Upcoming Diary Dates

This week	Event	Details
Tuesday 20th June (in school event)	Midsummer Festival	The sun is at it’s highest, the day is at it’s longest. The sun is calling us out to gather and play!
Thursday 22nd June (afternoon in-school)	Sailing for Hazel, Chestnut and Oak Children	Sailing at Wimbledon Park will be taking place in school. Children will return to school in time for afterschool clubs.
Friday 23rd June (12pm)	Junior School Concert	Families, come and listen to what the Junior School have been working on in their Samba Drumming lessons this term. Please arrive, sign in and be seated in The Hall in time for a 12 o’clock performance start.
Next week	Event	Details
Tuesday 27th June (in-school event)	TfL Safe Travel Presentation to Oak Class	We are delighted that TfL (Transport for London) will be coming into school to tell our Year 6 pupils all about public transport before they head to secondary school.
Thursday 29th June (afternoon)	Sailing for Hazel, Chestnut and Oak Children	It’s our last sailing session, so children are welcome to celebrate by bringing some money to purchase an ice cream at the end of the afternoon.
Friday 30th June (12 o’clock)	Oak Class Leaver’s Lunch	It’s the time of year when we prepare to bid farewell to our Year 6 students. Oak Class parents, more details will be sent out by email.

Welcome from our Headteacher

Welcome to another beautiful summer week. Many thanks to all parents who came to the meadow on Friday to take part in our Sports Day, it was lovely to see parents and children trying out different skills and equipment together and, most of all, enjoying being active together. This turned out to be a highly enjoyable community event and thanks once again to Coach Jody for organising it. Of course, as many of us are working parents, not all of us were able to make Sports Day and so we are pleased to feature images in this week’s Nutshell. The only events for which your attendance is positively required are parent meetings and we try to give plenty of notice for these so that they can fit into busy work schedules.

The focus for students this week is on looking after ourselves and other people. In Willow Class students have been working with this via concrete learning; creating physical outcomes which emphasise community values of kindness and inclusion such as a friendship chair and models of harmonious environments. In older classes students are working with their class codes, particularly around taking care of other peoples’ possessions. Please can you emphasise this as important in family talk, as we have recently had a trend in hiding personal items for fun and we are stopping this.

Meanwhile, in Kindergarten please can we ask that clothing featuring interesting cartoon characters is kept for just the weekend as it is distracting children’s talk from play, which is getting even more complex, amazing and keeping wonderfully inclusive, so we don’t want anything to get in the way. Thank you for emphasizing the ‘everyone is welcome in Kindergarten’ message – its coming through in the children’s games loud and strong.

Wishing you a calm and peaceful summer week ahead.

Sarah

Announcements, Reminders and Important Information

Thank you:

Thank you to all students, parents, staff and our wonderful Coach Jody for a fantastic Sports (Bonding) Day! Take a look at the Sports Day Gallery below and keep checking our social media platforms for some great sports day videos.

Reminders:

Parents, please ensure that your child arrives on time for the start of the day. For Juniors, the start of the day is 8:30am. For Kindergarten, the start of the day is 8:40am. Arriving late is not only disruptive to your child’s learning but this interrupts the rhythm of the morning for the other children, particularly in Kindergarten.

Afterschool Club booking for the first Autumn Term 2023 will be available from 5pm today. Please look out for an email this afternoon. The afterschool club schedule can be found below.

With these hot, sunny days, please make sure your child is provided with sunhat, water bottle and suncream applied before coming to school.

Kindergarten News

Last week in Kindergarten was packed with fun, fun, fun! We have seen advanced printing factories and libraries that can automatically provide the book of your choice through a slope. Children sitting in a car or on a plane together ready for the holiday. During circle time, we have practiced to wash clothes; stepped on stepping stones to crossed the river; visited the meadow; and sailed and swum in the big blue sea. Children’s drawings and paintings are getting more and more colourful and diverse, just like how nature is now!

The highlight of indoor time must have been “making apple juice”. We grated apples and pressed the purée through a sieve to extract juice. Although each child only had two and a half spoonsful, it was the sweetest juice ever! We would like to thank Matheus’ family for kindly providing the bubble blowers for bubbly outdoor fun!

No need to say that the Sports Day drew a perfect ending to the school week. In half an hour time, some Kinde children had gone through the obstacle course 5 times. We really loved it!

Junior School News

Willow Class have been continuing to explore the Earth’s relationship to the Moon and the Sun in English and Science, learning to write non-chronological reports as well as conducting light experiments to understand the Moon’s orbit around the Earth.

Hazel Class have been continuing with their class book, Rooftoppers, using the adventures of Sophie to write their own description of a journey, including noun phrases and the five sense to make their writing paint a picture in the reader’s head.

Oak Class have been meeting with TLAS alumni to learn more about the transition to secondary school – sage advice being given! Oak Class have also been exploring tessellation in Maths and getting ‘hands-on’ in Art & Drama with making scenery for the school musical.

Woodland Craft

Willow Class

We studied a sample of freshwater invertebrates – mainly freshwater shrimps, which we practised identifying. Also a large and leggy mayfly larva which amazed us all; students named this ‘Dancer’ after it’s fluid, whippy swimming. Good comments ‘ we’ve found a biggie!’ and ‘We had the best time learning about water animals.’

Self-directed learning included lots of peaceful play: boat races at the edge of the stream, a fairy wand made of cottonwood poplar ‘fluff’, a spies game, a hospital game, and one or two soothing chats between children while perched quietly on a log or in the crook of a branch.

Hazel Class

This group also enjoyed the water invertebrates, competently identifying a hoglouse, pea mussels, a blue-winged mayfly larva, a leech, shrimps of course, and – twice lucky – another very mature and large ‘Dancer’ mayfly larva.

We tested three different stream locations, and found varying invertebrates at each. Students also re-invented the digging stick, and re-visited the cross-stream-shuffle, which they’re getting better at. It felt like arriving at a wild island on the other side, ‘The Isle at Yoshi’.

Oak and Chestnut Classes

The shade of the trees and the cool of the stream supported a relaxed session starting with clay – dragons, birds, bowls and other fine forms emerged. Two students built a litter-filter for the stream, and others played, immersed in the lush vegetation. Finally we stopped for some tree-climbing on our way back to school.