Prudhoe West News
Our online newsletter for parents, carers and the community
Embedded Files
May 2023
May 2023
Doesn't time fly when you're having fun?!?! We're into the summer term already and as usual, so many wonderful things have happened in school. Take a look...
Staffing updates
Staffing updates
Our new Leadership and safeguarding team
Our new Leadership and safeguarding team
Mrs MICHelle Brewster
Mrs MICHelle Brewster
Headteacher, Safeguarding Lead & SENCO
miss kirstie reynolds
miss kirstie reynolds
Assistant Headteacher, Early Years Leader & Safeguarding Lead
Miss Megan Gray
Miss Megan Gray
Assistant Headteacher, KS1 Leader & Safeguarding Lead
Mrs Hunter
Mrs Hunter
We're pleased to inform you that Mrs Hunter has returned to work this week. She will be working alongside Miss Oliver in Year One and is excited to be back in class.
Baby news!
Baby news!
We welcome two tiny new members to our school community. Miss Ibberson and her partner welcomed baby Adeline Rae into the world on 18th April and Miss Younger and her partner welcomed their baby boy, Jackson, on 22nd April. All are doing well and are settling into their new lives as families of three! We look forward to meeting them soon!
more baby news
more baby news
We're also delighted to inform you that Mrs Falcus is expecting another baby later this year. She will continue in her teaching role until she goes off on maternity in the autumn term.
online safety - save the date
online safety - save the date
As a school and as parents, one of our most important roles is ensuring our children are safe in all aspects of their lives.
On Monday 5th June, an online parent safety training workshop will be taking place from 9:15-10:15am. This will be a virtual session and will include a wealth of practical support including how to check and manage privacy settings and firewalls as well as maintaining appropriate parental controls.
Further information about this will follow nearer the time!
Road Safety
Road Safety
Our car park and roads around school continue to be very busy during drop off and collection times. We all must play our part in keeping everyone in our community safe by:
driving responsibly and safety
indicating when turning into the carpark and into bays
parking only in the designated bays
not stopping on zig zag lines or double lines
not blocking driveways or access to buildings
driving SLOWLY
When dropping children off, please:
Supervise them carefully and hold their hand near busy roads and when walking through the carpark.
Assist your child with opening and closing of car doors so that vehicles are not damaged.
Ensure the children are on the school premises and handed over to staff before leaving them.
Year One Phonics check
Year One Phonics check
This will take place at the beginning of June. Please help your child to practice a little each day.
Free fun games such as 'Picnic on Pluto' and 'Buried Treasure' can be found at https://www.phonicsplay.co.uk/
year four multiplication check
year four multiplication check
This will also take place at the beginning of June. Please help your child to practice a little each day.
https://www.topmarks.co.uk/maths-games/hit-the-button has games to help your child.
Walk to school week
Walk to school week
Next week (15th-19th May) is National Walk to School Week and we are taking part in Living Streets' five-day walking challenge. We are encouraging all familes to get involved with this as the benefits to health and well-being are huge.
A range of activities will take place next week, including tracking our class and school progress, exploring what the benefits are to us and the environment!
SCHOOL MEALS
SCHOOL MEALS
The cost of school meals is £2.10 a day (£10.50 per week) for children in Preschool, Nursery, Year 3 and Year 4.
Children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 2, alongside those registered for Free School Meals, will continue to receive their meal for free each day.
For children in Preschool - Year 2, all children have a school meal each day.
For children in Year 3 and 4 - children may opt to bring a packed lunch, but our preference would be that they continue to take a school meal.
Please note, we are a healthy school and packed lunches must not include chocolate, sweets or fizzy drinks. Thank you.
BREAKTIME SNACK
BREAKTIME SNACK
At the moment, all children up to and including Year 2 are entitled to a free piece of fruit at breaktime through the Governent SFVS Scheme.
For children in Year 3 and 4, you are able to send your child into school with a healthy snack each day for them to eat at breaktime.
All children are welcome to bring a water bottle into school (no Prime bottles please!)
Please ensure that this is only filled with plain, still water. Any juices or fizzy drinks will be replaced with water (unless required as part of a care plan for a specific dietary requirement).
Thank you.
LUNCHTIME!
LUNCHTIME!
The children are loving their school meals! It's always a pleasure for the staff (and our visitors from Redbrick) to join the children and have a catch up about their day in school, their hobbies and interests. Lunchtime is such a valuable learning time for everyone in school!
