Dear Howley Families,
Welcome to our first newsletter of this academic year. Below, you will find a wealth of information we hope you find useful.
It has certainly been a busy start back with everyone working extremely hard. Not only have the children been learning lots of new things in their lessons, but we have also had additional events happening such as the author event at The Earls where some of our children met Alexander Armstrong and heard all about his new book. The Transport and Highway Services helped some of our Reception children learn about road safety through their ‘Teddy Takes a Walk’ workshop and Severn Trent have visited Year 4 to talk about how we can reduce our water usage.
We have many other exciting events booked in our calendar such as a cross-country competition, Inspire Workshops for our Reception and Year Six families (details to follow) and our Parent’s Evenings.
Just this morning, we had a super Macmillan Coffee morning raising money for a cause that I am sure is close to all our hearts. We have some extremely talented families in our midst - there were many ‘Bake Off’ worthy donations, photos of some of which you can see below. All our additional events rely on the hard work and support of both our families and staff team, so thank you all.
When it comes to saying thank you for supporting Howley, I must give a very special mention to the Ward family. You will see below that over the summer, they undertook a huge project for us and have made such a tremendous difference to our school. Like many of us, their family have long been associated with Howley Grange. I cannot thank them enough for thinking of us and ensuring we benefit from this wonderful opportunity.
I do hope all our families never underestimate how much of a difference that your donations for hampers and the Fete, volunteering time to help the PTA, attending events and kind words of support make to our school and children.
Wishing you all a lovely weekend,
Miss Lewis
Thank you for all the support we had for our Macmillan Coffee morning today. Thanks to everyone who donated cakes and biscuits, thanks to the PTA volunteers who came in to serve all the cakes and drinks, thanks to everyone who came along and spent the morning with us, and thank you for the money you donated. We are delighted to say we have collected just over £200 for this very worthwhile charity!
Over the summer holidays, our former site manager’s garden was beautifully transformed into a vibrant outdoor sensory garden. Thanks to the incredible generosity of Shire, who completed the renovation free of charge, the space is now a calming and inclusive area for all students to enjoy. The project took over three weeks of dedicated labour, with materials kindly donated by Jewson’s. We are deeply grateful for their support in creating a space that promotes wellbeing, exploration, and sensory engagement. The garden is already proving to be a wonderful addition to our school environment.
We are all getting used to our new Arbor system, and hope you are too. Apologies for the few bumps along the way!
We hope you are finding it useful, in particular the calendar. In case you haven't found it yet, if you click on the green 'student profile' button under their photo, and then 'calendar' under 'profile', you will be able to see all the school events that involve your child's class.
You will no longer need the 'teachers2parents' app as all payments to school, except school meals, will be made through Arbor now.
Clubs and parents evening bookings, which used to be on School Life, are also on Arbor now so you won't need the School Life app for anything other than looking at our website information, which includes our newsletters. We will keep the School Life/website calendar up to date as well.
School Grid is operated by our catering company, Dolce, and you only need a log in for booking and paying for school meals.
If you need help with any log in issues, please contact the school office.
We are working with Dudley Performing Arts (DPA) to provide music lessons in school. September is a fantastic time to start learning an instrument and lessons can start this term for as little as £9.00 a week. The team at DPA have decades of experience and are the biggest provider of music education in our area. If you would like your child to start music lessons simply click on the link below for more information about enrolling.
Lessons take place in school or, if you prefer, after school at Cable Plaza making it easy to fit in around your busy family lives.
Year 6 will be creating a poppy art sculpture again this year to mark Remembrance Day. Please could you send empty 2 litre clear plastic bottles into school for us to use before the 20th October? To help us, please could they be rinsed out and dried, have labels removed and still have their bottle tops on?
Year 6 children will visit classrooms on a regular basis to collect the bottles.
