Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 1st MARCH 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

Personally, I bounced into work on Monday not only excited to see the children but also after celebrating a Liverpool trophy win on the Sunday before and it was great to see the children return in an equally positive fashion following the half term break where they have settled back into their routines and produced some truly brilliant work.

Our Year 1 children got to enjoy working outside the classroom as they headed off to The Hive for some outdoor learning opportunities. They had a great time and enjoyed looking at the seasonal changes in comparison to their previous winter visit.

On Tuesday, I shared lots of information with the children around some new initiatives in our school – these included the zones of regulation, a system designed to get children talking about their feelings and strategies to cope with these feelings, our school behaviour expectations and some great new individual and class rewards. We will share these with you over the coming weeks and information will be on our website soon.

During our Friday celebration assembly, we awarded the first of our new rewards – The Hamstel Infants WOW Moments. This week we had five winners, who stood up in front of the whole school and told everybody how they had excelled both in school with their work, and outside of school in events such as ‘Kids got Talent’, gymnastics and completing a charity run! Well done to all of our weekly winners but in particular, our WOW winners!

Next week is extremely busy as we celebrate our Book Week. Please see the letter that came out for specific details, but we have a full programme of events including book sharing opportunities, a book character parade, special book themed menu, library visits for Year 1, a visiting story teller and of course our widely anticipated dressing up day on Thursday 7th March. We hope the children have a fantastic week and thoroughly enjoy all of the book related fun.

Please don’t forget to book an appointment for our Teacher/Parent meetings on Tuesday 12th and Wednesday 13th March. If you are struggling to make the date, alternative appointments can be made – please speak to your child’s class teacher

I hope you have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday morning.

A few important messages that we need to highlight….

Safeguarding - some of our children have been coming into school playing ‘Huggy Wuggy’ on the playground, who is a character from a game called ‘Poppy’s Playtime’. While this may give the impression of being a cute character, this game has a minimum age limit of 8+ but a recommended age of 12+ due to its horror content. Please take care to monitor whether children can access these games online and be sure to put in suitable parental controls on any devices that they use.

Head Lice - We currently have a number of cases of head lice in school. Please can we ask all parents to check their children’s hair and if there is evidence of head lice, treat your child over the weekend in time for their return to school on Monday.

Uniform - Please can I remind everybody of our high uniform expectations at Hamstel Infants that mean that full uniform and correct PE kit should always be worn. We are very proud of the way our children look when they represent the school and we would like to maintain these high standards. If you are struggling to provide the correct uniform for your child, please speak to us as we have lots of pre-loved uniform available.

Books to be returned - Please return any school books that you may have at home as we seem to be missing quite a few books, that have gone home with the children and not been returned. This not only costs the school a great deal of money to replace, as books are currently very expensive but also means that your child’s next home reading book could be delayed, which of course impacts on their reading progress.

Best regards,

Scott Roche

Principal

Nursery

This week we have started our new theme ‘Out of this World’, we have shared 'Aliens love underpants'. The children have enjoyed making spaceships, aliens and designing underpants. In the garden we have been matching the amount of aliens to the correct numeral.

In Maths we have been learning to compare objects by mass, by describing an object as heavy or light. As part of our understanding the world we have been learning about different materials.

How to help at home

This week the children will be learning how to use Fred talk to blend sounds into words. They will also be learning the name of the pictures on the back of the RWI sound cards. Watch the RWI Virtual Classroom videos with your child, encouraging them to join in with the Fred Talk.

REMINDER: Please return any borrowed clothes and please ensure that your child has a spare change of clothes at Nursery.

Please remember to sign up for parents evening.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - World Book Day - 01.03.2024
• Whole School - Mothers Day Sale - 29.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversations - Appointment Booking - 26.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversation Booking Information - 26.02.2024

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week children in Rainbow have been learning about the story 'Where the Wild Things Are', the children have made monsters faces using felt tip pens and paint. They have been practicing to say/sound and write curly caterpillar letters (pen pal gym) . The children have looked at flowers and what all the parts are called. The children have done wonderfully with their number work, learning to put into order and point/say which are the correct numbers. We have been looking at sequencing numbers, colours and shapes, they have also looked at sequencing the story. The children have enjoyed group lessons and turn taking with the interactive TV.

Well done children! it has been a busy week, and you have all shown good focus and understanding.

REMINDER: Outdoor learning dates: March 22nd, April 19th, May 10th, June 9th, June 28th.

We will need wellies and outdoor clothing (children may get muddy and dirty) on these dates, thank you.

We have parents evening on 12th and 13th March, I will be sending out invitations via email.

Starlight

This week we have shared the story ‘Where the Wild Things Are.’ The children have sequenced the story. We looked at the different characters and tried to identify their emotions by looking at their facial features. We then tried to copy the same facial expressions as the main character. The children added labels to pictures from the book.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - World Book Day - 01.03.2024
• Whole School - Mothers Day Sale - 29.02.2024

Reception Year

This week we have kick started our new theme ‘Out of this World’ by reading the book ‘Where the Wild Things Are’. In English we have been learning to write sentences with the sounds that we have learnt and remembering to leave spaces between our words.

