Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 21st June 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

So while England may have flopped slightly this week in the football, our children didn’t let us down and we were thrilled to share our whole school Sports Day with so many of you on Wednesday. The event was filled with enthusiasm and athleticism from our children and we were delighted to see so many parents in attendance, cheering on our young athletes and enjoy watching a range of sports including sprints, space hopper relays, hurdles, obstacle courses, bean bag balancing and the adorable friendship race in Nursery.

A big congratulations to our overall winners, the Red Team! However, everybody’s hard work and team spirit truly shone through to make the day a resounding success! We want to extend our appreciation to all the children who participated and gave their best efforts in every event – they certainly earnt their ice pops and stickers.

Thank you for your continued support and for making this Sports Day a memorable one.

A special thanks to the fab Friends of Hamstel, for their hard work and their fundraising efforts which have raised almost £900 alone through their last two events.

Our Year 2 children also had the opportunity to participate in a Mini First Aid training course, where they learnt the essential first aid skills in a fun and engaging way and Reception children enjoyed their visits to Belle Vue Baptist church this week as they enjoyed taking their learning outside of the classroom and seeing the things they have been learning about in real life.

Next week, it’s the turn of our Year 1 children to visit the beach, another wonderful opportunity for the children to explore and learn in a different outdoor environment which is in complete comparison to our wildlife garden. Please ensure that your child is prepared with the necessary items to enjoy a fun and safe day at the beach.

It is also very exciting to be meeting our new Reception families next week as we hold our induction meetings for the parents of children who will be joining us next year. These meetings are crucial for parents to understand the upcoming school year and to help the children transition smoothly into our school community.

We look forward to another exciting week ahead, wishing you all a great weekend and let’s hope this great weather holds!

Scott Roche

Principal

Important Message re WhatsApp groups

Recently, we have been made aware of some instances where quite personal comments about our school and staff have been posted publicly on the Year group parent WhatsApp pages. While we understand that you may have concerns or issues from time to time, we kindly request that you do not post these comments on social media or WhatsApp groups but come and speak to us personally and we will do all we can to resolve the issues.

Our staff are always here to listen and willing to work together to resolve any problems in a constructive manner and by addressing your concerns directly with us, we can ensure that they are handled appropriately and respectfully, maintaining a positive and supportive environment for everyone.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation in this matter.

Nursery

This week we have continued our Superhero theme by sharing the story ‘Superbat’ we discussed what powers Superbat had. We have also been talking about what we are good at.

In Maths we have been learning to count objects accurately.

In Outdoor Learning the children enjoyed creating their own flower potions and looking for mini beasts

We all enjoyed our Sports day and being cheered on by our grown-ups.

A big thankyou to everyone who helped with our library trips, the children enjoyed the experience and were so well behaved.

We have been learning the sounds h and r, follow the links below to practice at home.

Fred Games

REMINDER: As the weather is now getting warmer can you please ensure that your child has a named hat and to apply suncream before they attend Nursery. Many thanks

Please ensure that your child has spare clothes at Nursery.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - SENCO Coffee Morning - 17.06.2024

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

The children have been learning all about superhero's, they have been listening and learning about the book 'Eliot Midnight Superhero', and all about his exciting adventures, the children have enjoyed learning about Eliot's powers, and what powers they may have themselves! Such as being kind, caring and using kind hands; making the right choices, and respecting space.

We have been practicing sentence building, CVC words, understanding numbers and number sets. The children have been busy making lots of different superhero crafts. We have continued with RWI, Reading and pencil control. The children have been learning to write their names and surnames independently. We have encouraged turn taking and sharing during afternoon sessions, encouraged group play (social skills) and role playing. We have also introduced children to following a set of instructions/visuals, using steps from 1 to 5, encouraging independence and focus.

Letters: Long ladder letters- l i j t u y

Numbers: up to 20/30 (recognising a group of items)

CVC words: zip,zap,win/wet,bat,mat,rat etc.

Starlight

In Starlight, we have been busy working around the story 'Eliot Midnight Superhero'. We loved the adventures that Eliot had when he changed into a superhero at night.

We learned about the seasons and the different names for each season. We talked about what kind of weather we would see during each season and what clothes we might need to wear. We discussed what we like to eat in Summer. We made a ‘sun’ from paper plates and handprints, and ‘ice-creams’ from paper and cotton wool. These are now for sale in the Ice-Cream Parlour in the outside play area!

In Maths we continue to count, order and recognise numbers to 10.

Today we had active sports activities where the parents were invited to see what we can do!