Full menus are regularly updated on our school website and can be accessed using the links below.
Please remember - meals must be booked and paid for in advance each week (by the Sunday before the week ahead) on the School Gateway App - Club section. This includes any children in Rainbow Room and Nursery, where children are attending full days.
Free School meals
Free School meals
Could your child be eligible for Free School Meals?
Many parents/carers do not receive the funding they are entitled to for this as they are not sure.
Not only does a successful application mean you no longer have to pay the daily charge of £2.10 for a meal, our school benefits from a small amount of money that provides additional resources and experiences for our children.
Further information related to this can be found here and here (for Early Years children).
Should you require any of the information in a paper copy, please do not hesitate to contact the school office.
Come and join our
Come and join our
EARLY YEARS classes
EARLY YEARS classes
Do you (or anyone you know) have a child that is reaching Rainbow Room, Nursery or Reception age (2 to 4 years old) that requires a place? If so, why not make an application for them to attend our wonderful Early Years provision.
We hope to see you at our open events:
Tuesday 13th June 2023, 3:45-5:30pm - Rainbow and Nursery Messy Play event (for new and prospective parents/children)
Monday 19th June 2023, Be Ready for Reception! 6:30pm Information to prepare children starting Reception in September 2023 (parents only!)
For Rainbow and Nursery aged children, we offer flexible education and childcare at competitive rates. For some children (based on eligibility criteria and age), this could be free of charge.
For more information about funding, please follow the link here.
If you would like to make an application for Rainbow Room, the link is here and for Nursery here. For Reception places, an application can be made through Northumberland County Council, here: Northumberland County Council - Reception entry applications
If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact Miss Reynolds (Early Years Leader) on 01661 832288 or email pweyfs@wiseacademies.co.uk.
We will soon be requesting information from families about the sessions they will require for autumn term.
Thank you!
WRAPAROUND CARE
We continue to offer wraparound care for children at Prudhoe West and Highfield Middle. Lots of exciting activities are taking place over the coming weeks including baking, drawing sessions and games nights.
Please support the club to remain open by using it as often as you can. Should you have any issues making a booking, please get in touch with Mrs. Wheeler in the school office on 01661 832288 and she will be happy to help!
External Afterschool Clubs
External Afterschool Clubs
In addition to Shining Stars Kids Club, there are also other (external) clubs available. They are as follows:
GAYLE SMITH GYMNASTICS
GAYLE SMITH GYMNASTICS
Contact Gayle on Facebook - GS Gymnastics or
07852 531844
Seiken Ryu karate
Seiken Ryu karate
Contact Peter for further details at on 07912 533164
Seiken Ryu karate
Seiken Ryu karate
Prudhoe West Pupils Only -EVERY FRIDAY 3.00pm - 4.00pm
Open to children in Y1
Contact instructor Wayne Bond on 07787145497
Attendance
Attendance
It has been long recognised that academic success is built upon a sound foundation of good attendance. Both school and parents have a shared responsibility in ensuring regular attendance. We are aiming for 98-100% attendance for every child.
We appreciate that children are occasionally poorly and do need to be at home. On these occasions, you must contact us on 01661 832288, by 8:45am, to notify us that your child will not be attending and provide a reason for their absence.
Please note: School Comms and our school Facebook page are not always manned, therefore, messages sent to these may not be picked up!
Please get in touch if you or your child is experiencing difficulties which are affecting their attendance and well-being. We are happy to support in any way possible.
NOTICE: We have recently received a high number of applications for holidays this term. Leave for term-time holidays will not be granted unless there are exceptional circumstances to justify this. Thank you.
lateness
lateness
Doors and gates close at 8:40am. After this time, children must be signed into the office by their parent.
Every minute late is valuable learning time lost! It can be unnerving for a child to arrive late and often takes a while for them to settle and catch up with learning routines and the vital instructions needed for the day ahead!
Please help your child to have a settled and positive start to the day by arriving on time. Thank you for your continued support.
Uniform
Uniform
With the exception of celebratory days, we expect all children to be in school wearing the correct uniform.
On a normal school day, this consists of:
Plain grey trousers (not jeans or leggings), shorts, a skirt or dress, or a red/white checked summer dress (grey joggers/leggings are allowed in preschool/nursery)/
Bright red or white long or short sleeved polo shirt.
Bright red sweatshirt or cardigan (or school fleece body-warmer)
White, grey or black socks or tights.
