Upcoming Diary Dates
| This week | Event | Details |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 19th September
(8:40 am) |
Class Reps Meeting | Class Representatives are welcome to meet with Zoe Everett to share ideas from the parent community with the school. |
|
Thursday 21st September (9:30 – 11 am) |
Parent Workshop: Managing Anxiety, Tantrums and Other Behaviours |
Adapt to Learn will be hosting our second Parent Workshop in our Autumn series. The London Acorn School staff have previously trained with Adapt to Learn on how to support children’s social communication needs, and so we are very pleased to offer this parent workshop with such expert practitioners.
TLAS is offering this workshop at a subsidised rate of £5 admission fee. Please book your ticket in advance via the school office as places are limited. |
| Friday 22nd September
(8:35 am) |
Kindergarten Walk and Talk |
Join our Headteacher for a Walk and Talk through Morden Hall Park to discuss our kindergarten. |
|
Next week |
Event | Details |
| Monday 25th September
(9:00 am) |
Whole School Harvest Assembly
(in school event) |
It is time to gather together and celebrate the harvest as a school. |
|
Friday 29th September (8:35 am) |
Willow Walk and Talk | Join our Headteacher for a Walk and Talk through Morden Hall Park to ask questions, share ideas and find out more about education in Willow Class. |
| Friday 29th September
(12:15 pm) |
Community Harvest Festival | Please join us for our Stone Soup Feast (vegetable soup made by all the children in the school) in the Back Garden.
Please can your child bring a vegetable to contribute from the week commencing 25th September. We also ask that you bring your own cutlery, containers and seating. After school clubs will run as normal. |
Welcome from our Headteacher
Welcome to our second full week of Autumn Term. Autumn is such a varied and entrancing season:
As long as autumn lasts, I shall not have hands, canvas and colours enough to paint the beautiful things I see.
Vincent Van Gogh
At school this is often the busiest time, as we welcome children, both familiar and new, into classes and ensure the resources and strategies we have in place are working the best they can for them. It is a time both of benchmarking and monitoring and, in the first few weeks of term, the right point to complete our plans for events over the coming academic year. Often in education it is viewed as the most crucial term in class, the term when the most important ideas of the year ahead are introduced to learners.
Amidst all this busy activity we also strive to remember to stop and listen – the most useful feedback often flows in Autumn Term, between students and each other, between students and families and between families and the school. This is because, due to the extra classroom time afforded by some additional days, in Autumn Term we have a little more time for careful trials as and where appropriate.
As one of our internal school areas of current focus is school culture, we have been listening to parents concerns about the amount of time that junior children have to eat their lunch in school (currently timetabled for 15 minutes). We often extend the time to eat at the discretion of the class teacher, but appreciate that we may also need to flex the school day to allow more formal eating time, and so we are currently considering a two week trial extension of the junior school day by five minutes from next week. We appreciate that even the slightest change to school pick-up can impact families, and so our first step will be to send out a community consultation survey about this trial to everyone, and these are going out from now. As soon as you get it please fill in our community consultation survey regarding trialling a five minute day extension for juniors and we will swiftly let you know the outcome, so you know if timings will change next week. It will take just a few minutes to fill out.
Last term, I made some observations on our transition times, including lunchtimes, and every class teacher has reflected and taken appropriate steps to ensure a lovely kind table culture as children share this important meal. We have also made some subtle changes to break time play culture with more teacher-led activities for children to chose if they are unsure how they want to spend their playtime, and already this has positively influenced social interactions, with more games taking place involving children across age group bands, and many more cooperation games being played.
Thank you for supporting us in making positive community decisions,
Sarah
Announcements, Reminders and Important Information
Wet weather gear reminder:
This week, it is predicted to rain heavily in the afternoons. Can all children come to school with a full wet weather outfit that is required for all Junior students to ensure their safety and enjoyment. Any one child getting really wet will compromise the session.
The gear comprises of a hooded rain jacket, waterproof trousers, and wellington boots that are a comfortable fit, with two pairs of socks in cold weather, and that have been checked for leaks!
A great Open Day:
Last Friday, our fantastic TLAS team led our busiest Open Day yet! It was wonderful to share with prospective parents our vision for childhood and we felt very proud of our lovely, unique school. Well done to all!
Kindergarten News
Junior School News
Last week, Willow Class took on the identity of Maths Detectives, Moving Picture Creators and Science Investigators exploring the curriculum actively, which makes it so much fun! The class are doing so well settling into their new routine after their first full week. Note to parents: if you cook Mac ‘n’ Cheese tonight, you might find ‘Everybody Freeze(s)’!
Birch Class were writing Stone Age diary entries throughout the week, challenging their stamina, handwriting and editing skills. This week, they will be writing instructional pieces about fire-making, which will test their non-fiction writing and bushcraft skills.
Chestnut and Oak Class visited Kindergarten for our weekly Reading Buddies sessions last Wednesday. It is a joy to behold our oldest students reading to our youngest students. We look forward to seeing the bonds they form over this academic year.
Woodland Craft News
Willow Class
It was a special pleasure to welcome the new Willow class to the woodland this week. We found ivy strands and string lengths left for us by the stream, and students began to build little tripod homes on wreaths by tying sticks and knotting string. They also loved boat making, digging holes in the found pieces of bark or wood for masts, putting big leaves on the top as sails. String on, and off they floated. After this quite exciting time, we became Sleeping Lions, gazing up at the leaf-patterned sky, calm and ready for the walk back to school.
Birch Class
Beginning by making a timeline of Dragonflies, through to Dinosaurs and then Bees and then, several million years later, the Humans, each child representing a number of years between 1,000 and 100,000,000 ! Then we met UG, the Stone Age boy with stone trousers, and students observed that animal skins could’ve made a more comfortable choice.
Some then made little stone age figures, using sticks, sheep’s wool, alder cones, birchbark, and string. We even tried making string using fresh ash bark! Others played imaginative games such as Spies and many made bows with help from Coach Jody, while the Mud Kitchen produced first scented potions, then muffins (‘maybe if we drip some water in?’).
Chestnut and Oak Class
This week we continued the collection of plant seeds and discussed the forces that they use, such as air-resistance (sycamore, birch, thistle) and gravity (oak, horse chestnut). There followed some careful and enthusiastic painting of large Australian tree seeds, playing whole-class games, and re-visiting a former student’s hawthorn den, with its useful ‘broom–stick’. We ended by identifying Blackbird and Robin songs, using the birdsong book.
Autumn 2023 Calendar
