Furze Platt Infant School

Newsletter - 31st March 2023

Happy Easter!

We have had a very happy and successful Spring Term in school and have had some excellent endings this week to bring it to a close with our Year 1 and Year 2 Marketplace Events. We were so proud of our children for sharing their learning with such passion and enthusiasm at these events - and would like to thank all the parents, families and friends who came along to talk to the children and see the wonderful work on display. I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did! My thanks also to our fabulous KS1 team for all their hard work in helping the children to prepare for the event.

It was great to catch up with everyone who came along for our Parents' Evening Meetings recently. We had over 93% of parents in attendance, which was fantastic to see. We very much value having the opportunity to talk on a one-to-one basis with our parents and we hope you found your conversation with your child's class teacher useful and informative. Whilst our Parents' Meetings each term are a more formal way of keeping parents well-informed about their child's progress and achievements in school, please feel free to talk to your child's class teacher at any time should you have any questions or concerns. We are here to help! Appointments can be made via the school office - or a brief disucssion with your child's class teacher may be possible at drop off/pick up times.

Thank you for your continued support this term. Have a lovely Easter holiday and we look forward to welcoming our children and families back for the start of the Summer Term on Monday 17th April.

With warmest wishes

Jane Indge

Head of School

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Diary dates - coming up soon!

Here is a brief look at what's going to be happening in school over the next few weeks...

Monday 3rd April - Friday 14th April - Easter Holidays

Monday 17th April - Term begins

Friday 21st April - Early Years: visit to Oaken Grove Park 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Tuesday 25th April - Information Advisory Service (IAS) Coffee Morning 9:00 am - 10:00 am

Friday 28th April - FPSA Year 2 School Quiz 3:15 pm - 5:00 pm

Monday 1st May - Early May Bank Holiday - school closed

Friday 5th May - Coronation Party - children may wear red, white and blue (non-uniform)

Monday 8th May - Bank Holiday for the Coronation of King Charles III - school closed

Monday 15th May - Early Years: Visit to Windsor and Boat Trip on The Thames

Friday 26th May - Term ends

Monday 29th May - Friday 2nd June - Half term holiday (school closed)

Monday 5th June - Term starts

School Attendance

With an attendance figure of 99.3%, Silver Birch Class had the best attendance overall this week. SAM - our School Attendance Mascot, will therefore be spending his Easter holidays in Silver Birch class. Well done everyone!

Our latest school attendance figures for each class are shown in the table. Our school attendance target is: 97%

Silver Birch 99.3%

Holly 99.0%

Hazel 98.1%

Bumblebee 97.0%

Dragonfly 96.9%

Oak 95.9%

Willow 94.3%

Caterpillar 86.5%

Beech 80.7%

FPIS SEND Signpost

World Poetry Day 2023

To celebrate World Poetry Day on Tuesday 21st March the whole school took part in a Poetry Parade. Each class moved around nine different stations all celebrating our world at school. At each station we had an activity and a poem related to that. Stations included: meeting the chicks in Early Years, skipping on the playground, observing our blue tit nesting box, weather watching, pond dipping and much more.

Once the children had travelled around all nine stations they went back to their classrooms to listen to the poems again and then became illustrators! Each poem has now been illustrated by each class and the Poetry Book stands pride of place in each classrooms reading area.

RED NOSE DAY 2023 -

FPIS Grand total

We are delighted to say that the total amount raised via our FPIS Red Nose Day 2023 JustGiving page is a fantastic...

£522!

Thank you so much! Your incredible support will help people who are facing the toughest times of their lives and help them to break free from poverty, both here in the UK and across the world.

Early years easter Event

Our Bumblebees, Caterpillars and Dragonflies celebrated the end of term with a Easter trail around our Early Years environment. All of the children worked together to look for clues and had lots of fun working with friends from other classes.

Happy Easter everyone!

KS1 assembly: Baha'i New Year

Last Wednesday the Key Stage 1 children had a special assembly to learn about the Baha'i Faith and their New Year celebration called: Naw-Ruz.

Michael Gammage a representative of the Baha'i Faith came to talk to us about how Naw-Ruz is celebrated and why it is celebrated. We also learnt about some of the key messages and important teachings.