Plain black school shoes, boots or trainers (which your child can fasten independently).
PE kits
PE kits
Our PE kit consists of:
Plain grey or black jogger bottoms, black shorts, or black leggings, or school logo PE tracksuit bottoms.
Bright red round neck t-shirt.
Bright red sweatshirt or cardigan (or school logo grey PE tracksuit top).
White, grey or black socks.
Plain black trainers (which your child can fasten independently).
Please note: the uniform does not have to have the Prudhoe West logo on it - plain jumpers, polo shirts etc. are fine as long as they are the right colour/style.
Branded uniform can be bought from Salto (website here)
Items for purchase include reading folders, caps, fleeces, school coats and hi-visibility jackets.
You can also access our uniform swap shop, requesting items here.
Please ensure every item is clearly labelled with your child's name. Items should be simple enough for your child to manage independently (e.g. velcro fastenings on shoes, elastic waistbands on trousers etc.)
PLEASE do not send your child in wearing jewellery . Thank you for your cooperation with this.
clothing for the great british weather
clothing for the great british weather
Please can we ask that you continue to prepare for every eventuality with regards to the weather. Recently, there has been glorious sunshine in the morning, followed by torrential rain later on. We don't want to stop children from being outdoors, but we need to ensure they remain comfortable and well.
Please make sure your child has a waterproof coat with them each day. Wellies are also recommended and children can change into their shoes once inside. We are happy for these to be stored in school, if you wish, rather than carrying them back and forth each day. Thank you!
Rainbow Room
Rainbow Room
We have thoroughly enjoyed sand play recently and were so excited to see our outdoor pit filled up with new sand. We were very keen to help Mr. Jeffries fill it up and couldn't wait to get in!
After it was full, we had a wonderful time building castles, making pretend food and burying things for our friends to find!
Nursery
Nursery
Our lovely Nursery friends have been incredibly busy learning all about the Signs of Spring. We enjoyed digging up potatoes, planting seeds and helping them to grow. We learnt that a seed grows roots, then pops out of the ground and its strong stem helps it to dance in the wind. We also discovered that the leaves gather rain water for food. Finally, the beautiful, colourful leaves come out for all the bees to make honey.
We've also been reading Supertato and created our own Supertato’s. In Maths, we helped to count the Evil Peas, draw their value and match the value with the numeral.
Reception
Reception
Reception children have been working so hard on their handwriting and are very proud of how amazing their work looks in their books. This week we have been looking at one of our favourite stories in literacy - The Gruffalo! We have also been carrying out a science experiment this week to find out the best conditions for making cress grow, looking at the effects of light and water. We have made predictions and can’t wait to find out the results!
Year 1
Year 1
Year 1 thoroughly enjoyed their trip to Prudhoe Castle as part of their ‘Kings and Queens’ history topic and their Geography topic ‘Northumberland’. We discussed how many castles there are in the county as well as what features of the castle we could spot.
Year 2
Year 2
Year 2 have been working extremely hard on their ‘Secret Agent Training’ this week, and we have been blown away by their resilience and attitude. Last week we absolutely LOVED celebrating the coronation. We are fantastic artists and particularly enjoyed our task of designing wreaths to decorate our houses! Don’t they look great?
Year 3
Year 3
This term we have had lots of fun in science, exploring forces and magnets. We investigated which surfaces produce the most friction and tested which materials were magnetic, finishing off with a magnetic treasure hunt.
Year 4
Year 4
Recently, Year 4 had a special online lesson delivered and resourced by the RAF. Their task for the morning was to work in teams to design and make three different types of gliders. Once they had made them, we took them into the yard to find out which design was best. As well as having fun, the children learned all about the role of engineers within the RAF.
The king's coronation
The king's coronation
The whole school had a tremendous, royal time celebrating King Charles III coronation. The children enjoyed decorating bunting, painting pebbles, playing fun games and having a whole school party lunch together. We were extremely lucky to be joined by some of our friends from Redbrick Care Home and loved hearing their stories and spending time with them!
A huge 'thank you' to our team in the kitchen for such a wonderful celebratory meal!
Celebration assemblies
Celebration assemblies
Our Celebration Assemblies are always such a special time for us! We thoroughly enjoy hearing about each other's achievements and being praised for a job well done!
