Dolphins found a newt this week in Forest School!

Welcome back to you all!

I hope you all had a good rest with your families and were able to enjoy some time with others. The children have settled back well and we have enjoyed the better weather this week. We continue to be very careful in school to avoid the isolation of whole bubbles, so please work with us to follow our safety procedures and to isolate and test in the event of symptoms. To avoid the mixing of bubbles, please do not arrive until your drop off/pick up time.

Many families have had to change holiday plans and family events due to the pandemic and as a consequence I am receiving a number of holiday requests. While we are understanding of the situation families are in, the government position remains the same, so I am unable to authorise any holidays in term-time. You will receive a set letter, composed by Essex County Council, to say that your absence is unauthorised.

Thank you to those of you who supported WISPA's Easter Egg Hunt over the holidays - congratulations to Rowan in Squirrels and Evelyn in Sharks for winning the prize draw! The Easter Egg Hunt and the sale of bath bomb kits raised around £400 for the school. We are very grateful to the small but dedicated committee for their hard work and organisation. We are currently planning for Captain Sir Tom Moore’s Day on Friday 30th April and deciding what 100 things the children can do in return for donations to the NHS. My son and I are aiming to cycle 100km on our spin bike during that week!

At the moment large scale school events are still not possible under the government’s recovery roadmap, so we await further guidance from the Department for Education. As we have been so lucky to avoid extensive isolation of whole bubbles, I will always err on the side of absolute caution.

Today is national Primary School Offer Day and we were delighted to welcome our new families whose children will start school in September. While our contact is virtual at the moment, we look forward to inviting them into school as soon as we can. We were also pleased to learn that our Healthy Schools status has been renewed this week, in recognition of our commitment to this area.

Can I remind you that it is very important to email parents@writtleinfantschool.com regarding anything that needs to be dealt with during the school day, such as absences, changes to pick up and drop off arrangements or checks on your child's well-being. The office needs to be aware of anything that might affect the school register and we like to be able to respond to you as quickly as possible, so please do not email the class email accounts as teachers are busy in class and cannot check their messages.

Enjoy your weekend.
Helen Castell

Please try to remember to bring everything your child needs at the start of the school day. The office staff cannot go into class, so staff have to leave the relevant classroom to collect any forgotten items that have been dropped off.
Please have a look at home and return any school library books. Many thanks.
Please remember that children must not attend school within 48 hours of any sickness or diarrhoea.
To contact the School Office or Mrs. Castell, please email us at parents@writtleinfantschool.com.

Well done to the following children who have been awarded Shooting Stars for setting a great example to others this week.

Sharks: Nathan for persevering with his reading and doing a good job with his last book! Alex for some wonderful throwing and catching in Cricket!

Dolphins: Adora for her positive attitude to writing independently!
Rosie FS for working independently and showing determination!

Turtles: Aria for writing some amazing questions about our new storybook ‘Grandma Bird’! Florence for participating in our Q&A session on our story ‘Grandma Bird’!

Parrots: Austin for reading with expression and using his sounds for those difficult words! Sophia for an excellent job using her sounds to spell words and for beautiful handwriting!

Foxes: Henry K for helping me plant some seeds and labelling the pot so we know what’s growing! Fabulous writing Henry! Evie for growing in confidence this term and answering questions well in class.

Squirrels: Bonnie for looking after her friends when they are upset!
Henry for fabulous handwriting and working hard in class!

This half term the children will have lots of fun with our pirate themed work and activities. They have enjoyed creating their own pirate name and learnt some fun facts about pirates along with some myths. We have started learning about fractions: equal and unequal groups, recognising and finding half of shapes and amounts. We also talked about the Duke of Edinburgh and the children were fascinated to learn about his life.

Please click here for this week's Year 2 Home Learning.

Our email addresses are dolphins@writtleinfantschool.com and sharks@writtleinfantschool.com.

This week the children have settled back to school really well. We started our new topic book ‘Grandma Bird’. We have learned what an island is and the different human and physical geographical features we may find on islands. We designed our very own island too! We will begin sending home library books next Friday. If you have any books at home that belong to school, please return them by Wednesday.

Please click here for this week's Year 1 Home Learning.

Our email addresses are parrots@writtleinfantschool.com and turtles@writtleinfantschool.com.

What a lovely week we've had! We loved jumping around during the hail storm trying to catch the hail! We found out all about it too and how it is made. We have been enjoying reciting our poem 'A Little Seed'. We planted some seeds and wrote labels for the pots to know what we are growing. The children amazed us with their sounding out skills! We enjoyed our second PE session and played a funny bean game and practised using the whole space and moving with control. In maths we have been working on the numbers 11-20 and realising that there is a 10 and another number that makes up the numbers 11-20. Next week we are learning about frogs and have some frogspawn in school, so that will be very exciting! We hope you have a lovely weekend.

Our email addresses are foxes@writtleinfantschool.com and squirrels@writtleinfantschool.com.