Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 4Th April 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

It seems hard to believe that we are already at the end of the spring term but the children’s enthusiasm for their learning has continued throughout, with them all continuing to display our ‘we care’ values throughout this week and across the whole term!

During this last week, the school has been full of Easter crafts and fun learning as the children and staff prepare for a well-earned break. On Wednesday, everybody looked very smart and really seemed to enjoy having their class photos taken – we hope you enjoy seeing these when they come home.

We then ended the week in style with our Year 1s enjoying their Bunny Hop Parties, a last-minute replacement for the Bunny Hop discos that normally occur at this time of year, while our Year 2s looked very regal dressed as knights, kings, queens, princesses and even a few dragons, as they enjoyed their royal banquet this afternoon.

After my ‘we have no update’ update last week, we also had some good news this week regarding the reopening of our school hall. The extensive cleaning work that needs to happen to make our hall safe and usable again is scheduled for the second week of the school holidays, so it is our hope that we will be able to start using the hall again during the summer term. We are also hoping that a mobile kitchen will arrive during the holidays which will make life much easier for Mr. Prince and our kitchen team. A really big thank you to everybody who has been involved in this project, especially Mr Prince and his team, our team of Midday Assistants led by Mrs Steri, the juniors for the loan of their canteen area and our staff who have worked so hard to keep things going in as much of a normal way as possible over the last term.

Let’s hope all of the necessary work can now happen quickly, as it will certainly be great to get things back to normal!

On Friday last week, our ‘Friends of Hamstel’ ran a very successful Easter Egg hunt around the school grounds… great fun was had by all and it raised almost £600, a magnificent achievement following on from the £550 made during their Mother’s Day sales. We are also very pleased to share that our Comic Relief Day raised £260 toward this great charity. Thank you to everybody that supported these fabulous events.

We have so many things planned for the summer term for both you and the children to enjoy. These include such events as our year group curriculum meetings, parent workshops, the ‘Friends of Hamstel’ Summer Fayre, the visit of Gemma‘s farm, the Infant Dance Festival, the Portico Art & DT festival and beach trips alongside lots of sporting opportunities for Team Hamstel and our whole school sports days.

We also mustn’t forget, the delayed Year 1 Spring Show which has been provisionally rearranged for Tuesday 20th & Wednesday 21st May and our magnificent Year 2 Leavers Show that will take place on Tuesday 15th and Wednesday 16th July. We obviously hope these events can take place on these planned dates but please bear with us if venues, dates and times need to change slightly around the ongoing cleaning and works around our school hall.

Thank you to all our parents and carers for your understanding and support other the last term, it has been greatly appreciated. It’s certainly going to be a very busy summer, so I sincerely hope that you all get to rest, have fun and recharge your batteries over the Easter holidays.

I’d like to end by giving a huge shout out to all our staff who work so tirelessly hard for our children. Thank you all - we are very lucky to have such a brilliant team at Hamstel Infants!

Whether you are parent, carer, child or staff - I hope you all have a great break and we look forward to seeing you again on Tuesday 22nd April, to begin the summer term.

Scott Roche

Principal

Jump to a section...

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

Year 2 - Portico Photography Competition

Dinner Menu - PTA - Messages from the Office - Community Information

Key Dates for Summer Term

Nursery

This week we have been reading ‘Copycat’. The children have enjoyed playing follow the leader and copying their friends. We have practised skipping.

In Maths we have been learning the names of 3D shapes. We have been naming the RWI pictures and playing Fred talk games.

The children have enjoyed making a variety of Easter crafts, they especially enjoyed making the chocolate krispie cakes!

REMINDER: Outdoor learning is on Friday, please wear suitable footwear and clothing.

As the weather is getting warmer can you apply suncream on your child before attending Nursery thank you.

Could you also provide your child with a named sun hat as the children enjoy spending a lot of time in the garden. Thank you.

• Summer 1 Theme Overview
• Summer KIRFS

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week the children have continue listening to the story 'Don't call me Sweet', and have enjoyed repeating some familiar phrases, enjoyed laughing at certain key points in the story. The children have continued their learning on understanding the Zones of Regulation, making the right decisions and choices. Understanding rules and routines. The children have made excellent progress in RWI, focusing and listening during structured lessons. We have been taking advantage the lovely weather we have been having, giving the children the opportunity to access the large climbing frame in the playground to build on gross motor skill and spatial awareness. We have been practicing working in pairs and working as a group during activities and structured lessons, the children have shown resilience and focus. The children have continued with their writing, pencil control and maths/number work.

