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Edition 5. published 24th May 2024
MESSAGE FROM THE HEADTEACHER
MESSAGE FROM THE HEADTEACHER
Dear Ambler families,
It’s been a bit of a wet half term, but that hasn’t stopped us from engaging in our learning at Ambler! Here’s what we got up to this half term:
Mid-May means SATs and the Year 6 children certainly did us proud using all their DREAMS qualities! I was so proud of the effort they put in - the children showed resilience and determination throughout.
We were delighted to welcome back Sarah Pimenta to do some screen printing with the children to create school banners. It was a delight to see the children getting messy and enjoying the art sessions! Thank you to the parent volunteers who helped. Can’t wait to see the finished banners.
So much to look forward to next half term, including:
Sports Day 20th June at Highbury Fields for Yr 1 to Yr 6
Yr 1 trip to Hampstead Heath
Yr 2 trip to the Seaside
Yr 3 Science museum
Yr 4 Kenwood House
Yr 5 Neasden temple
Yr 6 Chessington, prom, leavers’ assembly and so much more!
WHOLE AMBLER: Summer Fair Saturday 6th July
Looking forward to seeing you all back to school on Tuesday 4th June 2024 for our final half term of this academic year. Have a wonderful half term.
Best wishes,
Sandy McNicholl
DATES FOR THE DIARY
DATES FOR THE DIARY
Mon 3 Jun - INSET day - School and Children's Centre closed
Tue 4 Jun - First day of Summer term 2
Mon 10 Jun - Y1 Phonics Screening Check
Tue 11 Jun - "Welcome to Reception" parent/carer meeting
Wed 12 Jun - Class Group Photography
Thu 13 Jun - Mindfulness for Parents/Carers coffee morning (9-10am)
Fri 14 Jun - Y6 Chessington trip
Thu 20 Jun - Y1-6 Sports Day, Highbury Fields
Fri 28 Jun - NED Show, KS1 & KS2 assemblies
1-12 Jul - Y3 intensive swimming course
Mon 8 Jul - "Welcome to Year 1" parent/carer meeting
Tue 9 Jul - Y5 R.E. trip to Neasden Temple
Sat 6 Jul - SUMMER FAIR
Thu 11 Jul & Fri 12 Jul - Y6 Production
Fri 12 Jul - Y1 Parliament Hill Paddling Pool and Adventure Playground trip
Mon 15 Jul - 6B Leavers' Assembly
Tue 16 Jul - 6G Leavers' Assembly
Wed 17 Jul - Y2 Seaside trip
Fri 19 Jul - Y6 Ben Kinsella exhibition
Wed 24 Jul - Last day of term. 2pm finish for school - no after school clubs
Thu 15 Aug - Children's Centre Summer Closure, last day for all-year round children
SCHOOL UNIFORM
SCHOOL UNIFORM
As the weather is changing, please remember to follow our school uniform policy.
Leggings can be worn under skirts/dresses, but not in place of trousers
In the warmer months, children may also wear the following:
Dark grey or black shorts
Blue summer dress
Black, brown, white or grey sandals.
While sandals are allowed in summer, we prefer children to wear black shoes or trainers, as they are more appropriate for active play and reduce the risk of injury. If you choose to send you child in sandals, they must have a heel strap.
Do you want to promote good health at school? Would you like to learn some transferable skills which look great on your CV? Islington has an exciting opportunity for you!
What: The Families for Life Community Champions programme. Free training is provided.
Where: New River Green Children's Centre, 23 Ramsey Walk, N1 2SX
When: 6-week course starting Thursday 6 June to 11 July 2024
Time: 3 hours 9.30am to 12.30pm
To apply to become a champion, or for further information, please contact Jessica Mark jessica.mark@islington.gov.uk
🐝 SPELLING BEE 🐝
🐝 SPELLING BEE 🐝
This term, we held our postponed Spring 2 Spelling Bee. It was an exciting competition with children demonstrating incredible speed and accuracy in their spelling.
Congratulations to our winners, Max in Year 4 and Ayda in Year 6. Well done to all those children who competed and our children who have shown great improvement in their spelling. We can't wait for the summer competition!
