Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 28th MARCH 2024

Dear Parents and Carers,

And so we reach the end of the Spring term but we certainly ended it in style!

Year 1 did everybody proud this week as they performed their spring show ‘Rise and Shine’ to two packed audiences full of family and friends. The children did an amazing job to learn all the words, actions and songs and the hall was full of claps, cheers and whoops as they delighted their audiences.

A huge well done to all our Year 1 children and a big thank you to the Year 1 team, who have worked so hard to get the children to such a high standard. Year 1 got the chance to celebrate their achievements and let off some steam at their Bunny Hop disco on Wednesday evening.

Nursery have been very busy making some great Easter crafts this week with their parents/carers coming into Nursery to help make easter eggs, baskets and bonnets. Thank you to everybody who came along to work with the children, they were very impressive creations.

To round the week off, Year 2 looked absolutely fantastic as they came into school dressed as kings, queens, princesses, dragons and knights ready to take part in their banquet afternoon. The children were buzzing when they returned to their classes and all seemed to have a great time!

This morning we had a huge end of term celebration assembly where we celebrated the best attendance and gave out Going for Gold awards, achievement certificates and the most WOW moments we have celebrated to date.

This week our great attendance certificates have also come home with those children reaching either 100% or 95% attendance across the term.

We also celebrated the winners of our PTA easter egg design competition, with each winner receiving a delicious egg for their brilliant designs.

Well done to everybody!

When we return after the Easter holidays, we have lots to look forward to in our summer term.

During the first week, Year 1 are off to The Hive for their summer visit and we also have phonics meetings for Nursery and Year 1 parents. The Year 1 meeting is around the Phonics Screening Check so it is very important that you try to attend. This will take place on Wednesday 17th April at 9:00am and 2:45pm. The Nursery phonics meeting takes place on Thursday 18th April at 8:40am and 2:30pm.

As another term ends, all that remains to say is that I hope you have a relaxing and fun Easter break and we look forward to seeing you all again on Monday 15th April.

Scott Roche

Principal

Water bottles

After the Easter holidays please send your child into school with a named transparent water bottle. To avoid damage to books and work, please try not to store these in book bags.

Bottles should only be filled with water, no juice, fruit juice or fizzy drinks please. Bottles can be refilled in school at any time.

Please try to avoid screw cap bottles as there is a risk of spillages. Some suitable examples are shown below.

We will still have cups in school for children to use should bottles ever be forgotten, so children will always be hydrated.

Thank you for your support

Sports Day

As we shared a while back our whole school sports day is planned for Wednesday 19th June. A letter will come out to you early in the Summer term giving full details of this event but to allow you to save the date and make any arrangements, we envisage that the timings of the day will be as follows;

• 9:00am to 10:00am – Reception Sports Day

• 10:15am to 11:15am – Year 1 Sports Day

• 1:15pm to 1:45pm – Nursery Sports Day

• 2:00pm to 3:00pm – Year 2 Sports Day

Please note that these may be subject to slight amendments in time but we do not anticipate any major changes. We obviously hope that the weather will be kind to us but should we need to postpone, Thursday 27th June is our proposed back up day.

We hope to see you there!

Nursery

This week the children have enjoyed listening to the story No-Bot the robot with no bottom. The children have answered questions about what happened in the story. They have enjoyed making shape robots, designing a new bottom for No-Bot.

In Maths we have learning to compare amounts of objects and saying if there are more and fewer in a group.

We have been learning about why we celebrate Easter.

A big thank you to the parents/ carers who took part in our Easter craft sessions, We hope that you enjoyed taking part as much as the children and we did.

Have a lovely Easter break.

How to help at home:

Watch the RWI Virtual Classroom Video’s

REMINDER: Please do not allow your child to bring toys or wear jewellery into Nursery as they might get lost or broken.

Letters sent home this week

• Nursery - Phonics Meeting - 27.03.2024
• Whole School - Consultation: RSE Policy - 25.03.2024

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week Rainbow has been looking at feelings and emotions, and how they feel. It has been a busy week with children making faces of different emotions, looking at how their friends may feel. We watched some short, animated films about feelings, which the children really enjoyed.

