Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News week ending 21ST MARCH 2025

Dear Parents and Carers,

Another very busy week at Hamstel Infants..

On Wednesday we launched our Wake Up Wednesday Online safety advice for parents and carers. We started by looking at how to develop safe and healthy online habits for your children. Please try and take the time to read these useful tips if you can, as I’m sure you appreciate that it’s always better to try and stay one step ahead of our children in this ever-evolving world of technology!

A big thank you to the PTA for running our Mother’s Day pop up shop on Tuesday. The children all looked very pleased with themselves as they came back laden with gifts. There will be a further session after school on Wednesday 26th in the school uniform shop on the junior’s side.

Friday was a brilliant day as we celebrated World Poetry Day with some great poetry workshops for each class. The children really enjoyed hearing and using poetry in this exciting way. It was also Comic Relief Day and the school was a sea of red as we helped raise money for this great charity which is also celebrating its 40th year in 2025! Thank you to everybody that contributed.

We had some great entries towards the Hamstel Infants Joke book – my personal favourites were….

‘what is brown and sticky?... a stick!’

and

‘What did one toilet say to another toilet? …you’re looking a bit flushed!’

then again…I am a dad, and have a repertoire of equally as bad dad jokes, as my own children will testify!

Next week, we are celebrating Women’s History Day with each year group learning about some of the inspirational women who have shaped our lives today. It should be a really interesting week of learning.

Talking of history…last year you may recall that we were visited by a lovely lady, Betty who celebrated her 96th birthday by coming back to visit Hamstel Infants where she had come as a child….well, that got us thinking! We are extremely proud of the history of our school and the fact that it has been here, serving the children of Southend for over 100 years. With that in mind, we thought how great it would be to create a permanent display in our school that celebrates the history of Hamstel Infants and this is where we need your help! 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 please let us know. These can either be emailed to hamstelhistory@his.porticoacademytrust.co.uk or alternatively bring them into school and we will take copies and return them to you. If you could also include any information about the memorabilia such as who is pictured, where it was, when it was, and what it is about …that would be great for us to share with the Hamstel pupils of today. These could be from your own days at the school, or maybe even your parents or grandparents….whatever your link may be with the school, it would be great to hear from you!

I also wanted to share a provisional date for your diaries – Thursday 19th June, which we have pencilled in for our Sports Days in the summer term. Although this seems a long way off, we wanted to give you plenty of advance notice. At this stage. it is anticipated that we will do all of our sports days on this date, weather permitting, so please save the date. More details will of course follow, nearer the time.

I hope you have a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you on Monday.

Scott Roche

Principal

Important health and safety notice

We have had an increasing number of children using the climbing frames and school play equipment before and after school. Please can we respectfully ask all parents to ensure that children refrain from playing on these areas as they are unsupervised at these times and we would hate for somebody to have an accident.

We are also getting more and more scooters being ridden around school and on the playground. Please can we remind you that scooters should not be ridden anywhere on the school site for the safety of others.

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 been reading ‘Don’t wake up the tiger’. The children have enjoyed designing their own birthday cakes and learning about floating and sinking and have had fun finding objects that float.

In Maths we have also been talking about size and ordering objects according to their size.

In RWI the children have continued learning the pictures on the set one sound cards.

In outdoor learning we went on a walk and enjoyed looking for signs of Spring.

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

This week the children have continued listening and learning about the book Aliens love Underpants'. They have been thinking about who the aliens are, where they might live, and why they came to Earth.

We have continued our learning on mass, length and sizes, the children have enjoyed looking at physical items and weighing them to see which ones are heavy or light. The children have made some lovely masks, and they enjoyed making cupcakes on Wednesday, they decorated their cupcakes with coloured icing and ate them! The children were fantastic and watched with interest to follow the procedure of how cupcakes are made and all the different ways they can be decorated.

We have also been looking at the days of the week, today, tomorrow and yesterday, we have looked at the different seasons and what they may look like. The children have continued with their 1:1 activity, colourful semantics, sentence building and structure, RWI, maths, matching games, Pictoys, Reading and sequencing.

