Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News

Dear Parents and Carers,

Welcome back to the second part of the summer term and amazingly, the last part of this academic year! Sadly, the inclement weather put paid to our Year 2 beach trips this week but luckily, we have rescheduled and are ready to go again next week instead. Apologies to those parents/carers that were offering support to the visits. Thank you for being so understanding and rearranging your own schedules to support us again. We started the week with our annual Summer Safety assembly delivered by the Fire Service. This is a yearly event and covers how to stay safe in and around water, fire safety when outside and how to make good choices around keeping safe when playing during the summer holidays. Our Year 1 children also started a programme of cricket sessions run by Centurion cricket in association with Essex Cricket. This is another example of our commitment to developing the experiences had by our children in all different forms of life and we hope they children enjoyed the sessions and the chance to learn some new sporting skills. On Monday, we celebrate our ‘We are Artists’ day where the children will be creating some amazing designs using neon ‘glow in the dark’ art materials, linked to an underwater theme. We hope to be able to share these with you in our specially created gallery later in the term. Next week we are also aiming to try again with our beach visits for Year 2, although the weather looks potentially worst and we may need to resort to plan C. Across the week, we are also looking forward to our Reception parents joining  us for outdoor learning sessions – we hope you enjoy seeing where the outdoor learning journey led by our wonderful Mrs Shine, begins in Reception. Weather permitting, we hope to hold our Sports Days the week after next, more information will follow later in the week but the children have been very busy practicing the events and they are really looking forward to showing off their skills. We look forward to welcoming Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 families on Wednesday 17th June and Nursery families on Thursday 18th June. I hope you have a great weekend, see you all on Monday. Scott Roche Principal

Weekly Celebrations!

Attendance

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Summer 1 Diary Dates - Nursery - Reception - Rainbow & Starlight Year 1 - Year 2 - Lunch Menu - PTA - Messages from the Office - Community

Nursery

Welcome back!  This week our NELI story has been ‘The Knight who said no’ the children have enjoyed talking about what makes a good friend. We have also been learning about our body parts and our senses. In Maths we have been learning about 3D shapes and have had fun sorting the shapes into shapes that stack and shapes that roll, why don’t you try this at home.  How to help at home NELI special words: polite, always, whisper, lonely  Please click on the link below or the QR code on tapestry to explore some fun Fred Talk games that you can play at home to support your child’s learning. https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/vDu4HDEX/EiBABStB https://schools.ruthmiskin.com/training/view/osGF2qeP/qfWy1ySN REMINDER: Monday, we are artists day Please put your child in old clothes as we will be using acrylic paint   As the weather is getting warmer and the children will enjoy spending more time in the garden, please ensure that your child brings a named hat to nursery and that you apply suncream before they attend their session. Could you please ensure that your child has a spare set of clothes at nursery and if you have borrowed any clothes could you please return them. Thank you

Letters sent home this week

• Nursery - Summer 2 Curriculum Overview
• Nursery - Letter about Curriculum - 03.06.2026
• ​ Whole School - We Are Artists Letter - 01.06.2026 ​
• Whole School - We Are Artists Poster - 01.06.2026

Reception

Welcome Back after a lovely sunny and hot half term! This week we have kicked started our Summer 2 theme Superheoroes by reading the book ‘Supertato!’ The children have been busy writing Wanted Poster for the Evil Pea who has taken Supertato! Let’s hope all the information on the posters leads to the rescue of Supertato! In PSHE we have started our new unit Growing and Changing and this week have been talking about all the things that make us unique and special. In maths we have been using the rekenreks to explore 1 more and 1 fewer. In shape, space and measure we have been exploring and learning about 3D shapes. In RE we have been talking about things we find interesting, puzzling or wonderful. In art we have started learning the skills of collaging by exploring tearing and cutting materials   How to help at home Fine motor skills: practise cutting out shapes with a pair of scissors. Handwriting: practise all the long-legged giraffe letters focusing on starting and finishing in the right place:  

Letters sent home this week

• Reception - Summer 2 Curriculum Overview
• Whole School - We Are Artists Letter - 01.06.2026 ​
• Whole School - We Are Artists Poster - 01.06.2026

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

Welcome back! We hope you had a lovely half term. This week the children have been listening to the story “supertato” and learning about what makes someone a hero, and how we can be considerate and helpful to others. The children have looked at different ways of sharing and caring, and what it might look like. We have explored different vegetables, colour and size. We have been discussing why evil pea is the way he is, and how he might be feeling and how he might be making others feel. Maths: additions up to 10, one more one less, tens frames, partitioning RWI: Special friends' recap and sound of the week CK

REMINDER: Monday – We are Artists Day, please don't forget the children will be using acrylic paint and therefore need to wear something old.

