Maynards Green CP School

OUR SCHOOL VISION

For our children to have the confidence, skills and attitude to become responsible citizens who can achieve their potential.

'Growing the community one child at a time'

A message from Mrs Clark

Dear Families,

As the weather turns colder we are starting to feel festive at Maynards Green!🎄 Please make sure your child has a warm coat, and is suitably dressed for outdoor learning if they are in Reception and Y2.

Our calendar is packed to the brim with fun and exciting events in the coming 4 weeks.

Rehearsals for our EYFS and KS1 Nativity show, the Year 2 and 3 Christmas Performance and the KS2 Christmas Concert are in full swing. We have Rev PJ joining us on the 2nd December for an assembly all about advent.

Mrs A and I are looking forward to taking some of our Y6 pupils to sing for the older people of the community at Cherry Tree Court in early December. Following this, the Year 3 & 5 Pantomime trip is all booked, and we have even ordered the ice creams for the interval! (I am having strawberry 🍨)

Our new additions to playtime are a great success, with the traverse wall and vehicle area already firm favourites across the school. Thank you to everyone who has donated vehicles and equipment. If you are having a clear out of old toys and games before Christmas, we would love to take these off your hands! Please drop in any donations to the school office.

Have a fantastic weekend.

Warm wishes,

Mrs Clark

Headteacher

🗣You said...We Did👍

Mrs Townsend and I met with your Class reps earlier in the term. Here is some of the feedback they gave us, and our response as a school.

Class Reps 2025/2026

Reception - Holly Jones & Sophie Weeks

Year 1 - Crystal Wren & Becky Evershed

Year 2 - Emma Adams & Charlotte Ross - Goobey

Year 3 - Lynsey Extence & Becky Evershed

Year 4 - Leanne Cooley & Dawn Lee

Year 5 - Jess Woods

Year 6 - Becky Delves & Sarah Barnard

📢 Call for Volunteers! Help Us Enrich Our Primary School Community! 📚

We are reaching out to all parents, friends, relatives, and members of the local community to ask for your generous support as volunteers in our primary school. Your time and unique talents can make a significant difference in our students' learning and overall experience!

How You Can Help

1. Reading Support 📖

We are looking for volunteers to help our students with reading.

This involves:

Listening to children read individually
Encouraging a love of books and improving reading fluency.

This is a wonderful way to directly impact a child's foundational literacy skills. Even 30 minutes a week is invaluable!

Amazon Wishlists

Thank you so much for all those who have bought off our Amazon Wishlists so far!

This is an easy way to help enhance your child's learning environment. You can purchase items directly from Amazon, and they'll be safely delivered right to us.

Every purchase, no matter how small, makes a significant positive impact on our classrooms.

Thank you so much for your generosity!

Click the links here:

Reception, Year 1, Year 2, Year 3 , Year 4, Year 5, Year 6 and whole school (including playground, science and outdoor learning)

Teacher Contact Details

Ailsa Clark - head@maynardsgreen.org

Carly Townsend - ctownsend@maynardsgreen.org

Helen Evans - hevans@maynardsgreen.org

Christina Green - cgreen@maynardsgreen.org

Colette Lacey - clacey@maynardsgreen.org

Verity Keet - vkeet@maynardsgree.org

Nicola Alexander - nalexander@maynardsgreen.org

Sophie Francis - sfrancis@maynardsgreen.org

Karolina Holton - kholton@maynardsgreen.org

Robyn Osborn - rosborn@maynardsgreen.org

Jane Taylor - jtaylor@maynardsgreen.org

Attendance

Link to our attendance policy - click here

Year R -92.7 %

Year 1 -95.5 %

Year 2 - 97.4 %

Year 3 - 94.6%

Year 4 -97.2 %

Year 5 -95.9 %

Year 6 - 96.4%

The following NHS page helps parents/carers by providing guidance on common childhood illnesses:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/is-my-child-too-ill-for-school/

Safeguarding and Parent support

Link to our current safeguarding policy - click here

Parent & Carer Workshops

We are offering a programme of free workshops for parents and carers of primary aged children, including:

Taming the Worries (helping children manage anxiety and worry)
Tricky Mornings (supporting smoother starts to the day)
Neurodiversity, Anxiety, and Sleep (understanding the links and strategies to help)

We also host Lunch & Chat online groups for parents of primary and secondary aged children, providing parents with a relaxed space to share ideas and support one another.

