Upcoming Diary Dates

This week	Event	Details
Monday 4th March	Ready, Steady Read sponsored reading week starts	As we celebrate the culture of reading in the lead up to World Book Day, this week is a great opportunity for us all to focus on reading while also earning money for new books for our school library. More details can be found below under Announcements.
Tuesday 5th March	Junior and Kindergarten Parent Meetings	Your child’s Class Teacher will have offered you a Parent Meeting slot for this week, either in person or remotely.
Wednesday 6th March	Junior and Kindergarten Parent Meetings	These meetings are an opportunity to discuss your child’s emotional, social and academic progress.
Friday 8th March	Walk & Talk – Parents of Year One (Older Kindergarten children) 8:35am	Sarah will be meeting with parents of Year One (the top of Kindergarten) in the park to answer questions about the forthcoming transition to Junior School.
Next week	Event	Details
Monday 11th March	TLAS World Book Day	We can’t wait to see your book character costumes and hear your presentations about your character. Don’t forget to bring the book that your character comes from!
Friday 15th March	Parent Workshop ‘Light-touch assessments and how we use them at TLAS’ 8:35am	Zoe and Sarah will be sharing resources and explaining the assessment process throughout the Junior School. More details and booking form to follow shortly.

Welcome from our Headteacher

Welcome,

According to the folk saying, March ‘comes in like a lion, goes out like a lamb’. We are still awaiting the softer weather but it will come.

Just like weather cycles, children go through their natural phases and it can sometimes feel that moving to the next stage takes forever. They need time to satisfy each phase, and sometimes, often seen in their play, they get ‘stuck’ in certain behaviours along the way.

One of these ‘stuck’ behaviours can take the form of physically fighting each other, pushing, shoving or even hitting. Many parents have the attitude that the children need to “work it out” and that is so, but sometimes they need some support.

At school we do not accept these behaviours and we close down any moves by children to push, wrestle or hit, whilst emphasising that the individual presence of every child in themselves is always acceptable and to be respected. Children who are around the age of 7, 8 or under often do not have the skills to “work it out.” If we see signs that they are moving to the physical we see this as a need for support. In the playground we may ask them to take some time to calm and then go back in with an adult play coach close by. Ultimately if behaviour is so stuck that it is forming a pattern we may ask parents to keep their child at home for a period, to keep others safe and ‘unstick’ the behaviour in line with our safe behaviour policy.

Being a listening ear can go a long way toward soothing strong emotions and tears even without providing much of a solution. Just having an adult understand how upsetting a situation can be is helpful. You really don’t need a lot of words, just a calm presence.

Sometimes the urge to get physical comes from the healthy need of a child to measure their strength or capability. This can be channelled into safer activities with clear boundaries, like a stomp rocket, or moving heavy objects or sports (ask coach Jody about how he uses safe boundaries in rugby practice), or martial arts traditions where training partners work safely together.

Of course, how parents choose to approach this matter is up to each individual household to decide. To support our school community, my request is that you do not allow your children to physically interact with each other in an unboundaried way, particularly in the environs around the school. If adults are physically present and children are aggressively pushing each other, even if the adults not watching, the very presence of adults indicates to the children that this behaviour is acceptable. We are only human, and you can’t follow every action in a large group of children playing joyfully outside the school, but we can but continue to try to support each other as a ‘learning village’.

With warmest wishes,

Sarah

Announcements, Reminders and Important Information

READY STEADY READ FOR WORLD BOOK DAY!

Junior children were very excited in assembly this morning to find out about our reading challenge this week. They have all been given a reading log (spare downloads found here: Reading Log London Acorn School)

Parents, please find sponsorship forms here: https://forms.gle/pZ4mRzy8bP69hk616

Furthermore, by partnering with Usborne books this week, we have access to Usborne’s Virtual Book Fair. This is a change to buy books that are on our personalised recommended reading list (London Acorn School recommended reading list) while also contributing to new books for your child’s school library. Every time you buy a book for home, Usborne provide a book for school!

Please follow this link to our very own Virtual Book Fair, for this week only!

https://usborne.com/gb/uevent?event=f91c6b0c863f38a49c4239d9eb38ff99

World Book Day will be celebrated at our school on Monday 11^th March. So many children love dressing up for it, we also have activities for children who prefer to celebrate in other ways.

Kindergarten: Our kindergarten groups are working with Sibylle von Olfers‘s The Story of the Root Children. If your child wishes to, they may dress up as a flower or plant. Homemade costumes only please.

Junior School: Your child may dress as any character from a book. We will have the opportunity to make a small presentation in school so please can they bring the book with them that features their character. If their costume has a headpiece, please can they enter school with the headpiece off, to avoid reactions from younger children who might find some headpieces a bit of a shock to see! Homemade costumes only please, as simple or complex as you prefer.

