The Buzz

It is definitely starting to feel a lot like Christmas here at the Infant School. The children will be wowed when they come into school tomorrow and the hall has been transformed with all of their amazing art work. Thank you to all of the staff that stayed to make this happen, their dedication is appreciated!

We all enjoyed our Christmas shopping today where the elves visited our classrooms. Thank you to HPPA for organising.

We have our Christmas fair on Saturday and I am looking forward to seeing lots of you there.

On Monday the Christmas post box will be outside the hall. Please ensure the child’s full name and class is clearly written on the front of the cards otherwise they will not be able to be distributed.

On Monday our assembly was about allergy awareness and the things we can do to help our friends who might have an allergy. We have many children with nuts allergies and we still occasionally have children coming into school with a Nutella sandwich, a chocolate hazelnut crepe or Nutella bar, particularly as a snack for clubs. Please can parents be extra vigilant when packing lunches and snacks for clubs. There is a discount code to purchase allergy friendly snacks below.

This week we also had a visit from Charis Penfold who is the Director of Education for Achieving for children. She visited both sites and commented; 'Thank you very much for your time this morning. It was a fabulous morning for me and I really enjoyed speaking with you and walking the school sites. Your school environment, indoors and outside sparkles, and demonstrates your attention to detail and high expectations. The learning in the classrooms was really purposeful, inclusive, ambitious and included all the children - which really impressed me.'

Please can I remind parents to be considerate when parking their car when dropping their children to school and collecting them. We have had reports of cars stopping on the double yellow lines on the corner, the zig zag lines and over driveways. It is inconsiderate and dangerous. Wrap around care providers are having to put children’s safety at risk trying to cross the road when these cars are here. Please make our children’s safety everyone’s top priority.

HISN Spring club timetable was sent out last night, please book clubs directly with the club provider.

Have a lovely weekend

Claire Cook

Head of School

2D had 99% attendance

2D had no late students

Certificates have been handed for following the HPP principle of:-

RC Harriet

RK Aurelio

RP Sara

RY Austin

1B Otis

1C Oliver

1D Vishu

1GC Willow

2B Jind

2D Ted

2M Lexie

2P Avayah

A wonderful week in Nursery. The children have loved exploring our theme for this week: birthdays. We have had birthday tea parties in the home corner with very yummy cakes and birthday meals. We have overheard lovely conversations as the children play, singing 'Happy Birthday' to their friends at the top of their voices. The children have thoroughly enjoyed wrapping presents for their friends too, using their funky fingers as they carefully fold the wrapping paper down and stick with tape.

The children have also been using their maths skills to practise counting. We have been thinking hard about our counting rules, making sure that we count our counting objects one at a time and ensuring that we include all our counting objects. Inspired by our birthday theme, the children have been counting candles on the cakes, figuring out how old their cuddly toys are on their birthday.

Another highlight of our week is we had a very special visitor into the Nursery: Police Officer Hannah. We thought about this community super hero and how she helps us. PC Hannah showed us some of the things she uses whilst doing her job. She spoke about her walkie talkie and who she can communicate with. She also allowed us to try on her Police hat and we were so interested to discover that it was rock solid and very heavy. We were very excited when PC Hannah showed us her handcuffs and we even had a go at wearing them! PC Hannah also told us important top tips for us to remember when we are out and about - we should always remember to hold hands with a grown up when we cross the road and always listen and look out for cars before crossing too.

This week we are starting our Christmas spirit a little early and have been busy making Christmas art ready to put up in the lunch hall. This year the theme is Christmas movies and so the Early Years have been creating artwork inspired by Paddington Bear. The Nursery children have loved collaging huge jars of Paddington's favourite food: marmalade. We children carefully selected different shades of orange and yellow materials ready to stick onto a jam jar outline. We can't wait for you to see all our handiwork in a couple of weeks when we sing our hearts out in our Christmas show.

We all know how important talking at home is for exposing children to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas. This all helps them with their reading and to become future writers. Each week we will share an idea with you for 'talk homework' with your child.

This week, linking in with our learning you could talk to your child about a party they've been to either at home or school. What games did they play? Who was there? What decorations were up?

Another busy week in Reception! Preparations for Christmas are in full swing as the children have been busily making their Christmas cards ready to post next week. They are so excited for you to see them when they arrive at home.

