Upcoming Diary Dates

This week Event Details

Wednesday 10th May

(2pm in Kindergarten)

Parent Flag Bunting Workshop

Come and decorate your nationality’s flag in preparation for the May Day Festival. We will adorn our school’s flag bunting in the Back Garden for our shared Afternoon Tea celebrating different cultures after our Maypole dancing.

For those unable to attend, you can make your own country’s flag from an A5 sized paper at home. Please leave the homemade flags with the Kindergarten staff to make into bunting by Friday. 

Thursday 11th May

(9am)

Oslo Steiner School in-house concert A musical treat for the whole school by this very talented group of visiting students.

Friday 12th May

(after drop-off)

Willow Walk and Talk with Sarah A chance to meet our new Headteacher personally while enjoying springtime in the park.
Next week Event Details

Monday 15th May

(2pm)

May Day Festival Parents are welcome to join in the celebrations, watching Maypole dancing and enjoying a shared Afternoon Tea, bringing a dish from your culture. Can children please come dressed in white with a few flowers to weave into their flower crown in the morning.

Thursday 18th May

(afternoon in-school)

Sailing for Hazel, Chestnut and Oak Children Get ready to set sail again! Sailing at Wimbledon Park will be taking place in school. Children will return to school in time for afterschool clubs. More information to follow.

Friday 19th May

(after drop-off)

Hazel Walk and Talk with Sarah A chance to meet our new Headteacher personally while enjoying springtime in the park.

Welcome from our Headteacher

Two bank holidays in a row are wonderful, especially when one is for a reason of an interesting and historic national event, but now all families and staff are back into the busy swim of summer term work.

Many thanks to all Kindergarten parents who took part in the ‘Walk and Talk’ with me last Friday, and for all their deeply useful feedback. One message that came through loud and clear is how much our families care about attending school events and how they want to ensure that they don’t miss anything important. For this reason, we will continue to work with you by making any useful little changes immediately where we can. For example, since last week we now start our Nutshell with a diary dates summary, and we are now thinking about how we can help families to prioritise events, or make their own meaningful contribution if they have work commitments and cannot attend a daytime event.

Another theme from community listening has been families’ interest in finding out more about how our skilled and experienced teachers work with classroom culture, and guidance on how to manifest our school ethos as a community, inspiring the right values, kindness and balance in our children. We are currently planning some coffee mornings and online information for these areas. Watch this space.

What I wish to make fully clear is that your feedback is sincerely appreciated, recorded and acted upon by your school team.

Warmest wishes for a great week,

Sarah

Announcements, Reminders and Important Information

Thank you:

  • Thank you to St Michael’s Steiner School for hosting our Kindergarten teachers last week. It was a wonderful opportunity for our staff to share best practice and network with similar alternative education settings.

A few reminders:

  • Parents and carers, please can we remind children not to trample on the flowerbeds around school. They have been carefully planted and now is a time for enjoying the beauty of that hard work.

Exciting opportunities:

  • SUMMER HOLIDAY CAMP

    Sports, Games, Arts, Crafts and a whole lot of Fun for BOYS & GIRLS, AGED 4 – 10yrs
    DATES:
    17 July to 5 Aug
    TIME:
    9:00 to 15:00
    FEES: £45 per day.
    Siblings discount available, please enquire…
    Discount available for booking 5days or more!
    Location: (SM4 5JD)
    The London Acorn School!
    For all enquiries and Bookings:

    SUMMER CAMP 2023!

Kindergarten News

Spring is here and we can feel the liveliness everywhere! Nature is in motion every second and so are Kindy children. We listened to the birds, watched tiny insects crawling on the ground, run after butterflies and made buttercup and cow parsley bouquets for parents. Older children pulled out weeds on our allotment plots to get the beds ready for planting.
During indoor playtime, as well as the all-time-favourite family and construction games, children have been exploring the movements, sounds and habitats of different animals. We also enjoyed pairing and dancing along with Maypole songs. There were three birthdays in Rose Class last week: Happy Birthday to Arlo, Matheus and Louis!

Junior School News

Willow Class have been busy practising for our May Day Festival with their Maypole dancing as well as preparing for our end of term musical, Wind in the Willows, by hot-seating the main characters.

Hazel Class have been investigating tooth decay in Science by looking at what happens to the eggshell of hard-boiled eggs in different liquids. Making this experiment a fair test meant everyone was meticulous, particularly with measurements.

Oak Class have been managing money in PSHE in terms of investments. This has involved risk management, independent decision-making, probability and mathematical calculations.

Woodland Craft

Hazel Class

The request was for fairy fires (practising the use of the fire steel with tiny sparks on cotton wool in scallop shells), as well as hot tea and a story. So we knew how we would end the session, and very peaceful it was too.

But before that, the students made lots of good choices, from massaging mud to heal a graffiti’d tree trunk, to making drawings, whittling, digging, balancing on trunks and sitting by the river: a very happy buzz about the woodland.

Oak and Chestnut Classes

This was Dandelions Part Two: we’d foraged and cleaned last week. Three chefs enjoyed breaking up and grinding the newly-roasted dandelion roots (‘save those big bits, Karin, you might be able to boil them or something!’), selecting and pounding wild garlic and basil leaves for pesto. Others were loving the rare spring sunshine, drawing or playing. We gathered for the feast with nettle soup, pesto on oatcakes and dandelion tea (or was it ‘coffee’ !?) – all of it interesting and some of it delicious!

Summer Term Calendar 2023

In a Nutshell Newsletter 2nd May 2023: Coronation Week
In a Nutshell Newsletter 15th May 2023: May Day Festival