A big thank you to Michael for coming to talk to us.

St Mark's Care Home visit: Year 2

Last Thursday a group of Year 2 children went to visit some of the residents at St Mark's Care Home. This continues the fantastic work which started in the Autumn Term. The children made Easter Bonnets with the residents and read some stories to them. A fun time was had by all and the children represented FPI so well. We are very proud of them. We are looking forward to other exciting events taking place in the Summer Term.

Early Years

Our Bumblebee, Caterpillar and Dragonfly children have enjoyed learning about the life-cycle of a chick. Through observing them everyday they have been able to notice and talk about the changes that they could see. Our Early Years children all got the opportunity to hold one of our chirpy chicks and even had a go at naming them. The learnt lots about the characteristics of a chick, how to care for them and discovered how they grow and develop. We have all thoroughly enjoyed hatching chicks in school. They have now gone back to the farm where they will have more room to continue to grow into hen's and roosters!

Following on from this, the children have been busy creating some lovely observational drawings of our chicks during busy learning and some children even chose to design a chick on the front of their Easter card which they are excited to bring home today! We have been so impressed with their writing inside their cards.

During Discovery RE we have been learning about different celebrations. Last week we learnt all about Ramadan. Mrs Bi and Mrs Rashid showed the children some pictures of traditional food, read them a story about Ramadan and gave the children the opportunities to ask lots of questions. Mrs Bi taught us how to put on a Hijab and even modelled it on some of the children that wanted to have a go! The children absolutely loved using the coffee paste to create some beautiful Henna designs which they were very proud of! This week we continued our learning about Easter. The children have shared the story, discovered Christian symbols and learnt about how Easter is celebrated around the world.

In maths, we have been learning about doubles. The children have been using their fingers to represent double numbers and impressing us with their super stem sentences. For example, "four is made of two and two. Two and two makes Four." We have also been playing some fun sorting games with different objects from around the classroom such as spoons! The children have had to guess how the objects have been sorted and then had a go at their own, choosing to sort by colour, size, material and shape!

The children have had great fun and learnt so much about animals over the past few months. We can't wait to begin exploring our new project next term!

Year 1

What an excellent ending we had to our project 'Emergency!'. We have been very busy preparing for our Marketplace event which took place on Wednesday.

We had such an amazing array or market stalls and we were able to teach our grown ups all about the Sticky Knowledge we have been working on over the Spring Term.

Some of the many wonderful stalls included; an RNLI stall, a stall all about the Police, the importance of laundry cleaning during the Crimean War, Mary Seacole and her use of natural rememdies, keeping ourselves healthy (which included exercise and trying some soup!), how hospitals have changed over time thanks to Florence Nightingale, mountain rescue, a puppet show about the lives of Mary Seacole and Florence Nightingale and much more.

Thank you so much for everyone who came to support us or watched our Marketplace video on Seesaw.

We are sure you will agree that the Year 1 children shared their learning with confidence and enthusiasum!

Year 2 visited by maidenhead fire and rescue service

Last week we were very fortunate to welcome local firefighters to our school! They very kindly took time out of their busy schedule to give our children an amazing, immersive experience! They showed the children all of the life saving equipment on the engine as well as an opportunity to sit inside. The children were able to demonstrate their knowledge of fire fighting in 1666 and then compare it with fire fighting in 2023. We also had the chance to look in detail at all of the equipment that is worn when they are putting out fires and consider which items are waterproof, water resistant or not at all. As part of their Sticky Knowledge the children later went onto design a uniform fit for a fire fighter with the brief to think about what might be waterproof. A huge thank you to all of the firefighters that came.

Year 2

We have been very busy planning our marketplace stalls and working collaboratively to bring to life our plans!

Yesterday we held our Marketplace showcasing our learning from our Spring project 'Fire, Fire!'. The children presented their Sticky Knowledge learning with confidence and enthusiasum.

Some of the amazing stalls included; a Science stall including discussions around the Great Plague of 1665 and comparisons between that and Covid-19 (this also included a germ experiment to teach our grown-ups how germs can spread), sewing and creating scent bags, Samuel Pepys, the Monument, Tower Bridge, how London has changed since 1666, firefighting and how this has changed, spot the difference between the old and new St. Paul's Cathedral, our very own art gallery and finally Pudding Lane was also brought to life which included Thomas Farriner's bakery!

