Dear Parents,

Wow! The children's pumpkins and spooky costumes have been absolutely fantastic - my goodness they have lifted our spirits today! Each class walked along the front path so that the children could fully appreciate the effort and imagination that went into designing every pumpkin. Judging the competition was extremely difficult, in some classes I could have chosen 3 or 4 winners, I had to ask Mrs Duff to help me choose! Every pumpkin was brilliant, but congratulations to the following children who won "Spookiest Pumpkin" awards:

Squirrels - Finley and Maddie's joint effort
Foxes - Henry H
Turtles - Alice P
Parrots - Ruby D
Sharks - Lily H
Dolphins - Henry M

Our overall winner was Roman, with his incredible dinosaur egg (pictured)! Thank you to each and everyone of you who has carved a pumpkin, designed a costume and donated to WISPA today. My thanks go to our new WISPA committee and their volunteers for their brilliant efforts so far this term. We are very grateful for their daily commitment this week, standing outside every morning and afternoon to take payments for craft kits and treat bags.

Thank you for your support during another challenging half term. We are dealing with more cases in our school community than at the very height of the pandemic, so we are grateful to you all for your regular home testing and arranging PCR tests when your child has symptoms. Your efforts help to keep us all safe. Our staff have been amazing, keeping up with the disruption in all classes and settling in the children so well. We are so proud of the children for easing into routines they have not experienced for a long time, if at all. I am also delighted with how our school choir is performing. Now they all know the ropes, I am going to join up the Year One and Two choirs after half term.

This week we had a range of different activities in school for well-being week, including mindfulness colouring and practising breathing techniques. Our thanks go to Sue Easteal, who led a wonderful yoga session for each class during the week. A number of children said they would like to do more yoga and Sue has spaces in her club, which meets on a Thursday morning at 8am. Booking details are on our website if Year 1 and 2 children would like to join the club next half term - Foxes and Squirrels are invited to join after Christmas. Exciting news - we have also made arrangements for all children to have a yoga class with Sue on a rota basis on Monday mornings.

On Wednesday the children watched a live broadcast from the UK Space Agency called Spaceship Earth. It showed us satellite images from space. Both the children and adults found it fascinating! Thank you to Matt Coffey, our Science governor, for arranging this.

I very much hope that Reading Mondays will begin on our first morning back on Monday 1st November. We will confirm this to you. If they go ahead, please come into class with your child when you drop them off in the morning. A bell will ring at 9.15am for assembly, at which point we will ask parents to leave through the front doors.

A reminder that urgent emails that require our attention during the school day should be sent to parents@writtleinfantschool.com. Please do not email the class accounts, as teachers cannot check them during school time. All absences and Covid test notifications should be reported to parents@writtleinfantschool.com. If your child does test positive over half term (fingers crossed this doesn't happen!), please inform us if their 10 day isolation period will run into the week of our return.

Have a wonderful half term break.

Helen Castell

We encourage healthy lunches for all children. Please support us by not including sweets or chocolate in your child's packed lunch and reserving those treats for home.
A reminder that we love to share awards, medals, trophies, even anecdotes from children’s achievements outside of school. Please hand them to me or email parents@writtleinfantschool.com for assemblies on Friday.
Please ensure that you are aware of the symptoms of headlice and threadworms and treat your child promptly if necessary. You can follow the links to NHS advice. Both conditions are very common and easily spread, so it pays to be vigilant! Thank you for your support.
Diary dates and school events can added from our website to the calendar on your phone. Click on your chosen list of dates from the Links section and then click export at the bottom of the page.

We’ve managed to survive the first half term! We are so proud of how the children have settled into Year Two and the “normal” school routines. They have shown remarkable resilience, despite the difficulties they have faced during the pandemic. We understand how upsetting and frustrating it is not to be able to meet in person for Parents' Evening, but we hope you found the phone consultations useful.

Highlights of our wellbeing week were; meditation, yoga with Sue Easteal and peer massage. Obviously wellbeing is a constant focus throughout the whole school (for both pupils and staff) and wellbeing activities will continue as necessary.

Click here for this week's home learning.

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

What a great half term! We are so proud of how well the children have settled into their new routine and it has been such a busy and fun half term. In English, we continued with our story ‘Adventure Through the Ages’ and retold parts of the story. In Maths, we have continued to look at addition number sentences and number bonds. We had such a lovely time during Yoga on Thursday and the
children seemed to really enjoy it. Turtles have thoroughly enjoyed their time at Forest
School this half term and we know Parrots are excited to have their turn after half term. Have a
wonderful and restful half term break and we look forward to seeing you all when we return.

Click the link for this week's home learning.

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

What a fun day we had today! The children loved dressing up and enjoyed drawing themselves and writing their names. Our poem this week was '5 Little Pumpkins' and we really had a great time reciting that with Trish from Poetry Basket! Mrs Fisk and Mrs Giles really enjoyed chatting to you this week about how well your child has settled. We look forward to times when we can all be in the classroom together! This week was well-being week. We took part in a wonderful yoga session with Sue Easteal, we were all very relaxed afterwards. We also learnt some good breathing techniques to help us when we need to calm down or get upset. After half term we will introduce 'The Zones of Regulation' to the children. We will do a Tapestry post about this. Have a wonderful half term holiday!

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