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - SENCO Coffee Morning - 17.06.2024

Reception Year

What a busy week Reception have had! We started our week by reading the book 'Eliot Midnight Superhero' and then we wrote a description of Eliot, trying to think of our own sentences and write them down in our books remembering our capital letters, spaces and full stops. This week we have been lucky enough to visit Bell Vue Baptist Church and learn about why churches are special places for Christians. Thank you to all the parents/ carers who supported us on our local visit. We all thoroughly enjoyed our Sports Day and being supported by all the grown-ups while we completed the races and events.

In PSHE we continued our learning about different kinds of feelings, this week focusing on how other children might be feeling and thinking of some ways to support them with these feelings.

In Maths we have been learning to say which set of objects contains more than or fewer than the other and explore the order of numbers to 10, ordering towers of cubes to 10.

In Outdoor Learning we have been learning about Summer, including the features of summer, the weather we might expect and what keeps us safe in the sun.

In Art we have continued our learning about Megan Coyle, this week learning how to draw a city scape by drawing different buildings.

How to help a home

Handwriting

• Practise writing the zig zag monster letters, remember to start at the top of each letter.

Maths

• Make different groups of objects, say which one has more than the other.
• Order numbers to 10

Letters sent home this week

• Reception - Beach Visit - 17.06.2024
• Whole School - SENCO Coffee Morning - 17.06.2024

Year One

In Literacy we have been writing some simple facts about the seasons. We have been developing our research skills using books to find out more information. We have labelled a simple tree diagram to show the changes across the year as the seasons develop.

In Maths we have been learning about mass. We have been weighing classroom objects and using the words ‘heavier’ and ‘lighter’ to compare them. We then used cubes as a non-standard unit of measure to see how many were needed for each object.

In Geography we have been learning about London and the geographical features. We have been using North, South, East and West to describe the position of certain landmarks.

How to help at home

RWI Virtual Classroom: Over the next couple of weeks, we are going to focus on reading fluency.

REMINDER: Year 1 beach trips are next week

• Dragonfly and Newt – Tuesday 25th June
• Heron and Duck – Wednesday 26th June

Letters sent home this week

• Year 1 - Read Write Inc - 17.06.2024
• Whole School - SENCO Coffee Morning - 17.06.2024

Year Two

It’s been another busy and exciting week in Year 2, with Sports Day and Mini-First Aid workshops thrown into the mix!

In Literacy this week the children have been learning how to use prepositions at the beginning of a sentence, words such as under, above, behind, for example 'Under the box is a huge red box with a ribbon on top'. Using this language and other adventurous words the children have been writing under the sea setting descriptions based on the text 'Winnie the Witch Under the Sea'. The children worked so hard to apply this language and wrote brilliant descriptions.

In Maths we have continued with our unit on time, continuing to learn how to read the time to quarter past and quarter to the hour, as well as challenging ourselves with reading the time to 5-minute intervals. We have been using analogue clocks to practise these skills and our full sentences to demonstrate our understanding.

The Year 2 children did a brilliant job on Sports Day and all their hard work, determination and practise over the past couple of weeks, certainly paid off. The children made the Year 2 staff very proud! A big well done to all the children.

We finished off the week by welcoming back Frankie who delivered our Mini-First Aid workshops. The children loved it, they learnt how to call 999 in the event of an emergency, how to put a plaster on a cut, how to put someone in the recovery position and had a go at CPR. These are fantastic and important skills for our young children to learn, so please encourage them, if they don’t already know, to learn their address so they can give that information out, if they ever did have to make a 999 call. All the children received a certificate for their efforts and learning such brilliant life-saving skills.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - SENCO Coffee Morning - 17.06.2024

Online Safety

Football’s European Championship is now well underway, and this huge event could potentially get children interested in having a go on the pitch themselves – or perhaps they’re already passionate about sport. It could present a great opportunity to get young people engaged in physical activity and regular exercise, which has proven positive impacts on all facets of their health – including mental and emotional wellbeing.

With all that said, it can sometimes be difficult to get children and young people motivated to take part in sports and other exercise, but there are certainly ways to do so. This guide provides you with some top tips from our expert on how to encourage young people to stay active and remain invested in their physical welfare.

PTA

Friends of Hamstel Schools are requesting donations of teddies for a teddy tombola at the Summer Fair. Donations can be brought in via classroom doors or the office for us to pass on to the PTA.

Summer Fair

Friends of Hamstel Schools are busy planning a Summer Fair on Thursday 11th July 3-5pm.

They are also looking for willing volunteers to help with the planned Summer Fair.