These sessions not only equip families with practical strategies, but also reinforce the work schools are doing every day to help children flourish.

Parents and carers can book via TicketTailor
For any questions, please email mhew@eastsussex.gov.uk

Support for Parents Carers Guide Oct -Dec 25.pdf

Parenting Team Poster.pdf

Google Classroom

Please click the link below to access our Google Classroom guide:

link to slides

MG XMAS 2025

(open the document above to access the links ⤴️)

Dates for your diary

Dates 2025 for newsletter

Christmas Lunch Menu

We will be having our Christmas Lunch on Thursday 18th December.

Please note, there will be no jacket potatoes, pasta or sandwiches served on this day.

Please complete the form to order christmas lunch by Friday 28th November. Please indicate on the form of your child will be bringing a packed lunch from home: https://forms.gle/MX5CGruSnz8wWz2K8

💜 End-of-Term Pool Party! 💜

We are delighted to report that the children had a fantastic time at our end-of-term Pool Party! It was a wonderful way to celebrate all of their hard work this term.

We would also like to extend a massive thank you for your generosity! The incredible amount of money raised through your contributions will go directly towards maintaining this wonderful facility for all the children to continue enjoying.

Your support is invaluable in helping us keep our pool a fun and safe environment.

This lottery has been set up specifically to raise money and make a difference for our children!

It's a fantastic way to bring Parents, Carers, Teachers and the wider community together, in partnership with our school, and at the same time give something back.

We hope to raise funds that can support and enrich the education of our children - we aim to provide extra resources for the children, improve the school environment as well as run extracurricular activities such as music, art and sport.

Your support is greatly appreciated and we wish you good luck!

The Friends of Maynards Green

Click here to enter

🤩 THANK YOU! 😀

A huge thank you again to Kim and to Henley Bridge for their thoughtful support of our school community with the generous donation of chocolate milk. We hope you enjoyed it!

Tess and her Dad have been busy crafting a beautiful birdhouse that will soon enrich our garden. Thank you!

Thank you to Caz (Bissy's Mum) for creating a custom, 'Pudz' sized MG t-shirt for our school mascot- complete with a perfect tail hole!

Reception

We have had such a fabulous start to term 2. We have been able to start our outdoor learning with Mr Townsend, which the children have loved. They really enjoyed looking for minibeasts and getting to experience the outdoor learning area.

In class we have learnt about Rememberance day, Anti-bullying week and Children in Need, so we have been very busy! We talked about what is kind and what we can do if we see someone being unkind. We have also begun rehearsing for our Christmas Nativity! Overall, it has been such a fun start to a very busy term.

Mrs Osborn

Reception Class teacher

Year 1

This term has begun with our first trip on a coach! Year 1 have the challenge to answer the question - Do I have better toys then my grandparents and parents have? To help us with our understanding of toys we visited Brighton Toy and Model museum. We saw a teddy that was stuffed with wood chips and learnt that a spinning wheel has been a toy for over 6000 years!

The children were a pleasure to take on the trip and a massive thank you needs to be given to the parents that supported us on that trip.

Mrs Green and Mrs Keet

Year One Class Teachers

Year 2

Term 2 has started with a bang with the children being inspired by Bonfire Night to write poems. They used their senses to describe what could be seen, heard, smelt and felt during a firework display - they even learnt about onomatopoeia! We have thrown ourselves into our history topic - The Great Fire of London and become historians, looking at evidence which gave us clues as to how and when it started and what happened during the fateful four days in 1666. In Maths we have been practising adding and subtracting, using resources to help us and working out ten more and ten less.

Finally, we have been very busy learning the songs for our Christmas play with Year 3 - we can't wait to show you all!

Mrs Evans and Mrs Keet

Year Two Class Teachers

Year 3

Term 2 is upon us and that can only means one thing; the Christmas performance! In Year 3, we are rehearsing lots to ensure we give the very best performance we can and are very excited to share it with you on Monday 8th December (2.00 pm - 3.00 pm) and Friday 12th December (9.30 am - 10.30 am).

Anti-Bullying week began with Odd Socks Day and the theme for the week was "The Power of Good". We focused on how we can use our power of good to help those who might be feeling vulnerable.

Miss Taylor

Year 3 Class Teacher

Year 4

Year 4s have been busy exploring Times Tables rockstars. This is such a fantastic tool to aid our preparations for the Multiplication Tables Check in June next year.