You may also have heard some hilarious songs being sung at home. We have been teaching the children in Year 1 to 4 some tongue twister songs, to really make their brains work! The children absolutely love these songs, and have started to practise them as they walk around school. The teaching staff have also been having alot of fun learning the songs, as they are pretty challenging! The songs are ‘Don’t joke with a giraffe’, ‘Cookies’ and ‘Crazy clapping’, so if your child has been singing (or clapping) any silly songs at home, this is probably where they have got them from. We love to make our assemblies fun!
Skills Builder
Skills Builder
This term, our area of focus is 'Aiming High'. We continue to develop all of the other skills we've already built upon, with a focus on high aspirations for ourselves and others. We have talked about setting goals for ourselves and how to achieve these, as well as recognising when other people can be involved in helping us along the way!
EXtra-curricular Clubs
EXtra-curricular Clubs
Lots of children in Key Stage Two have enjoyed Miss O'Kane's Games Club.
They have enjoyed a number of activities including board games, puzzles, card games, quizzes and word searches. These include Pick Up Sticks, Roll and Describe/Draw, Yes/No and 3D puzzle building!
The children have enjoyed taking on the roles of players and referees and have developed a number of skills including problem solving, listening and working co-operatively.
Miss O'Kane has been extremely impressed with the children's levels of commitment and determination to complete the tasks!
Over the last few weeks, the children in our fabulous choir have been working on a number of different songs: ‘Celestial’ by Ed Sheeran, ‘Unbreakable’ from the film Ugly Dolls, ‘Cover me in Sunshine’ by Pink and ‘One more try’ by Jessie J.
The children have shown great commitment towards our choir sessions every Friday lunchtime and have come with a smile on their face each time!
Mrs Falcus absolutely loves teaching choir, particularly as the children always show brilliant listening skills, meaning we can learn the songs quicker, and have lots of fun whilst doing it!
Key Stage 2 Bookworms Club was chosen to be a review panel for “The Shop of Impossible Ice Creams” by Shane Hegarty for the publishers and we have had lots of fun creating strange ice creams of our own, while sampling the book. This is what the Book Club reviewers had to say about the book:
“My favourite character was the pet chicken because he was funny”
“I liked the bit about the fairy fort because it felt so magical.”
“My favourite character was Limpet because he turned out brave even though he worried about everything.”
“I like how Limpet’s Mum made impossible ice creams not normal flavours”,
“I would recommend it to my friends because they like ice creams and funny books.
swap shop!
swap shop!
We have a large range of uniform items to choose from (for children in every year group) and encourage everyone to access this. They are all in good condition and would help all families to save money and our planet!
Please get in touch with the school office should you require anything and they'll happily gather them for you!
Upcoming events
Monday 15th-Friday 19th May - Walk to School Week.
Friday 19th May 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am
Friday 19th May 2023, Reception Height and Weight Screening, 1pm.
Friday 26th May 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Friday 26th May 2023, school closes for half term at end of today!
Monday 5th June 2023, school reopens after half term.
Monday 5th June 2023, Online Parent Safety Training, 9:15am-10:15am.
Friday 9th June 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Tuesday 13th June 2023, Welcome to Rainbow and Nursery event for new children and their parents, 3:45-5:30pm.
Friday 16th June 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Friday 16th June 2023, Year 2 Father's Day Assembly 1:30-2:15pm.
Monday 19th June 2023, Year 2 Maths Share and Stay 8:50-9:50am.
Monday 19th June 2023, Welcome to Reception event (parents only) 6:30pm.
Tuesday 20th June, 2023, Year 1 Maths Share and Stay 8:50-9:50am.
Wednesday 21st June 2023, Year 4 Maths Share and Stay 8:50-9:50am.
Thursday 22nd June 2023, Year 3 Maths Share and Stay 8:50-9:50am.
Friday 23rd June 2023, Reception Maths Share and Stay 2:00-3:00pm.
Friday 23rd June 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Thursday 29th June 2023, Reception - Year 4 Sports Day.
Friday 30th June 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Wednesday 5th July 2023, Robin Nursery Sports Day.
Friday 7th July 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Friday 7th July 2023, End of Year Reports hand out.
Friday 14th July 2023, Little Stars Toddler Group, 8:45-10am.
Thursday 20th July, Friends of Prudhoe West Leavers' Disco, 3-5pm
Friday 21st July 2023, school closes for end of academic year.
Friday 21st July 2023, Year 4 Leavers Assembly and Breakfast.
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