In a Nutshell Newsletter 15th May 2023: May Day Festival

I hope this finds you well. This week we are working with the positive behaviour that underpins our strong community culture. A culture strongly in evidence last Thursday, when I watched in amazement for over an hour as all school students listened with full engagement and enjoyment to the musical concert given by the talented young people of Oslo Steiner School. Kindergarten parents – whatever you are doing at home to promote contented focus, please keep doing it!

A healthy school culture is the foundation of learning, as it provides a positive environment where children can thrive and grow and develop the resilience to eventually tackle challenges beyond their comfort zones.

As parents, your continued role in supporting school culture is essential. Here are a few practical ways you can do so, which came up in recent discussions with parents:

1. Foster open communication and help build resilience. Children often adore hearing about your childhood days, especially any difficulties you encountered, or mistakes you made and how you got over them. Sometimes this can present a great opportunity for humour, or indeed for presenting models for them to emulate, or just open up discussion. Telling children about your days now can encourage them to reciprocate with news of their own.
2. If your child is drawing or writing at home and it feels right to comment, place less emphasis on aspects of performance (which even if praise, can provoke anxiety), and more on effort, with warm praise for how hard they have worked.
3. Encourage positive behaviours at home and try to catch them showing respect, kindness and responsibility and then coming in with some specific light praise, describing what they did, and the specific positive impact that this will make.

Of course life isn’t always positive, and, especially if overwhelmed, children find it hard to display resilience or kindness. As we all know, this is normal, but, as their adult guides, our job here at school is to help them get them back on track in a positive manner.

Over the next few weeks I will be sharing with you how our teachers use specific language to do this. If you choose to reflect some of that language in your wonderful home cultures this will further build our common positive culture that bridges the home/school gap. Thank you all for all that you do in this area.

With warmest regards,

Sarah

Thank you:

• Wow! What a treat we had last week when Oslo City Steiner School honoured us with a spectacular concert. Everything from Mozart to David Bowie. Our students were spellbound. We can’t wait to invite them back next year and hopefully squeeze parents into the Hall as well next time! Our students were very keen to send thank you letters straightaway, sharing how the musicians “took their breath away” and were “on fire”. Apologies parents, I think every TLAS child may now want to play the accordion!

Reminder:

• Sailing starts this Thursday for Hazel, Chestnut and Oak children. Please can children bring to school with them appropriate clothing and footwear as outlined in the email sent to parents. We look forward to having fun on the lake at Wimbledon Park! We will return children to school in time for pick-up and clubs.

Exciting opportunities:

• Barnes Children’s Literature Festival is returning on Saturday 24th and Sunday 25th June. Not only have they got a legendary line-up of authors speaking, including Sir Michael Morpurgo, but they also have a rendition of The Wind in the Willows, great research for our own Wind in the Willows musical. For more information, visit https://www.barneskidslitfest.org/.