We also completed our art unit all about repeated patterns.

Throughout the unit, we sought inspiration from the works of Rachel Parker and adapted a mindful approach to working with pattern. Children explored how patterns are used in Rachel's own work, and then went on to explore ways in which they can create pattern in a playful way.

We used paper to create our patterns and then repeated them digitally using Canva. The children also had an opportunity to look at each other's work and to reflect on their creations.

Mrs Holton

Year 4 Class Teacher

Year 5

Year 5 pupils represented Maynards Green at the Cenotaph Memorial in Horam on the 11th November. The short service was led by PJ from Christ Church. Throughout the service, the children stood in respectful silence and were noted for their good behaviour by members of the Horam community.

Sporting News:

On 15th October, pupils from Years 4, 5 & 6 took part in the Heathfield Area Football Tournament at Heathfield Community College. The children demonstrated great skill and sportsmanship throughout the event and resulted in the girls winning their league without conceding a goal! The girls' team will now take part in the final later this month in Uckfield.

The second sporting event to take place, was the Wealden Area Cross Country Tournament held at Beacon Academy on 12th November. Six Year 5 pupils took part in this event. The course was challenging and extremely muddy, but the children rose to the occasion and gave a courageous and determined performance.

Miss Lacey

Class Teacher - PE Lead

Year 6

This term in Year 6 is flying by - I can't believe it's Week 3 already!

The talk of the classroom at the moment is very much Times Tables Rock Stars, following a successful launch last week. Here are some comments from the children in Year 6 about TTRS.

"TTRS helps to encourage me to do my tables a lot more!" - Ruby

"It's not only fun, it helps with your times tables! You can do it at home or at school - anywhere really if you have internet." - Lottie

"You can interact with your classmates in a different way. It helps you with your tables and it's really fun!" - Julietta

"It makes learning times tables more fun than it actually needs to be and I like the different multiplayer games." - Pippa R

Please encourage your children to play on TTRS at home to keep up the good work!

Miss Francis

Year 6 Teacher and Phase Lead

Updates from our School Garden

The children have been busy in our new School garden. Once sad looking space is starting to beam with life. Even as the days get cooler, our School Garden has been bustling with activity—from raking leaves and weeding, sowing, planting to important bug hunting.

So far the children have successfully sown broad beans, radishes, onions, and garlic. Our existing raised bed and pots are now home to new strawberry plants! The children planted bulbs in pots, with the aim to sell them at our Daffodil Sale in the spring. We had great fun upcycling old wellies into planters for bulbs and strawberries. We have added many Ox-Eye Daisies to our Outdoor learning meadow, which will hopefully add a splash of colour and help our pollinators next spring.

With the help of our dedicated staff, we now have two more raised beds ready to be filled with compost. We are currently seeking funds to fill them with new compost to start the growing season fully in the spring. (And hopefully build a few more raised beds!)

A big THANK YOU to everyone who donated us plastic plant pots - we would happily accept more if you have any! They were already put to good use!

The Big Dig: Pond Project & Treasure!

A team of enthusiastic pupils started digging a hole for their chosen project: creating a small wildlife pond! We found a couple of frogs in our garden already!
While digging was a lot of hard work, it led to an amazing and exciting discovery!

The team found two very old-looking but very good condition bottles! Based on our brief research, we believe they might be more than 100 years old!

The larger bottle has the name "N. Kenward Heathfield" embossed on the glass.
The small bottle : "Camp Coffee & Chicory Paterson’s Glasgow".

We would love to know more about the history of these bottles and how they might have ended up in our school grounds.

If you have any information about N. Kenward Heathfield (perhaps a local business from long ago?) or the Camp Coffee bottle, please get in touch with the school office.

Atrium Revamp: Donations still Needed!

As mentioned in our email a couple of weeks ago, we want to give our sad-looking Atrium a total makeover and turn it into a fantastic wildlife friendly space!

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who has already supported us and generously donated items so far. A special THANK YOU to Tess and her family for making us a gorgeous bird box! We cannot wait to put it up! Thank you so much !

We are still looking for donations to help us complete this Atrium revamp project with Bug Hotels, bird boxes and plants. We are hoping to start on this project after the Christmas holidays:

Bricks
Bamboo Canes
Barks
Pine Cones
Cardboard Tubes
Ready made bug hotels
Robin nest box (they have nested here in the past, on the ground)

Please drop off any items at the school office. Your support is really appreciated and will make a difference to our children. Thank you!