Starlight

Hope you had a lovely half term! This week in English, we enjoyed reading Tad by Benji Davies and used the story to support our learning about the life cycle of a frog. The children gathered their own frog facts and wrote explanation texts describing the different stages of a frog's life cycle. In Maths, we continued our work on fractions, exploring fractions of shapes and numbers, including thirds, 1/2, 2/4, and 3/4. In Science, we learned about the offspring of different animals and investigated which animals hatch from eggs, and which do not. We also compared the different stages in the life cycles of various animals.   REMINDER: Monday – We are Artists Day. Please put your children in old clothing for the day.

Year 1

Welcome back! We hope you enjoyed the very hot half term! In literacy we have been reading ‘Grandma Bird’. We have been learning to infer a character's feelings and have used adjectives to describe the main character ‘Noi’. At the end of the week, we used what we found out about Noi to write a detailed character description. In maths we have been learning about money. We looked at all the coins and notes and discussed their value and what they look like. In history we have been looking at old artefacts from seaside holidays in the past. We looked at parasols, Punch and Judy puppets and pictures of bathing machines. We also looked at the features of modern seaside holidays. In PSHE we watched the NSPCC ‘Speak Out Stay Safe’ assembly, and we discussed what grown-ups we can talk to when we don’t feel safe.    REMINDER: Phonics Screening Checks Monday 8th: Whole School ‘We are Artists Day’

Letters sent home this week

• Year 1 - Summer 2 Curriculum Overview
• Year 1 - Summer 2 Home Challenges
• Year 1 - Cricket Sessions - 01.06.2026 ​
• Whole School - We Are Artists Letter - 01.06.2026 ​
• Whole School - We Are Artists Poster - 01.06.2026 ​

Year 2

This week in Literacy, we read the story Tad, which follows the journey of a tadpole as it grows into a frog. This linked perfectly with our Science learning on life cycles and offspring. The children enjoyed exploring the different stages of a frog’s life cycle and then used their knowledge to write their own factual explanation of the frog life cycle. In Maths, we completed our fractions unit. The children have worked hard to develop their understanding of fractions and can now identify and find halves, thirds, and quarters of numbers! In PSHE we watched the NSPCC ‘Speak Out Stay Safe’ assembly, and we discussed what grown-ups we can talk to when we don’t feel safe. REMINDER:

• Monday 8th- We are Artists Day.

Please put your children in old clothing for the day. Beach trips 

• Tuesday 9th – Fox and Hedgehog
• Thursday 11th- Otter and Squirrel

Letters sent home this week

• Year 2 - Summer 2 Curriculum Overview
• Year 2 - Summer 2 Home Challenges
• ​ Whole School - We Are Artists Letter - 01.06.2026 ​
• Whole School - We Are Artists Poster - 01.06.2026

Support Our School with Easyfundraising!

Our PTA is using Easyfundraising to help raise money for our school and you can help too, simply by doing your everyday shopping online! It’s completely free to use and takes just a minute to get started.

1. 🛒 Here’s how it works: Visit our fundraising page here
2. Click “Support this cause” and create your free account.
3. Start your online shopping at your favourite retailers (like Amazon, Argos, Tesco, M&S, Just Eat and many more!).
4. The retailer sends us a free donation at no extra cost to you!

It’s an easy way to support our school while doing what you’re already doing online. Every penny raised goes directly towards enriching the learning experience for our children from new equipment and resources to fun events and activities. Please take a moment to sign up and share the link with friends and family too!

Messages from the Office

Parking around the school

Have you spotted unsafe, illegal and inconsiderate parking near to the school at drop off and collection times? As a citizen if you see problem or illegal parking you can report this - the link for Southend Council is here Report a Parking Problem and the link for Essex Police is here Report antisocial behaviour | Essex Police

Arbor Hints and Tips

How to make a payment towards the Enrichment Events:

1. The payment item can be found on your child’s main profile page under ‘Quick Actions’, ‘Trips’, choose this option.
2. You will see a section 'Trips Open to (your child's name), choose School Enrichment Events.
3. Now you can view the information and on the right hand side of the page is a 'Sign up ....' button, choose this option.
4. The cost for the Spring Term events your child will be taking part in is £6.00, increase the amount to pay to this figure or you can also choose to pay the full amount.
5. You can now choose to 'Add to basket' - use this option if there are other items you want to pay for in one total transaction.
6. Or choose 'Make Payment'. You will then be asked to add your card details and confirm the payment.

If you are unable to make payments using the system after following these steps please contact the school office.

Breakfast and After School Club

To change or cancel Breakfast or After School Club you need to contact the office. Parents are unable to change/amend their own bookings. If your child is booked into After School Club or Breakfast Club, it will show on their calendar in Arbor, including the session i.e SHORT, FULL, LATE. A full week view can be seen by clicking the blue arrow in the ‘Calendar’ tab.

Are you eligible for tax-free childcare? This can be used to pay for wraparound care at our setting. Please see the information below.

Community