Reaching high for the best for your child

This morning, we had the pleasure of welcoming the Mayor of Stevenage, Councillor Sandra Barr and her daughter the Mayoress, Louisa Barr to our Nursery. We were lucky enough to be the first school that the Mayor and Mayoress has visited since being appointed in their new roles. Our visitors commented on the children’s exemplary behaviour, we were so proud of our Nursery children. 

The children thoroughly enjoyed listening to a story chosen by the Mayor, ‘In a Minute Mum’. We were delighted when the Mayor gave us a copy of her favourite story, to share at Nursery!  

At Fairlands, we have used the catch up funding to invest in high quality picture books that the children have enjoyed sharing with their parents, at home. We have also invested in books with matching resources to promote a love of reading and promote language and vocabulary.  

During the pandemic, children engaged well with our remote learning offer but we understand the importance of children spending time with their peers to develop their communication and language skills and social interactions. Many of the children have benefitted from the additional small group interventions, since returning to school. Interventions included Early Talk Boost and Nuffield Early Language Intervention. The NELI programme helps children to make excellent progress, for some children this can be an additional 4+ months.  

Finally, we shared the creativity our staff team have shown throughout the pandemic and the first hand opportunities that have been planned for the children returning to school from hatching chicks to the Big School Camp, which will be taking place at the end of the Summer term. The Nursery children invited the Mayor and Mayoress to meet our chickens. The children explained so articulately how they have watched the eggs hatch into chicks, this will support their transition to Reception in September where they will continue to care for them. 

We would like to thank the Mayor and Mayoress for visiting and look forward to welcoming them to our school in July, for the school raffle!  

We are focusing on politeness during the month of June. 

We will be talking about:

- Remembering to say please, thank you and excuse me.

- Showing good manners, especially when eating.

- Treating others respectfully, especially people who are older than you.

- Using the right language at the right time.

A huge thankyou to our parents, carers and members of the local community who have donated fantastic books, which celebrate diversity! These amazing books are giving our children an appreciation about their own cultural heritage as well as those of others, they help our children develop emotional intelligence and creativity and challenge gender stereotypes to help nurture growth and development.  

If you would like to contribute by donating a book, our wish list is still available on the amazon UK website!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/genericItemsPage/2SYKCLTS3GRDR 

Our Value for the month of May is... Love!

We will be trying to understand that love is:

…an intense feeling of deep affection

…spreading kindness around us

…caring for and giving to someone else

…choosing to be at your best when the other person is not at their best

We will talk about showing love to our family, our friends, our pets, to God... and to ourselves!

We will be thinking about the value of Peace throughout the month of April. 

We will be finding out about:

- living together peacefully

- being a peacemaker

- knowing how to have a peaceful mind

Today in assembly, we looked at a variety of pictures and tried work out what they told us about peace. 

We then created a set of 'Peace Rules' for the summer term, to help us work together peacefully at school. 

The children continue to visit and enjoy our new library. Following World Book Day, our visiting author, Alice Hemming, donated some of her books! We now have her complete ‘Dark Unicorn’ series. There are four books in this series, and the first one has already been snapped up by one eager reader in Year 5! Alice also donated her book ‘Rickety Rocket’.  

We hope that everyone enjoyed the virtual sessions that Alice shared with us on World Book Day. Following the KS2 workshop, Alice even left some feedback for some budding authors from year 6. Here is the feedback for one child from Walnut Class.  

“You’ve written a beautifully detailed story plan here. I love your characters and the way the conflict between the siblings helps drive the story forward. It’s very realistic to have a brother and sister who don’t always agree! The MC Hunters work well as villains, keeping the characters on their toes. And what a great twist at the end; I didn’t see that one coming. I hope that one day you have time to write this in full with all the dialogue and description. I can just imagine a striking phoenix on the cover.” 

We have a wide variety of books in our library, from novels to comics, non-fiction and picture books. Ask your child which books they have recently borrowed from our library. 

If you would like to donate a book to our library, here is our wish list: https://www.amazon.co.uk/hz/wishlist/ls/1VOANTCSTPCJ5?ref_=wl_share