Hamstel Infant School & Nursery Weekly News

Dear Parents and Carers, Welcome back to the Summer term – I hope you all had a restful and fun Easter break. The children have come back to school in good spirits and have settled back into their normal routines successfully in what has been a busy first week. Thank you to all the parents that attended our Phonics Screening Check meetings yesterday, we hope you found the information useful to provide some valuable support to the children as they prepare for this important statutory assessment. Our teachers are working so hard to prepare the children but any additional practice at home is always appreciated. It’s been a really busy week for our Year 2s as they firstly welcomed parents and carers into their outdoor learning lessons this week. After missing these sessions last year, it was great to reopen the wildlife garden to parents again and we hope everybody enjoyed working collaboratively outside and creating some great outdoor related work. Year 1 parents will be invited to these sessions at the end of May, while Reception are planned for early June but more information will follow.  A big thank you to Mrs Shine and the Year 2 class teachers for making this happen! Year 2 also started their swimming lessons this week at Garons Fitness and Leisure Centre. With our own pool still out of action at the moment, we were determined to still honour our commitment to developing early water confidence and foundational swimming skills in our young children. I am so proud to report that they all did brilliantly both in and out of the pool and any early nerves were soon evaporated as they settled into enjoying their lessons. It’s our first year working with the team at Garons, so we hope it proves to be successful and that the children enjoy developing these new skills further!   Next week Reception are out and about in the local area, as they visit the local library. While Monday proves to be a very exciting day as we have the Dennis, recycling truck visiting as part of the prize for Archie in Year 2 winning the recycling poster design competition last term. It should prove to be a great day of interactive fun and some of the children will also get to meet the Mayor and Mayoress of Southend-on-Sea as well, as they are also popping by to join the fun! Have a great weekend everybody and we look forward to seeing you again on Monday morning!   Scott Roche   Principal     Polite Parking Request We have had several complaints this week from local residents who have been affected by the parking around school at the start and end of the school day. Some residents have sent photographs showing their driveways completely blocked by parked cars or cars parked in extremely dangerous places such as close to junctions, over kerbs or on corners. In the interests of maintaining good relations with our neighbours and even more importantly, the safety of our children, please ensure that you park considerately and safely when collecting or dropping off your children. Thank you for your cooperation.

Weekly Celebrations!

Attendance

Jump to a section...

Summer 1 Diary Dates - Nursery - Reception - Rainbow & Starlight Year 1 - Year 2 - Lunch Menu - PTA - Messages from the Office - Community

Nursery

Welcome back, we hope that you had a lovely Easter break. The children have settled back into Nursery life well. Our NELI story has been ‘The boy and the bear’. We have been looking at the differences between summer and winter. The children have enjoyed practising different yoga moves in the garden. In maths we have been practising counting forwards and backwards to 15. We have also been exploring weight using bucket scales to find heavy objects. How to help at home: NELI special words- understand, summer, winter, heavy, wait You can find the NELI newsletter on tapestry this provides lots of ideas to support your child’s learning at home. Maths- encourage your child to count objects such as bears, sticks, cars, stones etc

Outdoor learning – Monday   As the weather is getting warmer please ensure that your child brings a named sunhat to nursery as the children like to spend lots of time in the garden.   On sunny days please apply suncream before your child's nursery session.    Please check that you have supplied a set of spare clothes at nursery as these are often used and our spare supplies are getting very low. If you notice that your child has come home in spare clothes from nursery those loaned should be washed and returned as soon as possible. Thank you.

Letters sent home this week

• Nursery - Summer Theme Overview
• Nursery - Summer Events - 15.04.2026

Reception

Welcome back, we hope that you all had a lovely Easter break! It has been lovely to see the children bouncing back into school this week, with lots of happy, excited faces.  This week we have started our new theme ‘Around the World’. This week we are learning about cold weather animals and reading the book ‘Penguin’ and writing about the characters in the story.  In maths we have been learning about doubles, identifying when a double is shown and using objects to make doubles patterns. In shape, space and measure we have been learning about length, identifying when an object is taller or shorter than another object. In PSHE we are finishing of our unit on Money and Work and learning about why we need money. In PE we have started our gymnastics unit, practising our balancing and climbing skills using the apparatus. In RE we are learning about special places, recognising different places of worship from different religions. In art we are learning about printing, this week we have been exploring printing with different objects.   How to help at home Handwriting: Practise all the zig zag monster letters.  

Maths: use some toys or objects to show some doubles.  Comparison game: Let's Compare - Early Years Size Comparison Game Nursery rhyme of the week: 10 Little Fishies - Featuring Finny The Shark! | Kids Songs | Super Simple Songs

Reception Library Visits next week Tuesday 21st April 9.30am: Kingfisher 10.45am: Owl   Friday 24th April 9.30am: Woodpecker 10.45am: Peacock   Please let your class teacher know if you are able to help.