The children have continued with fine motor skills, and name writing. The children have had lots of fun with the interactive TV, playing hide-n-seek, where they need to find numbers in different places and structures. The children have really enjoyed their group work with pen pal gym, and Thursday was fantastic we played lots of different games with the children, and they enjoyed it very much. We learned about all the different shapes and sizes and went on an Easter egg hunt!

Starlight

This week we have been reading the story ‘Romping Monsters, Stomping Monsters.’ We have written labels to match the pictures and even designed our own monsters lollies!

In maths, we have been learning about doubles and odd and even numbers. The children used multilink to show odd and even numbers.

We have continued with our Attention Autism sessions and the children have engaged well, taking turns and accepting when their turn had ended.

We hope you have an enjoyable Easter break.

Reception Year

This week we have been learning about aliens and reading the book ‘Life on Mars.’

In Maths we have been learning to sort objects and compare their attributes and sort odd and even number blocks.

In Science we have been learning to identify similarities and differences between plants.

In PSHE we have been learning about money and work, the different strengths needed for different job and the different jobs in our community.

In PE we have finished our unit on Dance by extending our ideas and working in pairs to create movements together.

In Handwriting we have been practising all the curly caterpillar letters and the zig zag monster letters.

How to help at home

Reading

Continue to watch the RWI Virtual Classroom Videos and listen to your child read their RWI storybook and RWI Book Bag Book at least 5 times a week.

Handwriting

Continue to practise all the zig zag monster letters, remember to start and finish in the correct place.

Maths

• Sort objects into different jobs.
• Explain why the objects belong in one group.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Consultation: RSE Policy - 25.03.2024
• Reception - Library visit - 28.03.2024

Year One

We finished off this term with our Spring performance of ‘Rise and Shine’. The children were fantastic and we really hope you enjoyed coming along to watch. We are very proud of how hard the children have rehearsed and learned all the songs and their lines.

In Literacy this week we have designed, drawn and coloured our own ‘Extraordinary Garden’. We then wrote some descriptive sentences using noun phrases to describe our creation.

In Maths we have started learning about Multiplication in the form of equal groups. We have been learning how to share out equal amounts and using STEM sentences to support us e.g. There are ______equal groups. There are ______ in each group. We will be continuing our work on this after the holidays.

We have finished off our Art topic on Eric Carle by creating our own hungry caterpillar. We printed the circular shapes for the head and body using different materials and then added some eyes and legs. We used plastic lids, bubble wrap, pieces of polystyrene and pieces of cork. We completed the unit by evaluating our final piece.

How to help at home

Continue to watch the RWI Virtual Classroom videos:

REMINDER: HIVE trip will be taking place the first week back after the holidays.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Consultation: RSE Policy - 25.03.2024

Year Two

What a lovely end to our half term the Year 2 children had with the Banquet in the hall. The children all looked fabulous in their costumes and had a wonderful time in the hall, eating delicious food and playing games! Thank you to all the adults at home who helped sort out costumes for the children to wear.

In Literacy this week we have been using all the interesting and creative vocabulary we have thought of to describe dragons over the last couple of weeks and magpied from inspirational texts. One of the books we have really enjoyed sharing in class is in the form of a poem and called Tell Me a Dragon by Jackie Morris. This book is full of beautiful illustrations and descriptions of a variety of dragons. Using their vocabulary ideas and plans the children wrote their own dragon poems. The children have really worked hard and came up with some great ideas.

This week we have started a new unit on Fractions. The children have started exploring that fractions are equal parts that make up a whole and then have moved on to finding out about halves and quarters of some common 2d shapes. The children have been exploring this concept practically and explaining how they know a shape has halves or quarters using their STEM sentences e.g. When I find a_______ I make _________ equal parts.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Consultation: RSE Policy - 25.03.2024

Celebration Assembly - Working Together

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

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