It is lovely to see the children enjoying our school garden so far. It is wonderful to see them happy and fully engaged in all the activities, beaming with ideas and eagerness to learn from nature. I am very excited about our next adventures!

Mrs McFall

Teaching Assistant and School Gardening Coordinator

We hosted a special assembly to raise awareness of Type 1 Diabetes, presented by the parents of one of our pupils.

The presentation covered the key signs of undiagnosed Type 1 Diabetes, known as the 'Four Ts', shared one of our pupil's personal stories, and provided a brief overview of living with the condition.

The children watched a short video, "What is Type 1 Diabetes" from the charity Diabetes UK.

🌟Headteacher Awards🌟

Dormice

Arthur H - for practicing all his phonics sounds

Rafaela - for an amazing model built in class.

Zach - for super 1 more 1 less knowledge

Squirrel

Anna - for an excellent piece of writing and remembering her finger spaces.

Kiyara - for asking thoughtful questions to a visitor

Jenson - for being an amazing historian!

Harper - excellent reading in her our reading groups

Hedgehog

Freddie - working very hard in Maths

William - for writing a fabulous firework poem

Louis - for excellent effort and progress in reading

Rabbit

Oliver - for great focus in all lessons

Emilia - for working so hard on phonics and precision words

Boden - a great effort in STAR assessments

Murray - for a super job advert for the position of "Uncorker of Ocean Bottles"

Fox

Eden - for his excellent reasoning in history

Elliott - presenting his work to the Year 4 standard.

Alfie - for listening to and following up on verbal feedback in his written subtraction work.

Lily - for great progress in the speed and accuracy of times tables recall.

Badger

Tom - for excellent reasoning skills in Maths

Barney-for excellent improvement in Maths

Alice-for excellent reasoning skills in Maths

Deer

John - great ideas and engagement in English lessons this week

Willow - excellent effort and attainment with STAR assessments

Tilly - for growing in confidence and ability this week in maths

🌟Citizenship Awards🌟

Dormice

Ava Rose - for following the school values.

Hallie - for showing resilience with coming in to school.

Squirrel

Tyler - for being a resilient learner

Anna - for being a respectful member of the class

Bailey - for persevering with threading a needle!

Hedgehog

Myles - showing respect and hard work during lessons

Sophie - being a kind and helpful member of the class

Lottie - for being focused on the carpet and being respectful

Rabbit

Harley - for being a kind and supportive learning partner

Kiera - showing respect in class by listening carefully to the teacher

Ellie - being a kind friend at lunchtimes

Eloise - for always showing responsibility for her learning in class

Foxes

Lola - for being a supportive learning partner, always considering other people's needs

Juliana - for being the kindest and most supportive partner!

Theia - for having fantastic manners.

Badgers

Roxie-for developing good leaning behaviour

Nevaeh - for being a supportive learning partner

Delilah - for showing resilience and perseverance in Maths

Deer

Julietta - showcasing our lovely school so beautifully during the open mornings

Evie - noticing and recognising the little things about her peers and doing small, yet kind, actions and gestures to make others smile

Jake - for growing in confidence and being very motivated to learn - even sharing his learning with the class

Updating guardian infomation on Arbor

Updating your child's details on Arbor

The Arbor Parent Portal

*New*

You can now log your child's absence via your Arbor Parent Portal. This can only be logged on the day of absence.

Click here for the guide: https://support.arbor-education.com/hc/en-us/articles/19947254592029-Logging-absences-on-the-Parent-Portal-and-Arbor-App

Are you looking for a vibrant, welcoming community for a senior family member or neighbour?

Young at Heart is a friendly group dedicated to providing a supportive and engaging environment for older adults. We offer a variety of activities, from stimulating discussions and creative workshops to enjoyable social outings and gentle exercise, all designed to foster companionship, wellbeing, and fun. We currently have wonderful spaces available and would be delighted to welcome new members into our extended family. Becoming part of Young at Heart is simple- it’s a wonderful opportunity to connect, share memories, and create new ones!

If you know someone who would benefit from joining, please contact Rachel: 07971 032667 or rachel@youngatheart.me.uk to find out how they can become a valued member of Young at Heart.