We continued our learning with:

Phonics: ng Thing on a String

Letter Family: Curly Caterpillar Letters

Maths: Counting fingers, simple additions up to 6, number ordering, filling in number gaps, recognising numbers and number words, counting from a given number, subitising and more. (According to child's ability).

Starlight

This week we have continued reading the book ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers. The children have sequenced the story and made sentences to match the beginning, middle and end of the story.

In maths, we have been learning to subtract two numbers together; we used the part/part/whole model, a number line and the tens frames, as well as using practical equipment.

The children used blow painting to create their own aliens, before adding eyes. We had some amazing colour combinations, and it was lovely to see the children using their imaginations.

In Science, we continued to learn about materials. The children sorted objects into the different categories according to their properties.

REMINDER: Outdoor Learning on Monday. Please dress your child in suitable clothing for the weather and provide a change of clothes too please.

If your child borrowed some clothing from school, please can you wash and return it as soon as possible. Thank you.

Reception Year

This week we have been reading ‘Grumpycorn’ and writing sentences about the book. We have been working hard trying to write dictated sentences, remembering to use our spaces between words.

In PSHE we have been learning about the different strengths and interests needed to do different jobs.

In handwriting we have been finding out which letters we are forming accurately, and which letters we need some help with.

In maths we have been exploring doubles, identifying when a double is shown and explaining why it is a double We have been using objects to make doubles and saying what the whole is when we have two equal parts.

In outdoor learning we have been carrying out an experiment, learning to predict, measure and draw conclusions. To conclude our learning about states of matter we made a puddle and predicted what would happen to the puddle over the course of the day. We drew lines to measure the size of the puddle and to see how the puddle became smaller.

How to help at home

Reading: Listen to your child read at least 5 times a week. Watch the QR codes and return the sheet to your class teacher on a Thursday.

Maths:

• Make doubles from different objects.
• Count the objects to find out how many there are all together. Have a go at saying sentences like ‘double 2 makes 4’.

Year One

This week we have been reading ‘The Way Back Home’ by Oliver Jeffers. We have consolidated our knowledge on time conjunctions and noun phrases and used this to write a diary entry from the perspective of the little boy.

In Maths we have been learning how to create doubles and how to use arrays to solve word problems.

In Science we have been looking at materials that are best suited for particular objects and understanding why. We also completed an experiment, testing different materials to see what would be the most appropriate for a waterproof spacesuit. We tested fabric, paper, glass, plastic, metal and wood. We used pipettes to drop water on each material to see if it was waterproof or absorbent. In PSHE we have been looking at different kinds of jobs and how they provide us with money to live.

REMINDER: Outdoor Learning next week

Year Two

It’s been a super exciting and busy week in Year 2, trapping dragons, building castles, Poetry Workshops and of course Red Nose Day!

The children have been thinking about ‘How to Trap a Dragon’ in Literacy this week, coming up with lots of creative ideas. The outcome was a set of instructions that someone could follow if they had to trap a dragon. So, to write the instructions successfully the children planned their ideas, thinking about the equipment they would need, and the steps they would go through. We also thought about imperative verbs, these are bossy verbs which are important in instructions, for example cut, tie, put, dig. After the planning stage and practising writing command sentences using bossy verbs we wrote our set of instructions, also thinking carefully about the organisation of the instructions and our presentation skills.

In Maths, we have continued to learn and investigate money. We have been learning about different combinations of coins that are show the same total, we have also explored exchanging coins e.g. two 10p coins for a 20p coin. We have worked hard developing our knowledge and skills around money, it is very tricky. Why not practise making some different totals at home.

In D&T we have been building our castles out of boxes and different materials. The children thought about what they have learnt about castles and their different features as well as how they would join the parts together. They designed and planned their castles first before the making process. Once they were finished, they evaluated their finished product.

Portico Photography Competition

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.

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