Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 28Th MARCH 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

This week we celebrated Woman’s History Day in style, with each year group learning about inspirational people such as Marie Curie, Amelia Earhart and Malala Yousafzai. Walking round the school I could see that there has been some great work produced by the children and they were all very keen to tell me all about their learning, showing that they have developed a very good understanding of the impact made on the world by these great individuals.

I just wanted to share a couple of updates with you regarding our school hall and swimming.

We haven’t shared too much about the hall recently, simply because there hasn’t been much to share while lots of work happens behind the scenes between our facilities team and the insurance companies. It is the case that at this stage, the hall still remains out of action despite our best efforts to move things along as quickly as we can, but I am sure you can appreciate that things do take a great deal of time to get everything in place before the actual work can begin. It is our hope that cleaning work can begin on the junior hall within the next few weeks as it was the least affected by the fire, and that our infant hall will be able to follow shortly after. However, we need to make sure that when we do go back into the hall that it is 100% safe and clean for our children to use with no risk of recontamination, so as frustrating as it is to still be waiting, we will have to be guided by the professionals and see the process through to completion. Please rest assured that every effort will be made to catch up as much of the missed content from the spring term as we possibly can!

As you are also aware, swimming has always been a big part of our Hamstel curriculum as despite it not being a part of our statutory requirements for our infant age range, we have always valued this crucial life skill and have always subsidised and prioritised teaching our children to swim from a young age. Our view on this has not changed and as you will be aware, we arranged for a fabulous pop-up pool to come to the school earlier in the year. I am pleased to report that we have been in talks with Garons, our nearest pool, and swimming will return to our curriculum again next year. While we still have lots to sort out around the logistics of this happening, I wanted you to know that we will always do our best to ensure that swimming remains part of our personal development offer here at Hamstel Infants.

Don’t forget that if you have any old photographs, newspaper cuttings, quotes, stories or anything else of interest related to our school that you wouldn’t mind sharing for our permanent wall display, please either email them to hamstelhistory@his.porticoacademytrust.co.uk or bring them into school for us to copy.

Next week is the last week before the Easter Holidays and we still have lots to look forward to with lots of Easter crafts happening across the school, Bunny Hop parties in Year 1 and our Year 2 Banquet Day rounding the week off before the holidays.

Just a reminder that we also have class photographs on Wednesday. Please send the children into school in full uniform and if they are scheduled to have PE or outdoor learning, they can bring their alternative clothes into school to change into once photos are done.

I hope you have a great weekend! The good weather looks set to hold so whatever you’re doing, have fun and we look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Scott Roche

Principal

Important health and safety notice

Despite previous messages, we have still had parents parking in the staff car park and then walking their children, rather dangerously, down the service road where the cars enter. Some children have even been unsupervised by an adult when doing this, putting them and the drivers at risk of an accident.

We have therefore had to ask a member of our site team to restrict access at drop-off and collection time of day. Please be respectful of this request and understand that inappropriate language or behaviour towards our staff will result in you being asked to leave the site.

Thank you for your cooperation

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 enjoyed reading ‘The Three Little Pigs’. The children have enjoyed making their own houses and stick puppets.

In Maths we have been learning to sequence events, we have been talking about what we do at different times of the day and putting them in order.

We have been thinking about the Muslim festival of Eid.

As part of Womens History Month, we have been learning about Amelia Earhart because she was the first woman to fly alone across the Atlantic. We looked at maps of her journey and enjoyed making aeroplanes and flying them.

REMINDER: Please return your funding form ASAP

Please ensure that your child has spare clothes at Nursery.

If your child has borrowed clothes could you please return them as our supplies are getting very low. Thank you

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

We have a new story 'Don't call me Sweet' which the children have found quite funny, they have been learning about the little monster who wants to be a very scary and frightening monster. But when another monster comes along bigger and scarier than he is, things change, and he doesn't feel very big or scary anymore. It's a story the children have enjoyed laughing at, so we have been practicing some scary faces, and what's it like to be a scary monster. The children have also been learning about being kind to each other, and how to be friendly, helping each other, and learning to play in pairs, and groups.

It has been a very busy week for all, we have continued learning more about liquids and solids, using visuals and language to model and express what each word means. The children have enjoyed experimenting with water and ice, and what happens to water when it evaporates.

We have continued learning about big and small, long and short, wide and narrow and different vocabulary that may be used to express the same thing.

The children have all continued with their RWI Lessons, reading and fine motor skills. Some children have been concentrating on sentence building and structure. We have been learning about the seasons, and some of its features.