Thank you very much for all of your support and the lovely feedback shared on the proud clouds.

We are all extremely proud of the Year 2 children and we are sure that you are too!

Nurture Group

This week in nurture, we have planted out our pea plants into the raised beds in the front playground and look forward to seeing them grow over the next couple of months. The children were impressed how tall the seedlings became not long after planting the seeds into pots. We also made cress heads planting cress seeds into moist cotton wool in paper cups.

Carrying on with our discussion about our five senses, we had fun trying to identify different crisp flavours, first by simply looking at them, then by smelling them and finally by tasting them.

Finally the nurture team would like to wish all the children and their families a very happy Easter!

Eco Team

We are taking part in the Big Battery Hunt 2023, working together with other schools to help recycle used batteries. This week we have made posters to let everyone in our school community know about this brilliant initiative and each class now has a battery box and our Eco Team are keen to collect as many as possible.

Over the next few weeks please bring in all of your used batteries and give these to your class teacher so that our Eco Team can count them. Once we have submitted our totals we may win a prize!

Happy Hunting!

Wonderful Wildlife!

Mr Vogel as been keeping a careful eye on the nesting boxes around our school grounds recently. We are delighted to say that we have had lots of interest already!

Wonderful Wildlife#12 Blue Tit

A colourful mix of blue, yellow, white and green makes the blue tit one of our most attractive and easily recognisable visitors to our school grounds.

Did you know? British blue tits stay in the UK all year round. In fact, they rarely move far from where they first hatched.

Blue Tit.mp4

Awesome achievements!

Abi (Y1) and her older sister Katie (Y4 FPJS) noticed a lot of litter on their walk to school recently - and they wanted to do something about it.

The big bag of rubbish you can see here was collected by the girls just along their route to school and up the school driveway - that’s a distance of only about 1km!

Abi and Katie were thrilled to get lots of ‘thank yous’ from local residents and one man even gave them some more bags to use next time. A super effort! Well done to both of you!

Congratulations to Elvis who is proudly displaying his swimming certificate and his man of the match awards for football! Well done Elvis you are working really hard, we are very proud of you! :)

Well done to Chloe who has recently been awarded her orange belt in kickboxing. Congratulations Chloe on being rewarded for your hard work and continued effort to improve your skills! :)

Congratulations to Maya who has received this medal for, "Being respectful and for scoring goals." during football club. Well done Maya we are very proud of your continued commitment! :)

Well done to Edwin who proudly said, "I got my swimming certificate for swimming 5 metres!" Congratulations Edwin, keep up your hard work! :)

Bonnie was extremely proud to receive a level 1 water skills certificate for super swimming! Bonnie said, "I am really good at mouse, elephant, monkey and it helps me to swim!" Well done Bonnie, we are so proud of you!

A big well done to Edie for receiving an award in her swimming class! Edie was very proud to tell me "I can now blow bubbles in the water". Well done Edie, keep it up!

Emily is proudly sharing her Gymnastics certificate! "I had to do a handstand into a bridge." Well done Emily!

Congratulations to Isabelle who is proudly sharing her Swimming certificate for swimming 5 metres! Keep up the good effort Izzy!

Well done to Freya who has achieved her 5 metre Swimming certificate! She is very proud of her effort and so are we! Well done Freya!

Well done to Jack who has received a swimming certificate. "I got it for good swimming in the deep end and doing good dolphin, elephant and monkey moves."

Well done Jack, super swimming!! :-)

Well done to Arthur who has been awarded his blue belt in kickboxing. "Now I'm on blue belt I'm doing jumping front snap kick." Well done Arthur we are very proud of you! :-)

Isla B got a Level 2 swimming award. She also has successfully passed her grading and been promoted in yellow tag during her Little Samurai class. What a super sports star!

Ella received her white belt with red/blue stripes for showing her correct garden stand. Well done Ella -keep it up!

Rocco received his yellow belt in kickboxing. He got it for trying his hardest and doing all the correct moves. Well done Rocco keep it up!

Imogen received her level 1 swimming certificate. She also successfully swam backstroke for 5 metres and was awarded another certificate.

