Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 13th june 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

Wow what a week it’s been at Hamstel Infants as the children have enjoyed great learning both inside and outside the classroom.

The week started with a splash as we celebrated our ‘We are Artists’ Day on Monday with the theme based around World Oceans Day. There was some truly amazing art work on display and the children really seemed to enjoy letting their creative sides run wild. Some of the work will be on display around the school and at the Portico Art and DT festival on our open day on 14th July, which we hope you can attend.

In other news, both our Reception and Year 2 children have been out and about around the local area. Reception have enjoyed their visits to Southchurch Library and came back full of excited talk about the books they had read. While our Year 2’s headed off to the beach to enjoy a day in the sunshine, crabbing, making sand castles, completing scavenger hunts and getting more wet than planned. A big well done to all of the children for representing our school so positively and a big thank you to the staff and parents that supported these visits.

I couldn’t not mention our Year 1 children this week who have given their absolute all in our phonics screening checks. Well done for being so sensible and focused during the tests – you have done yourselves and your teachers proud!

Next week we have our Sports Days – Nursery will get us started by showing off their speed and agility on Tuesday 17th before Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 take over on Thursday 19th June. The children have been practicing hard to hone their sporting skills and we look forward to seeing you there. A final letter with any additional information will be sent early next week but please refer to our letter sent on 21st May for more details. The main dates and times are shown below;

Next week we are also hoping to let the children know their new class teachers and teaching assistants for next year. This will enable us to start our transition work really early and the children can meet and become familiar with their new adults well before the end of term. We hope this will allow all of the children to enjoy the summer holidays fully without any additional worries about the new year and then re-join us excitedly and enthusiastically in September.

Just a reminder that next Friday is an INSET day, so school will not be open to the children.

Have a great weekend and Happy Father’s Day to all of the dads in our school community – see you all on Monday!

Scott Roche

Principal

Jump to a section...

Summer 2 Diary Dates - Nursery - Rainbow & Starlight - Reception - Year 1

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

Community Information - Key Dates for Autumn Term

Nursery

This week the children have been learning about world ocean day and looking at underwater creatures. We also learnt the names of the 5 oceans. This linked in nicely with our story ‘Pip and Posy’s new friend’ which is about the beach. As part of the schools ‘Be an artist day’ we looked at work by the artist Courtney Mattison who creates coral sculptures using clay. The children enjoyed creating their own sculptures using plastacine. We have shared these on Tapestry.

In Maths we have continued to learn about 3D shapes and counting backwards from a given number.

In RWI Phonics we have learnt the sounds ‘u’, and ‘b’ please look on tapestry for the QR codes to watch the videos at home with your child.

Sports Day is Tuesday 17th June please arrive at 10.15am or 2.00pm as we don’t want you to miss the races as we will be starting promptly at 10.30 and 2.15.

For Sports day could you please send your child in wearing shorts, a t-shirt and trainers and a hat and apply suncream. Thankyou.

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week we continued our learning with the story 'The Hungry Caterpillar'. The children have familiarised themselves with the story and have enjoyed learning all about the life cycle of a butterfly, and all the different types of butterflies in our environment, the children have created some lovely artwork and have enjoyed making lots of symmetrical pictures. the children have been tending to the plants and flowers in Dilly`s Den watering them and making sure they are thriving, and they have enjoyed looking after them.

We have also looked at feelings and emotions and how feelings affect us, how they might make us feel and act. We have been using the `zones of regulation`, to express these feelings. And the children have enjoyed being able to express their feelings using the Zones. We have been looking at mindsets, resilience and well-being, making sure that everyone has equal opportunities to express themselves.

We have continued with RWI, pencil control, writing, sentence building and various maths.

RWI: qu – quit, quack, queen,

Letter family: Leg, lit, it, in, tip, top, up, jug, jet, yak, yet etc.

Maths: one more one less, more or fewer, additions, counting fingers, show fingers to said up to five, building towers to said number, partition 5, know what a partition is, subitising, recognise a set of numbers, count things we cannot see.

We have outdoor learning on Monday, please make sure children have hats and sunscreen (applied), thanks.

Starlight

This week we have continued reading ‘The Rainbow Fish’ by Marcus Pfister. The children wrote a postcard in character role as the Rainbow Fish, to say how the fish was feeling, who he met and who he played with. They also drew a picture of an underwater scene from the story to make the ‘picture side.’

On Monday, it was whole school ‘We are Artists Day.’ The children enjoyed looking at work by the artist Courtney Mattison. Throughout the week, inspired by the artist, we made cardboard roll octopus and painted rainbow coloured fish.

