The Buzz

We started this week with an amazing visit from Nerys Pearce. She was completely inspirational and so many children commented on her resilience and such amazing achievements after such adversity. My favourite comment was from a Reception child who said ‘she was a little bit wow’. Thank you for all sponsorship collected for this event.

We have received a letter of thanks from Shooting Stars Children's Hospice for raising £597 from our class Christmas performances. Once again a big thank you to our families for making kind donations towards a very worthy cause.

As a school we continue to have high expectations for presentation and uniform. This is because we want to demonstrate excellence in all areas and set our children up for success in the next stage of their journey and for the future in the workplace. We would appreciate your support in maintaining high expectations for uniform. This includes trainers only being worn on PE days and these need to be sensible trainers for sport and not converse or fashion/platform trainers. We know many children say ‘but my friend wears her ……. for PE’. We have given a clear message to all in assemblies and class teachers will be reminding children of uniform expectations. Thank you for your support with this going forward.

If your child needs to attend an appointment please make the appointments outside of the school day when possible. We have had lots of children being collected during important learning time. If you do need to take your child to an appointment during the school day please inform the office and provide evidence of the appointment.

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Claire Cook

Head of School

If you currently have a child attending HISN Nursery you must formally accept your school reception places with Richmond Admissions (instructions will be on the offer email you received from the Borough).

This needs to be done before Tuesday 30th April 2024 in order to secure a school Reception place.

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Monday 22nd April was Earth Day - an annual day to raise awareness of the importance of looking after our environment - HISNA have been busy working with the school to fund activities for our children to increase their awareness of the importance of looking after nature and our wildlife.

Funding for 120 trees was secured from both the tree council Orchard's for Schools program and the carbon footprint UK tree planting project, which children from Nursery and Reception have enjoyed planting with Mr Quirk over the last few weeks.

We had a clothes recycling collection on 22nd April.

During Earth Week HISNA gave all the children a packet of wildflower seeds to take home - which provide food for bees, butterflies and other pollinators - for them to plant with you at home this Spring.

At school, Miss Byway lead Team Earth to plant seeds, increase recycling with new bins in all classrooms and drive more eco friendly behaviours e.g. turning off lights when they leave a room.

If you are looking for other ideas for activities that can help your children becoming more environmentally aware, here are some resources for things you can try at home:

• Build your own bug hotel from natural materials and your recycling

https://www.wwt.org.uk/uploads/documents/2020-07-12/wwt-make-your-own-bug-hotel.pdf

• Make a bird feeder for your garden How to make a bird feeder

• Use your wildflower seeds to make seed balls for your garden

https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/discover/crafts/how-to-make-wildflower-seed-balls

This week at HISN, we were lucky enough to have an Olympic Athlete come into our school.

Nerys Pearce has competed in powerlifting, swimming, athletics, rowing and wheelchair basketball at the Invictus Games winning 10 medals! She led a fitness circuit with all the classes with music and cheering, all the children were very enthusiastic and had a fabulous morning. We then had some time to ask her some questions about all of her amazing achievements. We would like to thank all of the parents for their kindness and generosity sponsoring the children for this event. We will let you know how much we raise soon.

Nerys spoke to the children about trying to push yourself so we have chosen the Makaton sign 'Try' this week.

2J had 99% attendance last week

2J had no late students last week

Last week certificates were given out to children for following the principle of Excellence

AM Nursery Kyon

PM Nursery Theo N

RC Yasin

RF Reggie

RK Emma

RP Arvin

1B Ishani

1C Aaron

1D Sarrinah

1Y Levi

2C Jesse

2J Niamh

2MC Dylan

2P Lora

Well done to those children who have completed the spring term's math challenges on the Home Support Website, and congratulations to those children who have made great progress with their NumBot activities too.

Marvellous maths work everyone - keep it up!

The National Curriculum states that Design and Technology (DT) enables pupils to, ‘Learn how to take risks, becoming resourceful, innovative, enterprising and capable citizens.’ Design and Technology is a key part of the curriculum at HISN and it is our aim to encourage children to think about the products around them and consider how they work the way they do.

We aim to create hands-on opportunities within the Early Years for children to explore designing, building and experimenting with different materials. Alongside structured DT lessons there are daily opportunities within the provision for children to make and create models. This year Reception have focused on designing and building stable structures as well as exploring different resources to create a gingerbread man.

In Year 1 and Year 2 children are encouraged to plan and design their project before creating it and then evaluate it at the end of the block of lessons. So far this year, Year 1 have designed and made their own smoothies, where they developed their knowledge of nutrition and using kitchen equipment safely. Year 1 have just finished their second project where their design brief stated they must make a functional windmill that could stand by itself and turn in the wind.

Year 2 designed and made their own wraps for the Christmas party where they developed their knowledge of having a healthy and varied diet. They were encouraged to use kitchen equipment safely and spent time evaluating their wrap to see if they could make any further improvements for next time. Year 2 have also designed a finger puppet which involved cutting, sewing and decorating a puppet to meet the design criteria. During these lessons it is our aim to develop their vocabulary alongside their fine motor skills. They were encouraged to reflect on their experience and challenged to evaluate how successful their project was and if it met the design criteria.

Design and Technology is intended to transcend beyond the lessons and is encouraged to be used within other areas where they can use their practical, logical and mechanical skills to enhance other areas of learning.