SUMMER TERM 2024 EXTRACURRICULA CLUBS:

Please find attached the new timetable for extracurricula clubs for Kindergarten and Juniors for Summer Term 2024.

Please note a few changes to the timetable from Spring Term 2024.

A Clubs Booking email will be sent on Monday March 11th for you to book your child onto a club/s.

Summer Term 2024 Clubs Timetable

PARENT TESTIMONIES:

Some lovely feedback from our parent surveys about what parents value about TLAS that we’d anonymously like to share:

Honouring the seasons brings a huge sense of peace and joy; also the children are encouraged to be proud of the learning journey.
The kindness and nurturing care the teachers in both Kindergarten classes provide to the children. They treat the children with such respect and kindness. It is wonderful.
We value the care and love the teachers put towards the children, and that my child loves going to school everyday and the progress she makes along the way.
There is a sense of having time and space to develop at their own pace and being valued as individuals who make a contribution without having to conform to a particular mould.
At London Acorn, early childhood is not a race to exams but a time to be creative, curious, and find one’s own direction.

UPDATED SPRING CALENDAR:

Please take a careful look at the latest edition of the spring calendar at the end of this newsletter with extra events added, such as a Junior Flute and Recorder Concert for parents to attend.

EASTER HOLIDAY CAMP WITH COACH JODY:

Kindergarten News

There was a cold spell this week bringing wind, rain and lower temperatures. Every day before we went outside, we wrapped up ourselves from head to toe so that we could enjoy these gifts of nature to the utmost. It was easy to understand why children love to be in a summer meadow, but why didn’t they get bored of the winter meadow that seemed so bare? Well, for some, it’s a “space” to run freely, and for many children, the meadow is never bare. From a child’s height, they see everything from big holes, small holes, broken sticks, decaying leaves to the tiniest creatures. Any small discoveries can bring a lot of joy.

Inside our classrooms, animal games have been popular. Restaurants, homes were getting more and more advanced. It was really sweet to see some children having a bubble bath on cushions, having a good laugh wrapping themselves in colourful blanket bubbles! The craft project of making woolly sheep was well-received. At circle time, we sang rainy day songs. A new repetitive story, The Little Hen and the Little Rooster, is told at story time. The determination of the little hen to look after her friend, the little Rooster, has helped him to learn the importance of sharing.

We celebrated Xiomara’s birthday this week. She really enjoyed drawing pictures with her friends to make her birthday booklet. Happy birthday, dear Xiomara!

Junior School News

Willow Class: Willow Class have been working across such diverse areas at the moment, from mud hand print block art, to carefully sewn Easter handcrafts, to non-chronological reports of sea, to working with fractions in Maths. Well done, Willow!

Birch Class: Birch Class excelled at their 8BillionIdeas workshop with Hall School Wimbledon last Thursday; we look forward to finding out what toys they have designed.

Oak and Chestnut Class: Oak and Chestnut have started their illustrated books from scratch last week and these are already shaping up nicely. They also started on their journey with programmable systems and control, getting to know the BBC microbit controller. Already through their comments, they have some idea of the potential this gives them – Could I make a game? Could I record something? They are starting to talk like systems designers, developing their fundamental understanding of what an input and an output might be. Meanwhile they completed their non-programmable systems made of electrical components from around the average house – the purpose of this basic system is just to make you smile.

Woodland Craft News

Willow Class

Willow class loves the meadow when there are high winds. They re-built their beloved Truffula trees, and coloured and tied fluttering paper butterflies to strings on sticks, naming them ‘quick-wing’, ‘buttie’, ‘Rosie’, while one child made a staff, binding wool round its top. We also played the Seed Game, provoking some great comments on what happens if…there’s no water, too much sun… ‘the spiky plant doesn’t need much water!’ or : ‘ just water and sun – am I a coral?’

Birch Class

Although some made ‘sock-pots’ and planted strawberries, many children launched themselves into unscheduled examination of the riverbed invertebrates (‘look at that red wiggly thing!’ ‘what’s that orangey thing?’) and found what they believe to be a dragonfly egg ! Mud ball throwing, finding alder cones for ‘Coddie’ the fish’s eyes, identifying plants, playing, ending with a game of Bat and Moth.

Oak and Chestnut Class

Students made a food web, first with apex consumers at the top, and producers at the bottom, then inverting it. We all chatted about the planet’s structure, the depth of its crust, how photosynthesis works, and what are the requirements of life. They found foxes’ holes, listened to birdsong, examined various tree species, and played coo-whit and ’sink and fade’ – another form of hide and seek.