Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 7th MARCH 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

Wow what a great Book Week at Hamstel Infants as we celebrated everything reading, author and book related!

On Tuesday and Friday, our Year 1 book worms headed off to our local library for a great session, learning how the library works, looking at a range of books and generally having a fun time exploring the huge range of different books on offer. Thursday was a fantastic celebration of World Book Day as the children (helped by you) pulled out all the stops with a fantastic array of book related costumes. There were some truly amazing creations on display – a big thank you for all your support and hard work in making this such a great day! The week ended in style as each class got to experience a story teller workshop, before we opened our doors on Friday afternoon for a special share a book open door session. A big well done to the children for such enthusiastic learning, to the staff for putting all the plans into action and Mrs Tracy for organising what was a great week!

On Wednesday, Team Hamstel also headed off to the Tag Rugby competition at Southend Rugby Club. All of the children competed really well and their confidence grew as the games went on. The main thing was that they had fun and represented the school with pride! Well done Team Hamstel, we are very proud of you and a big thank you to Mrs Walker and Mrs Snashall, who have been working hard training our team.

Next week is an equally as busy and exciting week, as on Monday, our choir are in action at the Infant Music Festival. They have been practising hard and we are sure they will do Hamstel Infants proud as always. Tuesday is a whole school science day and we have workshops arranged for each class with the crazy Einstein scientists. We hope this will be a really memorable way of seeing science in action for our children. Team Hamstel are also in action again as we send a team of sporting heroes to the KS1 Panathlon on Thursday.

Finally on Tuesday and Wednesday, we look forward to welcoming you into school for our second parent/teacher meetings of the year. If you haven’t already booked a chance to discuss your child’s progress in school face to face, please don’t miss out. Bookings can be made via School Cloud by following the instructions that were sent out last week. We look forward to seeing you then!

I am also very pleased to inform you that our school was recently awarded the Active Essex Key Stage 1 Award, which recognises good practice in physical activity, PE and school sport across KS1.

We are very proud of this award and would like to give huge congratulations to everybody involved, children and staff alike but in particular, Miss West and Mrs Walker who lead our sporting clubs and competitive events so well.

I hope that the spring sunshine continues and you all have a great weekend!

Scott Roche

Principal

Special Events

We have lots of planned activities for the summer term including beach visits, library and church visits, sewing workshops, teddy bear’s picnics, year group picnics, our delayed Year 1 Spring show and of course our Year 2 leavers show.

All of these lovely events are generally funded by the school but in some cases, we ask for a small donation from parents/carers to help out with the costs of these ever-increasing expensive experiences.

The recent science and story teller workshops have only received donations from about 30% of parents, with a cost of about £1000 to the school.

As I’m sure you appreciate, this is not sustainable and seriously puts our summer term events at risk as without your donations, events such as Gemma’s farm simply cannot take place.

We fully appreciate that for some parents funding these events may be difficult and we really do appreciate your support where possible. To help us gain a better idea of barriers or your attitude to requests for payments we are shortly going to issue a parent survey to allow us to establish what would work best for the majority of families.

Thank you.

Jump to a section...

Spring Term Diary Dates - Nursery - Rainbow & Starlight - Reception - Year 1

Year 2 - Portico Photography Competition - Tag Rugby News Story - Dinner Menu - PTA

Messages from the Office - Community Information - Key Dates for Summer Term

Nursery

This week we have had lots of fun during our Book Week. The children looked fantastic in their costumes for World Book Day. The children also enjoyed a visit by an amazing storyteller and they have enjoyed sharing their favourite stories.

We have introduced NELI, this is an early language intervention. Our focus story this week was 'Neon Leon', a story about a chameleon who doesn't change colour. Our activities in Nursery have been linked to the story.

In Maths we have been learning about weight talking about objects that are heavy and light. We have also been naming numerals.

In PSHE we have been learning about different occupations.

REMINDER: Please look on Tapestry for our weekly NELI Newsletter which shares our special words and gives you activities which will support your child's learning.

Please ensure that your child has spare clothes at Nursery.

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

The children have enjoyed learning more about the story 'My monster and me' we have looked at different emotions that we may be feeling, what they may be, and how we can solve them, we have used visuals to support learning and have watched animated videos explaining some of the situations and emotions that may be confusing.

The children have made some lovely colourful monsters, they have used different materials and media to create their own monsters.

The weather has been lovely these past few afternoons, so we have encouraged the children to go outside and play, we have also been outside playing the freeze game, hide n seek and number games.

The children have tried very hard with their work, we have been learning about mass, (weight and sizes) we have looked at different ways of understanding what heavy and light is, big and small. The children have enjoyed searching around the classroom to find objects that match these descriptions. We have used scales and our own predictions. The children are continuing with RWI, letter formation and number recognition, cvc words, sentence building, counting to a given number, and simple additions. We are also reading (or read to) daily, using props and role play to encourage children to be engaged.

Outdoor Learning this week was messy, but the children had lots of fun, playing together and enjoying the outdoor fresh air.

Letters: Long ladder Giraffe Letters

Phonics: SH learning to blend (sound out) cvc and ccvc words (cvc words-cat,dog and hat etc.) (CCVC words – fork, port and sort etc.)

Pencil control and formation writing

Maths: simple additions, one more one less, more or less, counting, writing numbers, composing and decomposing numbers (2 and 4 makes 6) recognising a number of claps and/or jumps, counting in 2`s,5`s and 10`s etc.

We had a lovely picnic outside this week, which was lots of fun for the children, with the weather warming up we will be able to access Dilly`s den soon.