We have had a fun week full of drama as we retold the story of the Gingerbread man using stick puppets in our colour groups. We told the story and used the animal noises that the gingerbread man would have heard as he ran past. The gingerbread man kept running away from the animals singing his song which we all joined in with. We all felt a little sad when the gingerbread man was nibbled as he was such a cheeky character but we liked the fox too.

Also we had MAG week which was something so different for us all in nursery. We loved having Mums, Aunties and Grandmas in school. We showed them our nursery and played games, went on a gingerbread man number hunt, decorated gingerbread men and the first letters of our names together. We painted together and we were careful to not get paint on our Mums. Such a happy week for us all!

Reception have been continuing to explore the story of 'The Gingerbread Man'. The children have loved making gingerbread people out of playdough and have been very busy designing and decorating a Gingerbread Person so they are ready to be sent off on an adventure to a family member or friend. We are excited to receive them back at school so we can hear all about their travels. The children have been retelling the story using puppets and have loved acting out the line "run, run, run as fast as you can. You can't catch me! I'm the Gingerbread Man!"

We started off our afternoons this week with our MAG days. It has been so lovely to have Mums, Aunties and Grandmas join us for some fun activities. The children have been so excited to share their learning and show their grown ups where they play at school. They all got stuck in doing lots of different activities such as mindful colouring, drawing self portraits of one another and even giving their grown ups a very relaxing hand massage in the 'Spa Station'. We thank all the grown ups for coming in - what a memorable day for the children!

In Maths, we have been learning about different ways of making 6. We have been using different objects to create patterns of 6 and seeing how many different patterns we can make. We have also been looking at subtraction and that when we take away, the number gets smaller.

In Phonics, we have learnt the new sound 'tch' and how it makes the 'ch' sound. We have also looked at the spelling 'ing.' Well done Reception!

The children have returned from the Easter break energised and ready for all the amazing learning that we have planned over the forthcoming weeks.

The children have been enjoying learning all about the different animal groups in science this week. We worked in teams to sort animals into their various groups, then identified the key features of each animal group, before creating posters to share with the class and discuss what we had found out.

This week in English, we have been using all of our work on ‘Handa’s Surprise’ to help us to write our own version of the story. We have been sequencing the story’s events and creating a story plan to help us remember the structure, before putting pencil to paper and becoming authors ourselves. We think our own versions of the story are pretty amazing.

We have been focusing on weight and mass in maths this week. We have been holding objects to compare them, using the language of ‘heavier’ or ‘lighter’ and then used balance scales to check our comparisons. We noticed that the heavier object is lower on the balance scale, and that the scales are balanced when the mass of two objects is the same. We then measured the mass of various objects around the classroom using cubes, with the number of cubes on one side telling us the mass of the object on the other side.

In history, we have thoroughly enjoyed looking closely at castles, investigating the methods invaders used to attack castles (e.g. mining, siege tower etc.) and how the occupants tried to defend it. We worked in groups to record our findings before presenting these to the class, sharing the best tactics to attack and defend each castle.

In art, we have been looking at the work of various architects and learning a range of different paper folding techniques to create our own piece of structural art.

In PE lessons, we have investigating moving at different speeds over varying distances, focusing on how we take bigger strides when running faster, and using a slower pace for longer distances. We have also been developing our control and co-ordination skills when dribbling a ball with our hands, using soft touches to maintain good control and wide fingers to move the ball.

In RE lessons, we are beginning to learn about Jesus and his life. This week we have been focusing on the people in his life and identifying the festivals that celebrate the important parts of Jesus’s life.

The children have had a great first week back and we are very excited to see all the amazing work that we know is yet to come. Keep up the good work, Year 1!

We started the week with amazing energy ready for our sponsored athletic event- we had a great fun raising money for such a great cause and learning all about Nerys Pearce's life. She inspired us to always keep trying even when we are not winning or not feeling like we want to. We used this inspiration in our PE this week as we started our topic of invasion games. We have been learning skills needed for a range of sports, working in pairs to attack and defend. In indoor PE we have been working on speed and agility as we had sprint challenges running and jumping.

In English we have loved reading our focus story 'The Tiger Child' by Joanna Troughton. We enjoyed pretending to be the tiger child as we acted out different parts of the story, this helped us get into character and think about thow the tiger would be feeling. We then spent the rest of the week rewriting the story of the tiger child, thinking carefully about using expanded noun phrases to make our writing really interesting for the reader.

After foraging for natural materials on our trip to Carlisle Park last week, we have really enjoyed exploring these materials and using them to print, trace and sketch. We worked in groups to learn printing skills which we will next apply independently as we print in layers and build a tiger collage.

We have been using our musical knowledge in computing this week as we become digital composers. We spent some time listening to music composed by Gustav Holst and reflecting on how his varying music of the planets makes us feel. We discussed how the rhythm and pulse of music can make us feel different things and then we used this knowledge to create our own rhythm on Chrome Music Lab. We loved exploring this program and will continue to use it over this half term.

The well being and safety of our children is everyone's responsibility. If you have concerns about a child please contact SPA on 547 5008 or out of hours on 0208 744 2442.

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Email: office.hisn@hpp.school
Website: hpp.school
Location: Hampton Infant School and Nursery, Ripley Road, Hampton, UK
Phone: 0208 979 1815