According to each child's ability we have been learning to blend; CVC/CVCC/CCVC words and writing 2/3 syllable sentences.

RWI: nk link, sink, wink and think

Letter families: random letters (writing and formation)

Maths: partitioning, simple additions, subtractions, problem solving, building towers of 5/10/15 etc, following directions on repositions, lego building and ordering. (Example: children to follow said steps from 1 to 5)

Cooking: Biscuit decorating

Fine motor skills: spaghetti and cheerio's (spaghetti to be put through cheerios!)

Garden: Gross motor skills activities, group work. (learning to follow instructions and working in groups)

Starlight

This week we have been reading ‘Aliens Love Underpants.’ The children have designed their own pants, and we saw some great designs! The children used adjectives to describe the different aliens and the different underpants in the story.

In maths, we have been learning to share groups of objects equally between groups and recognising when the groups are not equal.

The children had a great time in Outdoor Learning this week. We collected sticks, stones and leaves and used these to create their own artwork, such as pebble people. The children worked together as a team to build rockets and UFOs using crates, before taking off to the moon! We finished the session playing hide and seek; there are some very imaginative hiding places!

REMINDER: We would like to invite you to come to an Easter Crafts afternoon on Friday 28th April at 2:30pm. We look forward to seeing you!

Reception Year

This week we have been reading ‘Monstersaurus’ and making lots of monster potions! In art we have been creating our collage space scene.

In history we have been learning about who lived and worked inside castles in the past. In PSHE we have been learning about money, what money is, how money comes in different forms and that you can earn money from having a job.

In maths we have been sorting objects into different groups, we have been sorting Numberblocks into odd block and even blocks. In RE we have been finding out about special people from Islamic religion.

How to help at home

Handwriting: Have a go at practising all the curly caterpillar, long-legged giraffe and one-armed robot letters.

Reading: Watch the QR codes and return your QR code homework sheet back to your class teacher next Thursday. Remember to tick in the box under the QR code when you have watched each video.

Maths: Sort objects at home into different groups. Maybe sort objects according to their colour?

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Summer Term Teacher Led Clubs - 21.03.2025
• Reception - Local Church Visit - 28.03.2025

Year One

In literacy we have been reading ‘Something Different’ by Jill Lewis & Ali Pike. We looked at the little alien character and described his appearance using noun phrases. We also spoke about his personality and what traits he had including being friendly and shy. We used this information to create our own word banks to support us in writing a character description.

REMINDER: Bunny Hop Parties on Friday afternoon - children can come to school wearing their party clothes. Please make sure the outfits are appropriate for the weather and being active in school, no high heeled shoes or flip-flops.

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Summer Term Teacher Led Clubs - 21.03.2025

Year Two

In the Year 2 classrooms this week there has been lots of excitement around what kind of dragon might hatch out of a dragon egg! The children have thought about what type of dragon it might be, what it looks like, what it might eat, does it need exercising etc. The children have delved deeply into their imaginations and came up with some brilliant creative ideas. Plans were drawn up first, by drawing and labelling their dragon and then they planned more of their ideas through lots of talk and writing some ideas down. Once they had gathered their thoughts, the children used their plans to write a description about their imaginary dragon. Some fabulous descriptive language was used to describe their dragon, as well as using conjunctions to explain more about their ideas.

In Maths, this week Year 2 have been learning about 2d shapes. We have revisited the basic 2d shapes such as square, rectangle, circle, hexagon and triangle but extended our knowledge with some mathematical language. We have learnt that polygons are 2d shapes with straight sides and that a vertex is when two sides meet, which we knew previously as a corner. We have been describing, comparing and identifying the numbers of vertices and sides 2d shapes have.

We have also enjoyed celebrating and learning about Marie Curie for Women’s History Day. We have learnt that she was a Scientist and about some of the important work she did. We created timelines of the important events and discoveries during her life and work. We gathered lots of interesting facts and worked together to create some ‘expert boards’ about Marie Curie’s life. Why not quiz us, to see what we have learnt.

REMINDER: Don’t Forget Next week is Year 2 Outdoor Learning week and we have our Banquet Day on Friday.

• OUTDOOR LEARNING
• Monday - Fox Class
• Tuesday - Badger Class
• Wednesday - Hedgehog Class
• Thursday - Squirrel Class
• Friday - Otter Class

Letters sent home this week

• Whole School - Summer Term Teacher Led Clubs - 21.03.2025

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