Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 22nd november 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

It has been brilliant to invite so many groups of current and prospective parents into school this week!

Year 1 parents had the chance to attend our maths workshops with Miss Goodman on Wednesday, while on Thursday, Reception parents came into school to view a phonics lesson with the focus on handwriting. A really big thank you for coming along and for your positive feedback, we hope you found the sessions useful. A big shout out and thank you to our reception teachers for opening up their lessons to parents and to Miss Goodman for organising and running the maths workshops. Two more examples that demonstrate just how our team at Hamstel Infants always go above and beyond the normal expectations to benefit our children and families.

Over the rest of the week, we held our penultimate prospective parent tour, Year 2 children visited the library, we had an author assembly on Friday and the classes have been busy making art and design creations for the Christmas Hoops that adorn our school hall every Christmas. They are already looking fantastic and will certainly look great when Mr Bailey and Mr Hallam finish putting them up this evening.

Next week, our Christmas events really begin in earnest, as not only will Reception be visiting the post box to post their very important letters to Santa but we also have our Christmas Fair on Wednesday. The children can be collected from their classrooms at 3pm, for you to then head over to the fair in the two school halls. The fair will run until 4:30pm so please bring along plenty of 20p, 50p and £1 coins to enjoy the fun. Entry is just 50p per family and don’t forget you can purchase a fast pass to help you beat the entry queues.

I hope you have a great weekend – see you again on Monday!

Scott Roche

Principal

Nursery

This week we have been reading ‘Handa's Noisy night’ we have talked about the different animals and noises that they made in the story. We have also read ‘Elmer’ and talked about why we are special.

In Maths we have been looking at 2D shapes especially triangles. Why don’t you challenge your child to see how many triangles they can find around your home or on the way to Nursey.

The children have enjoyed learning about the artist Jackson Pollock especially trying out some of his painting techniques.

Upcoming events - Nursery Nativity Performances

Due to limited space, we can only invite 2 grownups per child

• Tuesday 10th Dec at 2.15–Seahorse parents/carers
• Wednesday 11th Dec at 2.15- Starfish PM parents/carers
• Thursday 12th Dec at 9.15- Starfish AM parents/carers

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Christmas Fair - 20.11.2024

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week the children have been listening to the story 'Hoot Owl Master of Disguise' Its about an amazing owl who disguises himself in various costumes. The children have been really enjoying listening to the story, and laughing at the funny things the owl gets up to. We have enjoyed role playing to the characters, made some lovely pictures of the animals in the story, and have enjoyed drawing pizzas, and how we are going to make them next week. We have also continued learning about night and day, light and sound, listening to nocturnal animal sounds, and what they may look like in the dark. We have completed activities about some facts about these animals and why they come out at night.

They enjoyed Outdoor Learning on Monday, we went into the Hobbit Hut and lit a candle, looked at different colours of lighting and enjoying walking around the outdoor area exploring the various plants. The children are doing exceptionally well with their maths, as we continue learning about subitising and simple additions, more or less, counting in 2`s and 5`s, composing and decomposing 3 and 5. (according to child's level). The children are enjoying RWI and have made us proud with their efforts and persistence.

RWI: CKUB

Letter formation: Long Ladder Letter family

Maths: Additions up to 10/subitising up to 10/more or less up to 6/groups of 5/10/Ordering and recognising numbers/Sequencing and missing numbers.

It has been a very busy week, and the children have worked very hard on all their activities.

REMINDER: PE in Rainbow Class - Friday (PE Kit to be worn) - Reading books to be exchanged on Fridays

Starlight

This week we have been reading the story ‘Peace at Last.’ We have discussed how we feel when we find it difficult to sleep and thought about the noises that we hear at nighttime. In Science we have been learning about nocturnal animals and naming them.

We had Outdoor Learning on Monday. The children found ‘ingredients’ in the environment to add to a cauldron to make magic potions.

The children have been very excited by the cold weather. They have explored the garden area, looking for ice, looking at bubbles in the ice and finding ways to make it melt.

REMINDER: We would like to invite you to share some Christmas activities with your child in Starlight on Friday 13th December at 2:30pm. We look forward to seeing you!

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Christmas Fair - 20.11.2024

Reception Year

This week we have been learning about nocturnal animals and reading the book ‘Hoot Owl.’ In writing we have been labelling nocturnal animals by pinching the sounds in each name on our Fred Fingers. In Science we have been learning the meaning of the word nocturnal, learning the names of some nocturnal animals and sorting animals into nocturnal and day animals. In Art we have been creating our background using swirls for our Starry Night painting. In DT we have been designing our slider to represent day or night.