Daisy has received a certificate for awesome participation and brilliant team work during after school drama club. Excellent work Daisy!

Well done to Farrin who received her 'Feel Good' Rainbow badge! "I got my rainbow badge for completing some challenges." Excellent effort Farrin!

Congratulations to Dulcie for receiving her Gymnastics certificate! "I had to perform a handstand into a bridge." We are very proud of you!

Well done to Amaya who is proudly sharing her Gymnastics certificate. "I was practicing my aerial which is a no handed cartwheel!" Keep up the brilliant hard work Amaya!

A big well done to Bella-Rose who received her level 15 certificate in gymnastics on Thursday! Bella-Rose had to stand up by herself and complete a cartwheel, she received a big round of applause from the audience! We are very proud of you Bella-Rose, keep it up!

Kayna has received a medal from after school football club. "I got it for helping my team and also trying to score lots of goals."

Well done Kayna, great work! :-)

Well done to Amelia who has received her Level 4 certificate in swimming. "I had to swim a whole lap up to the lifeguard chair and all the way back down and I had to swim 50 metres and swim dolphin, butterfly, front crawl, backstroke and breast stroke."

Phew, sounds like you have been a busy swimmer. Well done Amelia we are proud of you! :-)

Enzo got a medal for playing football. He listened hard and followed all the instructions. He also got a certificate for doing really well during his drama show. He also got a certificate during music for making an amazing guitar and helping to tidy up. Well done!

Liliana got a certificate and badge for doing really well during gymnastics and achieving her Level 15 proficiency award.

House Points

MONoceros win the house cup!

Our congratulations to our yellow house team, Monoceros, who have earned the most house points this term - a very impressive 470 in total! Well done to everyone - a super team effort!

Head of School Awards

Every Friday, during our whole school Celebration Assembly, Head of School awards are given out to a child or children in each class. The certificates are presented by Mrs Indge to those children who have consistently demonstrated excellent behaviours for learning.

Head of School Awards 31st March 2023.pdf

Super-PoWeRs!

Miss Dexter pops on her Superhero cape each week during Celebration Assembly to present our SuperPoWeR awards. The awards are given to children who have been demonstrating excellent behaviour through our school values of Passion, Well being and Respect.

Book Bingo!

Every week, during our Head of School Assembly, a bingo ball is selected from our special red bag. The bingo balls are numbered 1 - 30. Each child in Year 1 and 2 with the corresponding register number to the ball chosen will have the opportunity to bring their Maths book and Project scrapbook to share with Mrs Indge, Miss Dexter and Miss Edmondson later that week. During the Book Bingo session, the children spend time looking through the books together with the adults, whilst discussing and explaining what they have been busy learning about.

FPSA update

Mr T's Quiz Night

Last Friday, just over 100 people joined the quiz night over at the Junior School hall with 18 teams taking part including 2 from the Infants staff and 2 from the Juniors staff. As well as 'Current Affairs' and 'General Knowledge' rounds, questions ranged from identifying TV themes, a Thomas the Tank Engine connections round and a music round which finished with a rendition of 'Blame it on the Boogie'.

The winning team was appropriately named 'And the winner is...' with 'The Summer Bay Babes' coming in second and 'Creamy pasta veg GF' in third.

Thank you to everyone who came and supported the event. The next quiz night will be in the autumn.

Dates for your diary.....

Year 2 School Quiz - Friday 28th April (3.15-5pm)

After a successful event last year, we will be running another quiz for the year 2 children in the hall. Mr Thompson is quiz master and will be testing the children (in teams of up to 6) on their general knowledge and the quiz includes some fun picture rounds. Tickets will be available from the pta events website soon (www.pta-events.co.uk/fpsa).

Junior Discos - Friday 19th May

The Junior School discos are back in May (the years 3 & 4 disco is 4-5pm and the years 5 & 6 disco is 5.15-6.30pm). Tickets go on sale at the beginning of May.

Summer Fair - Saturday 17th June (11.30am - 2.30pm)

Please keep this date free for our biggest fundraising event of the year.

Useful Information for Parents and Families

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10 top tips for stronger passwords.pdf

Pop Up Toy Shop A4 Flyer.pdf

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