In maths, we have been learning about capacity and volume. The children have used practical equipment to explore full, empty, half full, nearly full and nearly empty.

We have continued practising our knife skills in cooking. The children sliced vegetables to make pitta bread fish... and the best bit was eating them!

We have Outdoor Learning on Monday. Please dress your child in clothing suited to the weather and apply sunscreen and insect repellent. Also, please provide a change of clothing. Thank you.

Reception Year

This week we have continued our learning from Supertato and we have been on the lookout for Evil Pea!

In PSHE we have been thinking about our likes and dislikes and how they might be the same or different to other people.

In maths we have been counting to 100 and thinking of different ways to count larger amounts that cannot be moved.

In outdoor learning we have been looking for signs of Summer and discussing the changes from Spring to Summer. We have been learning the names of different minibeasts and had a go at identifying them on a minibeast hunt. In art we have learnt about some printing techniques in preparation for our final Eric Carle piece.

In RE we have learnt about the Christian creation story and worked together to re-tell the story about how the world was created.

How to help at home

Handwriting: Practice the formation of all the long-legged giraffe letters, remembering to start and finish in the right place.

Year One

On Monday we had a whole school ‘We are Artists’ day. We learned about Yellena James who loved to create art using pens, inks, markers and acrylics. She likes each piece of art to make its own little world. We used the paint to create bubbles on some paper, once it dried we used pens to make shapes and turn them into a sea life picture.

This week we have been continuing with the story ‘Grandma Bird’. We have been learning about the features of a postcard and why we might send them. In our big write we wrote a postcard from Noi, the main character, back to his Dad, telling him all about his trip at Grandma’s house.

In maths we have been learning about volume, we have been using the vocabulary ‘more than’ and ‘less than’ to compare different containers. We also used ‘half and quarter’ to compare capacity.

In PE we are continuing to practise our sprints, hurdles and obstacle races for sports day.

The year 1’s have all worked incredible hard this week during their phonics screening checks and all the teachers are very proud of them. Well done!

• Outdoor Learning next week
• Monday - Heron
• Wednesday - Newt
• Thursday - Dragonfly
• Sports day Thursday 19th June

Year Two

Well, it’s certainly been a very busy and exciting week in Year 2! We started off on Monday with a combined celebration and reflection of artists and World Ocean Day with our ‘We are Artists Day’ linked to oceans.

Year 2 explored the artwork of Mat Miller. Mat Miller is a British illustrator who creates beautiful drawings of animals and fantasy creatures. His style is intricate linework, meaning his pictures are filled with tiny, interesting details - you could stare at them for ages! The children found his work fascinating and used it as inspiration to create their own work using the theme of sea creatures. The finished pieces were all unique and carefully thought-out. Linked to the day, we of course did some geographical work around the oceans, which in Year 2 revisited some previous learning. We discussed and explored protecting our oceans, how we can contribute to looking after them and why they are an important part of our planet.

Having enjoyed our theme day, we delved into our new book on Tuesday during literacy, 'Winnie and Wilbur Under the Sea' by Valerie Thomas. Using this book we explored the setting. We thought about some adventurous vocabulary to describe the setting to write some descriptive sentences at the end of the week. We also further developed our knowledge of prepositions, but with the challenge of using them as a sentence opener e.g. Under the ________. On top of ______. We challenged ourselves to use these types of starters in our setting descriptions.

In maths we carried on with our unit on time. We continued to revisit last week's learning, telling the time to the hour, half past, quarter to and quarter past on an analogue clock. We then challenged ourselves with learning to tell the time in 5-minute intervals; this is very tricky! We used our knowledge of the multiples of 5 to help us.

On Wednesday, the year group visited the junior school for a special assembly with Mrs Farrell in their school hall. The children were all brilliantly behaved and were very excited to attend.

Luckily the weather was much kinder to us this week and we finished the week with our beach trips. The visits included a scavenger hunt, building different sized sandcastles, playing games, lots of exploration and a yummy picnic!

The spelling pattern this week:

The ee sound spelt ey e.g. key, donkey, chimney, turkey

Practise your spellings in your book and bring in at the end of the week to collect your stamp.

PTA

EXCITING OPPORTUNITY - HELP NEEDED

The PTA are busy planning for the Summer Fair, taking place on Saturday 5th July and they need willing volunteers to make the day a success.

Volunteer opportunities for Hamstel School Summer Fair 2025 are now open.

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