RWI: CH Chip, Choc, Chin and Chop

Maths: more or less/building towers to a said number/recognising a group of numbers/one more one less/partitioning/subitising etc.

Completing a sequence of shapes, numbers, patterns etc.

Writing: Name writing, sentence building and structure, pencil control, cvc words

I would like to say how very proud we all are of the children in Rainbow Room and recognise all the hard work they have put in to achieve and complete their targets and set work, wishing all a happy easter half term, with lots of laughter and fun. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the parents/grandparents for their cooperation, dedication and support.

Have a lovely Easter Holiday.

Starlight

This week we have continued reading ‘Aliens Love Underpants.’ The children have made sentences to match pictures from the beginning, middle and end of the story.

In maths, the children have been learning to understand the concept of doubles by identifying and creating doubles of numbers up to 10. They have used practical equipment by finding a particular number of objects, then finding the double by adding the same number again, before recording as a number sentence.

We have discussed expected and unexpected behaviours using the Zones of Regulation. The children were given scenarios of different types of behaviour. We worked together to decide which of these behaviours are expected or unexpected behaviours, relating them to expected behaviours in Starlight Room.

Thank you for coming into Starlight on Friday to join us for some Easter craft activities. It was lovely to see, and thank you, as always, for your continued support. We hope you have a lovely Easter break.

Reception Year

This week we have been reading ‘Where the Wild Things Are’ and writing sentences about Max, the main character in the story. In history we have been looking at how castles have changed over time. In RE we have been identifying similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam.

In PSHE we have been learning about why we need money and some of the things that we can buy with money. In maths we have been recapping everything that we have learnt so far this year. In shape, space and measure we have been exploring measuring lengths using cubes and rulers. In art we have been evaluating our Megan Coyle collages.

How to help at home

Handwriting:

Reading: continue to listen to your child read over the Easter break and watch the QR codes.

• Summer 1 Theme Overview
• Summer KIRFs

Year One

This week we have continued with the story ‘Something Different’. We started the week by designing our own ‘little something’ creature. We created a story map and planned our story using exciting vocabulary such as suddenly and unfortunately. In our big write, we used our new character and rewrote the story, ensuring it has a beginning, middle and end.

In maths we have been learning about sharing items into equal groups. We have been working to do this practically with our learning partners.

In Art we created space backgrounds using our knowledge of primary and secondary colours from last week. We mixed some paint to create the colours we wanted and used different tools to make shapes to look like planets and stars. In the following lesson we drew astronauts using 2B pencils and outlined these with black pen, we then stuck them onto our space backgrounds.

Finally, we really enjoyed our Bunny Hop parties, they were a great way to mark the end of the Spring term.

Happy Easter everyone and have a lovely end of term break!

Letters sent home this week

• Year 1 - Phonics Screening Meeting - 02.04.2025

Year Two

This week we have written some fantastic dragon poems with lots of enthusiasm. We wrote acrostic poems using the word DRAGON down the side of the page. We planned out first what we were going to include in our poem, thinking about some fantastic adjectives. All our previous work around dragons really helped us with coming up with our ideas. We are super proud of our finished pieces of writing, which we presented in our best handwriting.

In maths we have continued learning about shape, revisiting the language to describe the features of 2d shapes that we learnt last week. We have also explored repeating patterns thinking about shape, size and orientation. We practised identifying missing shapes in a pattern and finishing some patterns. The children also explore direction and rotation of shape, we had to use the words right, left, up and down when following instructions to locate positions of shapes.

In PSHE we have been discussing and thinking about ‘wants’ and ‘needs. We had lots of interesting discussions in class thinking about if we needed or wanted items such as McDonald’s, phones, a home, shoes and chocolate.

To finish the half term and our theme ‘Dungeons and Dragons’ we thoroughly enjoyed our banquet. It was lovely to see so many Queens, Kings, Princesses, Knights and Dragons come together to celebrate a fantastic half term. A big thankyou to parents and carers in supporting this event.

Finally, we hope you all have lovely Easter break, and we look forward to welcoming Year 2 back for the start of the summer term.

Letters sent home this week

Portico Photography Competition

Messages from the 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