Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 2nd may 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

It’s been a lovely week at Hamstel Infants as the children have not only enjoyed their learning in and out of the classroom (along with some perfect weather to accompany it) but I have also personally been on cloud nine following Liverpool becoming Premier League Champions again last weekend. Of course, I haven’t even mentioned it to those members of staff that support other teams and I have remained humble throughout!

Our Reception classes really enjoyed their visits to Bellevue Baptist Church this week, and as always, they received lots of interesting facts from Rev’d Goodliff to enhance their visit and link to the learning that they have completed in school. These visits are such great educational experiences for our children as the more abstract knowledge they learn in school, is seen in real life. A big thank you to all the parents and carers who supported our visit and of course to everybody at Bellevue Baptist for allowing us to visit. Next week it’s the turn of Year 1 to start their church visits as they head off to another of our local churches, Southend Christian Fellowship in Southchurch Road. We hope they have an equally as enjoyable and informative visit.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of accompanying our dance team at the Infant Dance Festival. They had a great afternoon in glorious sunshine, in the lovely setting of the walled garden at Alleyne Court school, watching over twenty other schools perform before blowing everybody’s socks off with a their fantastic ‘You’ve got a friend in me’ line dance/foxtrot fusion dance. As some of the youngest performers on show, they could have easily been a bit anxious to perform in front of so many people, but no nerves were in sight and they shone like the superstars they are as they left the stage to great applause. Well done Team Hamstel, you have done us all proud and a big thank you to Miss West for all her hard work and dedication in preparing the team.

In addition to our Year 1 church visits next week, Year 2 will also take part in their mini first aid workshops. This is another very important part of our enrichment curriculum as the children get to learn crucial emergency skills that will stay with them for life.

Gemma’s Farm is only a week away! This is a fantastic event that we hold each year to give our children hands on experiences with familiar and friendly farm animals. But we can’t do this without your contributions as it costs well over £1000 for the two days, sadly money we just don’t have spare. If you are able to donate and haven’t had the chance to already, please help us to support this experience for the children as without your valuable contributions this event is at serious risk of being cancelled in the future. More details can be found on our letter that went out this week. Thank you for your support!

Don’t forget it’s a bank holiday on Monday, so let’s hope the good weather holds and you all have a great long weekend. We look forward to seeing you on Tuesday for another week at Hamstel Infants!

Scott Roche

Principal

Crocs and Sunglasses

Please can we remind you that crocs are not suitable shoes to wear to school, especially for PE and outdoor learning due to their soft toes.

We would also just like to remind parents/carers that sunglasses should not be worn in school. This is firstly for a safety reason, but also because of the risk of them being damaged or lost. Children can of course wear them to/from school but we would appreciate them not coming into school.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Scott Roche

Principal

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Summer 1 Diary Dates - Nursery - Rainbow & Starlight - Reception - Year 1

Year 2 - Dinner Menu - PTA - Messages from the Office - Community Information

Key Dates for Summer Term

Nursery

This week our story has been ‘Cinderella’, we have enjoyed designing a dress for Cinderella, writing invitations and making carriages.

In Maths we have been learning about size by sorting shoes and towers and talking about which object is the smallest and which object is the largest.

We have been learning about the artist Claude Monet, we looked at some of his paintings and talked about what we liked about them.

In PSHE we have been looking at healthy food choices, the children enjoyed making their own fruit kebabs.

We have introduced our RWI phonics scheme.

There are videos on Tapestry for you to watch at home with your child.

We have learnt the sounds ‘m’, ‘a’, ‘s’.

REMINDER: As the weather is getting warmer please apply suncream before coming to Nursery and provide your child with a named hat thank you.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Gemma's Farm - 28.04.2025
• Nursery - RWI Phonics Meeting for Parents/Carers - 02.05.2025

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week we have continued listening and learning more about the animals in the story 'Walking through the jungle'. We have been looking at differences; and what makes them different; skin colour, shape and size. The children have been listening to different sounds that animals may make, and how they move, we have tried similar moves in PE, pretending to be a snake, lion or even a crocodile. The children have created some lovely pictures using different types of materials and media to create texture and depth. Outdoor learning on the adventure trail was all about developing our gross motor skill, which can help with balance, strength and stamina, we later ventured into the outdoor learning area, and collected some leaves and flowers to later use for art.

We have continued with RWI and pencil control, reading and 1:1 activities, .

