
I was hoping to be able to bring you a match report for our Y5/6 girls' football this week, but unfortunately, the event was cancelled at the last minute by the venue due to health and safety concerns with their roof. The rearranged tournament is for next Thursday when Penguins are out on their visit to Oswestry Sculpture Park for the day. Understandably, there was some disappointment and tears among our lionesses until we put together the new goals we had bought and got them playing football at lunchtime. The future Lucy Bronze, Chloe Kelly or Leah Williamsons ended up with flushed faces and big grins from playing the beautiful game.