Starlight

This week we had Outdoor Learning. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves looking for signs of Spring. We collected items from the Outdoor Learning area and used these as ‘paintbrushes’ in the afternoon to create some lovely patterns and pictures. We continued exploring paint as the week went on, doing bubble wrap printing and making our own planets using paint and pipettes. We have also celebrated World Book Day and have loved seeing the children in all their amazing costumes. We continued to read the story ‘Whatever Next!’ The children identified and used adjectives to describe characters and settings in the story.

This week we learned about the yellow zone in the Zones of Regulation. The children listened to a story called ‘When I’m Silly.’ We discussed strategies to use when we have yellow zone feelings and practised these. The children thought about some different scenarios, and we worked together to decide whether these were big problems or small problems.

REMINDER:

Letters sent home this week

• Spring 2 Theme Overview

Reception Year

What a busy week we have had this week, with dressing up, storyteller workshops and learning about many, many books!

To continue our ‘Out of this World’ theme, we have been reading Life on Mars. In writing we have been writing sentences about the book, remembering to start with a capital letter, leave spaces between words and use full stops at the end of a sentence. In history we have been asking questions about castles and learnt that castles are from the past. In art we have been exploring ripping, tearing and cutting techniques in preparation for making our own collages.

In maths we have been subitising numbers to 6, ordering numbers to 8 and consolidated our understanding that 8 is 5 and 3 more. In shape, space and measure we have been learning to compare and order objects by size.

In PSHE we have been learning to recognise some ways in which the internet can be used to communicate. In science we have been learning what a solid, liquid and gas is and identify them in the classroom. In RE we have been learning to identify what makes a good friend.

How to help at home

Handwriting:

Maths:

• Order numbers 1-8
• Subitise the amounts on a die

Letters sent home this week

• Spring 2 Theme Overview
• Spring 2 KIRFs

Year One

This week we have all thoroughly enjoyed our visits to the Library! Thank you to the grown-ups who came with us. We have also celebrated World Book Day and have loved seeing the children in all their amazing costumes.

As part of World Book Day, we looked at the story ‘You Choose Fairytales’. This was an unusual book as we got to choose our own once-upon-a-time adventure including fairy-tale character, hero, home and villain! This was lots of fun.

In other literacy tasks we consolidated our knowledge on noun phrases and wrote a setting description on last week’s book ‘Whatever Next’.

In maths we have been continuing with addition and subtraction word problems. We have been learning specific vocabulary to help us understand if a problem is an adding or takeaway sum.

In History we have completed a timeline about Neil Armstrong’s life. We also looked at the planet Mars and the Mars Rover landing.

This week's spelling pattern: ay/a-e/ai alternative: e.g. stay, plane, pain

Common Exception Words: school, friend, ask

Don’t forget to practise this spelling pattern in your home spelling book to get your stamp at the end of next week.

Letters sent home this week

• Spring 2 Theme Overview
• Year 1 Home Challenges

Year Two

It’s been wonderful to see Year 2 children immerse themselves in Book Week and come to school on Thursday as a book character. There were some great character costumes amongst the classes! The children thoroughly enjoyed welcoming the Storyteller and joining in with her workshop using their imagination.

In Literacy the children have focussed on sequencing the story ‘The Dragon’s Fire’ by Beatrice Blue and story language used to sequence events. We have spent time exploring the order of events and sequencing them using images and appropriate language such as all of a sudden, after that, suddenly. We discussed what happened in different parts of the story and at the end of the week we used our learning to re-write the story in our own way.

In Maths we have continued to develop and practise our skills to solve subtraction and addition questions and problems, particularly when renaming (when we bridge the tens number) e.g. 46 +7 =, 46 + 17 =, 58 – 9 =.

All the children are enjoying learning about castles as homes. So far, we have learnt some of the names for the different parts e.g. arrow loops, battlements, tower. We have been discussing what the different parts of a castle were used for and why. We have also looked at some of the different jobs that were available within the castle grounds and what the jobs would have involved.

This week's spelling pattern:

The r sound spelt wr e.g. wrap, wren, wrong, wrist, wriggle

Don’t forget to practise this spelling pattern in your home spelling book to get your stamp at the end of next week.

Letters sent home this week

• Spring 2 Theme Overview
• Year 2 Home Challenges

Portico Photography Competition

PTA

Messages from the Office

Nursery Admissions for September 2025

Do you or someone you know have a child who will be 3 years old by 31/08/2025? If so, you may be interested to know that we are now taking applications.

Our final planned tour of our Nursery to prospective parents is taking place next week. If you would like to book or know someone who may be interested in seeing our nursery please let them know!

Application packs are available now from the school office.

Lost Property

The lost property box can be found at the main school office and is full to bursting with 'lost' items! If you are missing any of your child's clothes please come and have a look.

To ensure that any of your child's items are returned safely to them in class please check that their name is clearly labelled on every item.

Medicines

If your child requires medication during the school day or during wrap around care please bring it to the school office, a parent or guardian will be asked to complete a permission form.

Antibiotics - in general if a child has been prescribed antibiotics to be given three times a day these can be given at home. If it has been prescribed to be given four times a day then we are happy support with this. Please bring the antibiotics in their original bottle to the school office and the parent or guardian will need to complete the permission form.

Please note that in general we will only be able to support with giving prescribed medicines. For all other medication please contact the school office to discuss your child's needs.

Community Information

Reporting a Parking Issue

Following on from Mr Roche's message regarding parking issues all Southend City residents can report parking problems to the council using the website - link provided below. Please note you will need a MySouthend account to use this.

01702 468461 - office@his.porticoacademytrust.co.uk