CALLING AMBLER ARTISTS & DESIGNERS!
CALLING AMBLER ARTISTS & DESIGNERS!
At Ambler, we're passionate about celebrating our differences and making sure everyone feels they belong. So next year, we're introducing a new charter to help us understand these three important ideas: Equality, Diversity, Inclusion.
We're asking our clever Ambler children to get creative and have a go at making pictures to illustrate each one of these words. They will need to be simple, clear and bold designs that are easy to see and understand.
There will be prizes for the winning designs!
You'll find all the information you need on Google Classroom. The deadline is Tuesday 4th June and children can hand in their ideas on Google Classroom, or on paper to their class teacher.
PESSPA ISLINGTON TENNIS CHAMPIONS!
PESSPA ISLINGTON TENNIS CHAMPIONS!
Congratulations to our Year 3 & 4 Tennis Team, who came joint first with William Tyndale School at The Islington Tennis Centre. Ambler will now represent Islington at the London Youth Games, where we will compete against the winners of each London borough represented. What a huge achievement, we are very proud of you!
HACKNEY CITY FARM
This half term Year 1 have been learning about Animals including Humans in Science. To bring our learning to life we went and visited Hackney City Farm. We were lucky enough to see some baby animals including 12 piglets and a 4 day old baby goat.
INCLUSION FESTIVAL
A small group of children from Key Stage 2 were chosen to represent Ambler at the Islington Inclusion Festival. The children participated in a carousel of activities designed to be fully-accessible to all children. They were fantastic ambassadors of the school!
FRENCH TRIP TO BFI IMAX
Mr. Read, Salmah and a mixed group of Year 3, 4 and 5 children visited the British Film Institute IMAX for a fantastic day of French learning on 7th May. Children were chosen by their teachers for showing a great attitude within their lessons at school.
In the morning, they watched a variety of short French language films and had to complete tasks linked to them - which really challenged their knowledge of the language!
As a reward for all their hard work, in the afternoon, they were shown a French feature film (with subtitles). Kai in 3G summed up the feelings of many when said, "it was one of the best trips ever!"
ARTS WEEK
For Arts Week we focussed on the skill of printing and worked with our artist in residence Sarah Pimenta to create a series of collaborative banners.
Our theme this year is Friendship and Equality and the children created their own imaginative stencil images to portray this important topic. We began with the skill mono printing to design the background of the banner and then screen printed our stencil designs.
The children had a great time developing and practising these new skills and the finished pieces look fantastic! You will be able to view these at the Ambler Summer Exhibition in July and after as part of the permanent art displays in the school.
Many congratulations to the winners of the Royal Academy (RA) Summer Exhibition competition; Daphne and Mahla. Their self portraits will be exhibited at the RA as part of the Young Artists Summer Show.
MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING
MENTAL HEALTH & WELLBEING
We have had so much fun this half term getting involved in a variety of Mental Health and Wellbeing focused activities. These have been for staff as well as children.
We organised YouTube’s Yoga with Adriene as part of our efforts to take care of our wonderful staff here at Ambler.
In response to the Child Wellbeing Survey a report has been written up and shared to the senior leadership team.
An optional Yoga and Mindfulness session was delivered to the year 6’s in their SATS week to help them to destress and relax.
As a school, we took part in Mental Health Awareness Week with the focus being 'Movement for Mental Health'. We explored physical activity and the importance of moving for happy minds. Staff took part in an exercise class designed to improve posture and mood through exercise and stretching.
Thank you for all your continued support. See below for upcoming important wellbeing dates:
Thursday 13th June 9-10am Lodge - Coffee Morning - An Introduction to Mindfulness for Parents/Carers with Sophie Smith-Tong.
Friday 28th June - NED’s Mindset Mission - Performances in assembly for KS1 and KS2 exploring a positive behaviour programme. This will involve a YoYo sale - more info to come in the first few weeks of Summer 2.
NURSERY NEWS
NURSERY NEWS
What a busy half term nursery have had! They have spent time learning and developing some of the skills needed to sew.