In PE this half-term our unit is all about dance, we will be learning to explore difference movements using different parts of our bodies. We will be thinking about how different dinosaurs move and linking emotions to our movements.

In Maths this week we will be finding out all the things that we have learnt so far this year.

In Science we are learning about minibeasts, this week we will be learning to name different minibeasts.

In History this term we will be learning about castles, this week we will be learning to ask enquiry questions about castles, looking at pictures to inspire us.

How to help at home

Reading

• Continue to listen to your child read at least 5 times a week.
• Watch the QR codes for the RWI Virtual Classroom videos, encouraging your child to join in.

Handwriting

• Practise all the curly caterpillar letters, long legged giraffe letter and one-armed robot letters

Longed Legged Giraffe Letters

Curly Caterpillar Letters

One armed Robot Letters

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - World Book Day - 01.03.2024
• Whole School - Mothers Day Sale - 29.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversations - Appointment Booking - 26.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversation Booking Information - 26.02.2024

Year One

Welcome back!

This week we have started our new topic ‘In the Garden’ which is perfect for Spring starting to arrive and tied in with our visit to The Hive!

During our visit we used our senses to explore signs of Winter/Spring. We spent some time looking at the trees and how they were beginning to change as they were covered in blossom. We also saw lots of bees starting to arrive even though it was still a bit cold outside!

In Literacy we have been reading ‘The Something’ by Rebecca Cobb. We have been learning about verbs and working together to sequence the story. Our final piece was writing a diary entry all about the little boy’s day.

In Maths we have been continuing with numbers to 40 and using more than, less than, fewer than, greater than vocabulary to help us understand the value of a digit.

During our Science lessons this week we have been labelling the different parts of a plant. We have also been looking at the difference between wild and garden plants.

How to help at Home

• Continue to listen to your child read their RWI books at least 5 times a week.
• Watch the virtual classroom videos.

REMINDER: Next week we have our trips to Southchurch library

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - World Book Day - 01.03.2024
• Year 1 - Mastering Number Lesson - 01.03.2024
• Whole School - Mothers Day Sale - 29.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversations - Appointment Booking - 26.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversation Booking Information - 26.02.2024

Year Two

It’s been lovely to see all the children back after their half term break. The children have already been working hard and immersing themselves in their new theme, Dungeons and Dragons.

This week in Literacy, the children have been exploring the text, 'Once Upon a Dragon’s Fire' by Beatrice Blue. We have been looking at story language to signal events and sequencing the text. The children then wrote their own retelling of the story at the end of the week, focussing on some key story language to open sentences.

In Maths the children have been continuing to develop their learning linked to the unit of money. The children have been developing their skills in finding and king different combinations of money, showing their knowledge of money values as well as applying number skills.

The children have been in full swing of developing their skills as Historians by asking and answering questions about photos of castles. New vocabulary has been learnt to name some of the important parts of a castle and know what these parts of the castle were used for.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - World Book Day - 01.03.2024
• Whole School - Mothers Day Sale - 29.02.2024​
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversations - Appointment Booking - 26.02.2024
• Whole School - Teacher Parent Conversation Booking Information - 26.02.2024

Celebration Assembly - Caring

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

Online Safety

Behind video-sharing platforms (like YouTube) and streaming TV shows and movies, gaming is the third most popular online activity for children in the UK. In fact, according to recent data from Ofcom, an overwhelming 89% of children aged 3 to 17 play video games. Of those, more than one in five (22%) talk to other players online who they don’t know outside the game.

The risk of contact from strangers is just one of the reasons that many parents are concerned about their child’s gaming: increased screen time, inappropriate content and in-game spending also figure among the most frequent fears. Agreeing on some rules around your child’s gaming activities can certainly help, and this guide has some useful tips for establishing these boundaries.

We have added all of our parent guides to the school website which can be found on at the button below;

Relatives Afternoon Tea

Reception Year had a fantastic time welcoming in relatives for our afternoon tea afternoon.

We started by welcoming all the grown-ups and then telling them about the book we are looking at this week – 'The Enormous Turnip'. We shared what we have been learning about and then the children performed ‘The Enormous Turnip song’, which sounded great!

All the children were very excited to be able to show their grown-ups around the classroom during a treasure hunt activity. They had to find areas in the classroom and tell their grown-up about it. They then had to tick of the areas as they went.

They also enjoyed the ‘Your hand in mine’ activity. The children and grown-ups drew around each other’s hands and drew pictures of things they like to do together.

We finished off the afternoon with a choice of cheese, egg and jam sandwiches; cakes and iced tea and juice.

What a wonderful afternoon for all and it was so lovely to see so many Nans, Grandads, Aunties, Uncles and Mums and Dads.

KS1 Football Tournament

PTA