In Maths we have been thinking about parts and whole and investigated ways to make up sets of 2 and 3, learning that 1 and 2 are parts of 3. In shape, space and measure we have been learning about triangles, identifying and naming triangles in the environment.

In PSHE we have been learning about how kind and unkind behaviour can make people feel. In RE we learnt that Muslims celebrate Eid and how it is celebrated.

In PE we have been learning to develop our jumping technique by applying it to a game.

How to help at home

Handwriting: Practise the one-armed robot letter r

Maths:

Identify parts of different objects and things e.g legs are parts of our body, wheels are parts of a car

Explore making 3, what are the different parts?

Upcoming events

• Thursday 21st November: Watch a handwriting lesson at 9am

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Christmas Fair - 20.11.2024

Year One

In Literacy this week we have been learning about factual sentences. We looked at the difference between a fact and an opinion and organised statements correctly. We looked at some old-fashioned toys from the past and wrote some factual sentences about them.

In Maths we have been continuing with numbers to 20. We have been using the vocabulary more than, greater than, less than and fewer than to compare groups of numbers.

In History we have been learning about the artefacts from the past. We looked at toys from the Victorian era and came up with some questions of what we would like to know about them, for example ‘How old are these toys?’ and ‘How do you play with them?’. We then looked at toys our Grandparents may have played with and compared them to the Victorian toys. We thought about how they were the same and how they were different.

In Outdoor Learning we learned about being safe around fire. We used matches to learn how to light a candle safely. We also made leaf puppets.

Letters sent home this week

• Year 1 - Christmas Craft Invitation - 20.11.2024
• Whole School - Christmas Fair - 20.11.2024

Year Two

Year 2 have had an exciting week, using their imaginations to design Queen Victoria a new pair of knickers! We were inspired by our text in literacy called Queen Victoria’s Knickers by Jackie French, where the Queen has lots of different designs created for her until she finds the perfect pair for her grand ball. As you can imagine the children have been very enthusiastic about their ideas and creations and we have had knickers with frills, secret buttons that you push to call for your butler, shooting arrows and storage compartments! Once the children planned their designs, they wrote simple posters to advertise them thinking about adjectives to describe their knickers and the information they would need to provide. We then followed this up with writing a letter to ‘persuade’ Queen Victoria that she would like their knicker design and why she should have a pair. The children have had great fun with the writing and really did come up with some fantastic ideas!

In Maths, we have continued to build on our knowledge, skills and understanding of early multiplication. This week we have explored the 10x tables and the pattern. We have started to use our written methods more confidently and the language used to demonstrate our mathematical understanding. Towards the end of this week, we mixed it up and have been solving equations using the 2x, 5x and 10x tables, applying our knowledge from all the learning we have been doing. This meant we have had to look carefully at the given equation to decide which times tables we were solving, and we knew what to do.

We have also been historians this week and have been using our enquiry skills to find out about Queen Victoria. We used our observation skills and discussed with our classmates some artefacts in the form of different photos and paintings of Queen Victoria throughout her life. We posed questions that we wanted to find out the answers to and then researched some facts to answer some of our questions. We found out lots about her life, for example we found out that Queen Victoria was married to Prince Albert and Prince Albert was born in Germany.

Letters sent home this week

• Year 2 - Christmas Production Invitation - 20.11.2024
• Whole School - Christmas Fair - 20.11.2024

Celebration Assembly - Aspire.

This weeks value has been 'Aspire', below are highlights from around the classes.

Online Safety

Managing money can be a difficult skill to master, even for adults. As such, it’s incredibly important for children and young people to learn all they can before they reach an age at which they’ll be responsible for their own finances. Teaching strategies for saving and responsible spending early on can be a huge help to youngsters, in a way that will stay with them for the rest of their lives.

It can be tricky to know the best approach for teaching money management to children, however, especially in terms of giving them practical experience with this important life skill. This guide – made in collaboration with financial education app GoHenry – provides you with expert advice on how to educate children and young people on both spending and saving their cash.

Our lovely PTA have signed us up for Asda Rewards Cash Pot - if you usually shop there please consider adding Hamstel Infant School so we can have a chance at some extra funds.

How does Asda Cashpot work?

Asda's new Cashpot for Schools initiative has raised almost £1million for UK primary schools in its first 72 hours. The industry first campaign sees Asda donate 0.5% of the value of its customers shopping to a primary school of their choice – every time they shop using Asda Rewards.

For full details on how to use this Reward Scheme follow the link to Asda