Our children know needles are sharp and need to be stored carefully. The children are developing the understanding of pushing and pulling the needle through the binka, and pulling the thread all the way through before beginning another stitch. The children enjoyed choosing embellishments for their sewing; and threading the beads and feathers onto the binka certainly motivated them to stick and keep trying!
The children have enjoyed sharing traditional tales such as 'The Three Little Pigs', and conversations about how the three little pigs could eat more healthily - so they can run faster to escape the big bad wolf - led to us making delicious fruit packed smoothies. The children washed, chopped, and mixed together various berries, bananas, pineapple, and milk to create a delicious smoothie. Idris commented after his second cup: "Yummy... I want more..."
The children have continued to enjoy their exploration of different materials including clay. The children learned to add water to their clay to keep it soft and malleable and the children enjoyed painting their clay and using different tools to cut, mark, and mould it. Arthur explained: "When the water goes in, it makes it soft and I can roll and squish it and pinch it..."
The children have worked hard this term, sharing their learning through their play with us. We look forward to more fun learning next term - children enjoy a well deserved rest!
DIGITAL @MBLER
We have had lots of tech-related fun at Ambler recently. Try-outs and selection for our first 'e-sports' tournament has begun and I will be taking two teams of three to Samsung at Kings Cross for an inter-school Mario Kart 8 tournament. As this is our first one, I am limiting try-outs to Year 5 and 6 children who have already played the game. I will organise something for beginners another time and will try my best to spread the fun!
In terms of online safety, Year 5 and 6 parents received an information sheet about healthy online habits and advice for transitioning to secondary school at parents' evening.
Blackstock Road and Finsbury Park are notorious for phone thefts, with many of our staff having theirs stolen. We worry about children we have seen walking along by themselves with expensive smart phones out, looking down at the screen as they walk. Our stance on this is that primary age children do not need a smart phone - just a simple, cheap, 'brick' phone to be contactable if walking to and from school.
I have been approached by some parents about implementing a parent/community 'contract' for banning smart phones for children at Ambler. Initiatives like this have been becoming more popular across the country recently and keep cropping up in the news:
The Guardian: "Thousands join UK parents calling for smartphone-free childhood" .
This is particularly relevant given this recent alarming statistic:
BBC: "Ofcom: Almost a quarter of kids aged 5-7 have smartphones".
The government are currently considering a ban for under-16s, in part, due to campaigns such as those mentioned:
The Guardian: UK ministers considering banning sale of smartphones to under-16s
I will be looking into an assembly for the children and some parent voice on this in Summer 2.
Lastly, many KS2 children will be doing computing units using the coding platform 'Scratch' this term. If you would like to know more about this platform and how children stay safe on it, please see here. It is an excellent tool and a useful platform for any constructive, healthy screen time at home.
SPORT FOR SCHOOLS ATHLETE
We had great fun during our Sport For Schools athlete visit, when we welcomed Saffron Severn - a GB Commonwealth athlete - to Ambler. The children were put through their paces during a high intensity fitness circuit and were treated to an inspiring assembly too.
Congratulations to all the children, who demonstrated their DREAMS qualities during the day. A huge thank you as well to everyone who raised sponsorship money to help the school buy more sports equipment. The totals have been sent off to Sport for Schools and you should receive your fundraising prizes in the early part of next half-term.
RECEPTION
This term our timetable has included a new fantastic and fun drama session with the charity, Artis. Our teacher Bosh, has taught us how to express ourselves using dance and singing.
Reception have been lucky to have another new visitor, Julia Smith, who has helped us celebrative and create a costume for the Summer Exhibition. Julia has taught us all how to sew on beads and buttons. We can't wait for you all to see it!
We have been inspired by the story, Julian is a Mermaid by Jessica Love and invited our special grownups to come and join us in reception to decorate a t-shirt. Together we practised lots of different skills such as sticking, cutting, and sewing. It was the perfect weather for a parade so we put our t-shirts on, played some music and danced around the playground. It was wonderful to see everyone so proud of their our creations, we all looked great! We would like to say a big thank you to all the grown ups who came and helped us! Have well deserved rest Reception and we can't wait for more fun next term!
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