RWI: sh,qu, th, ng,ch, nk and CVC words (blending)

Red Words:

Letter family: Long ladder giraffe letters:

Maths: additions/problem solving/one more one less/counting fingers/counting things we cannot see/number structures etc.

REMINDER: As the days get warmer, we will be out in the garden doing many different activities, we will also be using Dilly`s Den, so the children will get mucky and may need a change of clothes, we also ask that sun cream is put on them before they come to school. Thank you.

Starlight

This week we had Outdoor Learning, and the weather was beautiful! The children made boats using tarpaulin and crates, the role played some of the story ‘Lost and Found’ by Oliver Jeffers. We collected natural ‘treasures’ and made these into ice decorations.

In English, the children thought about the characters from the story and wrote a character description of both the boy and penguin, thinking about their appearances, emotions and actions. The children used paint and collage to make characters from the story.

In Maths this week, we have been learning to count using 10s and 1s. The children have used practical equipment to count and partition the numbers.

The children practised their drumming skills in music, following visuals to play along with different pieces of music.

Ways to help at home:

Handwriting/letter formation:

Reception Year

This week we have been learning about animals that live in water and reading the book ‘Billy’s Bucket’. In English we have writing about these animals, trying to think of our own sentences, and write them in our books. In geography we have been comparing life in England to life in cold climate countries. In art we have been painting with watercolours to create sea pictures.

In maths we have been making and describing arrangements of 6 and recognising double patterns. In shape, space and measure we have been learning about length and identifying when an object is taller or shorter than another object. In RE we all enjoyed visiting our local church and learning to talk about a church and understand what a church is.

How to help at home

Reading: We have started to learn some ‘red words’, words that we cannot sound out. Help your child to learn and read these words:

I, the, no, he, she, was

NELI Special Words: seed, sow, grow, stem, leaf, leaves, enough, not enough, how many, petal, carrots, potatoes, onions, peas, sweetcorn, pumpkin

Handwriting: Practise all the zig zag monster letters:

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Gemma's Farm - 28.04.2025

Year One

This week we have been continuing with the story ‘The Queen’s Hat’. We have been sequencing the main events in the correct order and completed a story plan ready to support us in writing our own version next week.

In maths we have been learning to count in 10s and 1s. We have been working practically with our learning partners with the dienes to help our understanding.

In science we have been learning about wild plants and garden plants and making comparisons between the two. During outdoor learning we tried to see if we could spot any outside!

In geography we have been continuing to learn about the UK. This week we have been looking at human and physical features and learning about the British seas.

REMINDER: Church visits on Thursday 8th May

• Dragonfly and Duck – AM
• Newt and Heron - PM

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Gemma's Farm - 28.04.2025

Year Two

Leading on from our book last week, Meerkat Mail, we have been delving into lots of interesting facts about Meerkats. We have used books, video clips and facts files to develop our knowledge about the world of Meerkats. We have found out where they live and their habitat, what they like to eat and other interesting facts that have caught our attention. We have used our new knowledge and used it to write our own simple factual sentences and reports about Meerkats. We have worked hard in using conjunctions to explain some of the facts and new language we have learnt. We used sub-headings to help organise our ideas too. We have really enjoyed developing our general knowledge this week, why not quiz us on some facts about the amazing world of Meerkats!

In maths we have continued our learning about 3d shape. We have continued to develop our explanation skills in talking about the features of 3 d shape and use language such as faces, surfaces and vertices. We have also explored nets of 3d shape and talked about what we noticed we had a ‘net’ of a 3d shape for example what 2d shapes we could spot when we had a net of a cuboid. This has helped us understand the structure of shapes.

In geography we have explored the physical and human features of Africa and different landscapes. We have learnt new words such as Savanna, valley, mountain. We have discussed what these features are and described them. We were amazed at the some of the different landscape images we explored of Kenya.

REMINDER: Next week we have our Mini First Aid Workshops on Friday 9th May. Please log into Parent Pay to contribute £2 towards these workshops running if you haven’t done so already. Thank you 😊

Outdoor Learning is next week, please make sure children are wearing appropriate clothing and have had suncream applied. Due to the bank holiday Fox Class will have their Outdoor Learning on Tuesday.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Gemma's Farm - 28.04.2025

PTA

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.

Visit Southend - Bank Holiday Weekend Activities

Follow the link for more information.

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