Letters sent home this week

• Reception - Summer 1 Theme Overview

Rainbow & Starlight

Rainbow

Welcome Back! We hope you all had a lovely Easter Break.  This week the children have been listening to the story 'The Boy and the Bear'. A lovely story about friendship, sadness, happiness and sharing. So, this week's theme was about friendships and how to be a good friend, zones of regulation and sharing.  We also looked at the changing seasons, and hibernation, why bears hibernate, when they hibernate. The children have also been working very hard with their pencil control, writing and maths. We have looked at previous learning and added some new information. The children have enjoyed looking at different ways of being a good friend, and how that may look. They have made some lovely artwork, using good eye and hand coordination, followed instructions and completed their work. 

Starlight

We hope you all had a lovely and restful Easter break. It has been wonderful to welcome the children back to school this week – it’s been so nice to see their enthusiasm and smiling faces again. In English, the children have been enjoying the story 'Meerkat Mail' by Emily Gravett. They have written their own postcards in the role of the character Sunny, showing great creativity and understanding of the story. In maths, we have been learning to identify the sides and vertices of 2D shapes, as well as exploring lines of symmetry. The children have been working hard to recognise and describe these properties. In PSHE, our focus has been on understanding how money can be kept safe and looked after. As part of this, the children designed and made their own money boxes using junk materials, which they thoroughly enjoyed. In geography, we have been locating Africa on a map and learning about the climate and weather of Kenya. The children have also been practising their map skills by using compass points to navigate.  

Year 1

Welcome back! We hope you have had a lovely Easter break. This week in literacy we have been reading ‘The Queen’s Hat’. We discussed the story and created a word bank to describe the hat. We used this to support us in writing a missing poster to find the lost hat.  In maths we have been introduced to multiplication by sharing and grouping equally. We discussed what the word ‘equal’ means and worked practically to share objects in pairs.  In science we recapped the parts of a plant. We started to grow beans in a bag on our classroom doors so we can observe how they change over time.  In PSHE we learned that we are all special and unique. We made an ‘All About Me’ fact file detailing our likes and dislikes and interesting information about us.

Letters sent home this week

• Year 1 - Beach Visit - 15.04.2026
• Year 1 - Summer 1 Theme Overview
• Year 1 - Home Challenges

Year 2

Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely Easter break. This week we have been reading ‘Meerkat Mail’ in literacy. We used the story to learn about the features of a postcard. The children then planned their own postcard about a day trip to Southend-on-Sea!   In maths this week, the children have been learning about 2d shape, learning about vertices, edges and even lines of symmetry!   This half term we are exploring the continent of Africa and this week we have located Africa and Kenya on a world map as well as recognising it’s climate and weather. Thank you to those that attended our Outdoor Learning sessions this week. The children loved sharing their experience with you and well done to Mrs Shine for all her hard work making the place look as fabulous as it does! 😊 

Letters sent home this week

• Year 2 - Summer 1 Theme Overview
• Year 2 - Home Challenges

Support Our School with Easyfundraising!

Our PTA is using Easyfundraising to help raise money for our school and you can help too, simply by doing your everyday shopping online! It’s completely free to use and takes just a minute to get started.

1. 🛒 Here’s how it works: Visit our fundraising page here
2. Click “Support this cause” and create your free account.
3. Start your online shopping at your favourite retailers (like Amazon, Argos, Tesco, M&S, Just Eat and many more!).
4. The retailer sends us a free donation at no extra cost to you!

It’s an easy way to support our school while doing what you’re already doing online. Every penny raised goes directly towards enriching the learning experience for our children from new equipment and resources to fun events and activities. Please take a moment to sign up and share the link with friends and family too!

Messages from the Office

Parking around the school

Have you spotted unsafe, illegal and inconsiderate parking near to the school at drop off and collection times? As a citizen if you see problem or illegal parking you can report this - the link for Southend Council is here Report a Parking Problem and the link for Essex Police is here Report antisocial behaviour | Essex Police

Arbor Hints and Tips

How to make a payment towards the Enrichment Events:

1. The payment item can be found on your child’s main profile page under ‘Quick Actions’, ‘Trips’, choose this option.
2. You will see a section 'Trips Open to (your child's name), choose School Enrichment Events.
3. Now you can view the information and on the right hand side of the page is a 'Sign up ....' button, choose this option.
4. The cost for the Spring Term events your child will be taking part in is £6.00, increase the amount to pay to this figure or you can also choose to pay the full amount.
5. You can now choose to 'Add to basket' - use this option if there are other items you want to pay for in one total transaction.
6. Or choose 'Make Payment'. You will then be asked to add your card details and confirm the payment.

If you are unable to make payments using the system after following these steps please contact the school office.

Breakfast and After School Club

To change or cancel Breakfast or After School Club you need to contact the office. Parents are unable to change/amend their own bookings. If your child is booked into After School Club or Breakfast Club, it will show on their calendar in Arbor, including the session i.e SHORT, FULL, LATE. A full week view can be seen by clicking the blue arrow in the ‘Calendar’ tab.

Are you eligible for tax-free childcare? This can be used to pay for wraparound care at our setting. Please see the information below.

Community