Celebrations of a different nature have also been a focus this week, using the book 'Kipper's Birthday' as a hook to discuss how each of us celebrates their birthday. The children loved sharing their own birthday experiences and we enjoyed discussing the merits of different types of cake. Colin the Caterpillar was the unanimous favourite. The children were then excited to write their own party invitations and birthday cards in the continuous provision, resulting in some wonderful and meaningful writing from the children.

In maths we are continuing to explore the 'parts' within the 'whole' of numbers within five. The children have explored how numbers within five can be rearranged into different parts of varying amounts through using physical manipulatives first (such as magnatiles and cubes) followed by representing this pictorially through stamping cubes into different patterns using paint.

Another highlight this week was a visit from one of our community police officers as part of our 'People Who Help Us' topic. PC Hannah showed us the different tools she uses in her job, such as her vest, belt, handcuffs and hat and the children loved handling them up close. One brave member of the class even volunteered to try on her vest!

We all know how important talking at home is for exposing children to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas. This all helps them with their reading and to become future writers. Each week we will share an idea with you for 'talk homework' with your child.

This week, linking in with our learning you could talk to your child about a party they've been to either at home or school. What games did they play? Who was there? What decorations were up?

Creativity has been flowing this week in year 1 as we continue with our preparations for the Christmas show, making our hall decorations, participate in drama and hot seating activities in English, as well as recreating the artwork of Kandinsky using our painting program in computing.

In maths, we have been investigating 2D and 3D shapes. We have been identifying the differences between 2D and 3D shapes, and looking at their various properties. We noticed that 2D shapes are the faces on 3D shapes, as well as looking at the number of sides, edges, vertices and faces of the various shapes. We investigated which shapes could be stacked and which could not, discussing the reasons for this and why certain shapes were better than others. We looked around our classroom to see if we could identify various shapes in everyday objects, and sorted shapes using various criteria, e.g. number of faces and sides, curved edges, etc. We also had fun creating various patterns using shapes.

Our focus text this week in English is called ‘Little Robin Red Vest’ by Jan Fernley. We have spent time hot seating the characters and sequencing the events in the story. We have been working hard to apply our sounds when writing independently.

In Science we have been continuing our work on materials and looking at the different properties of each. We have conducted an experiment to find out which materials are waterproof and which materials are absorbent. We also investigated which materials are opaque and which are transparent.

In geography this week, we took a walk around our local area. We spent time looking for some physical and human features of Hampton such as the train station, the doctors and the bakery.

In art, we have continued with our exploration of pattern based on the artists Shantell Martin and Bridget Riley. We have used our knowledge and practise of the patterns to create wonderful pieces of art.

Year 2 have been getting into the Christmas spirit this week. We have been hard at work learning new songs and actions for our upcoming Christmas show, and the classroom has been full of with excitement as we prepare our decorations. A letter was also sent home this week with details about what the children will need to wear for their performance.

In English, we have been diving deeper into non-fiction texts and have been busy researching all about our class pet. Our goal is to persuade Miss Lockey and the head of the WWF that we are knowledgeable and fully equipped to care for them. With all our newfound knowledge, we have started writing our very own non-fiction book about our class pet, which we have been thoroughly enjoying.

In maths, we have been learning about subtracting across 10. We used our dienes to help us partition numbers into tens and ones before subtracting. We then moved onto thinking about more challenging number sentences such as 46-29= where we had to 'exchange' a 10 for 10 ones to help us solve our problem.

In science, we have been exploring what it means to be healthy and how exercise effects our bodies. To put this into practice, we completed a variety of exercises for 45 seconds each and then recorded how they made us feel afterwards. Before starting, we made predictions about which exercise we thought would have the most impact on our bodies and later discussed whether our predictions were accurate.

We enjoyed making our Christmas wraps in design and technology. To start, we explored and sampled a variety of ingredients to decide which ones we would like to include in our wraps. Through taste-testing, we carefully select our favourite flavours to create our own wraps – the final results were delicious!

We are all very excited to go on our Christmas journey to St Michael’s church next week!

A cat was found in the pouring rain in Thames Close in Hampton Village, TW12 2ET on Monday 18 November around 9 pm. The cat is safe and being very loved and cared for at the moment, it has been checked out by a vet and the microchip is not UK registered. If you know or have any information on the owners please contact the school office.

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.

Click on above tab to view HISN's virtual school tour

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