Furze Platt Infant School

Newsletter - 13th February 2026

FPIS puts on a Golden Performance at the Dance Festival!

After a busy first half to the Spring Term, we have had lots to celebrate and be proud of at FPIS. We seem to have packed an awful lot into the past five or so weeks, with Busy Learning Afternoons for all year groups as well as lots of events and visitors in school too.

A particular highlight was yesterday, when Oak Class gave an incredible performance at the Ascot and Maidenhead School Sports Partership Dance Festival, held at Braywick Leisure Centre. It was wonderful to see the joy and enthusiasm on the children's faces as they performed their routine to a beautiful instrumental version of 'Golden', from the very popular 2025 KPop Demon Hunters film, to a packed auditorium. Our congratulations to the children for such a polished performance. We are so proud of you all for representing our school as brilliantly as you did! A very big thank you to Miss Edmondson and the Oak Class staff team for all their hard work over the past few weeks. Our thanks also to all the parents and families who came along to watch. What an incredible experience for our young children! Well done everyone!

Please read on for more about the Dance Festival and all the other events that have been happening in school recently - we really have been very busy learning indeed!

With the next half term promising to be just as busy, please do keep checking our diary dates and messages sent out via our SchoolApp.

Have a restful, happy and safe half term break. We look forward to welcoming our children back to school on Monday 23rd February.

With very best 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 during the next few weeks...

Friday 13th February - Term ends

Monday 16th - Friday 20th February - Half term holiday

Monday 23rd February - Term starts

Monday 23rd February - Early Years Mastering Number at Home Project - Parent Workshop: 2:00 - 3:00 pm

Wednesday 25th February - Early Years Mastering Number at Home Project - Parent Workshop: 2:00 - 3:00 pm

Thursday 26th February - Early Years Mastering Number at Home Project - Parent Workshop: 2:00 - 3:00 pm

Friday 27th February - Year 2: 1666 Dress-up Day

Friday 27th February - FPSA Murder Mystery Event: 8:00 - 11:00 pm

Monday 2nd March - Willow Class trip to London

Monday 2nd March - Early Years: Farm visiting school

Tuesday 3rd March - Holly Class trip to London

Thursday 5th March - Hazel Class trip to London

Thursday 5th March - FPSA Happy School Bags collection

Friday 6th March - World Book Day celebrations (Non-uniform: dress up as a book character or a hint of)

Monday 16th March - Parents' Evening: 3:40 - 7:00 pm

Tuesday 18th March - Parents' Evening: 3:40 - 7:00 pm

Friday 20th March - Comic Relief/Red Nose Day

School Attendance

SAM - our School Attendance Mascot, is our FPIS teddy bear who helps our children think about why it is so important to attend school every day.

Our children are busy learning right from the start of the day, so being in class on time each morning matters just as much too. Registration begins at 8:45am and we expect all children to be in class by 9:00am.

Each week, during our Celebration Assembly, the attendance figures are shared. The class with the best attendance overall gets to look after SAM until the following week. SAM will be spending his half term holiday in Caterpillar Class who had an impressive attendance figure of 98.3%! Well done!

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

You can read our full Attendance Policy here.

Our latest attendance figures

Caterpillar 98.3%

Bumblebee 97.7%

Dragonfly 95.3%

Willow 94.7%

Hazel 93.7%

Holly 92.4%

Beech 92.3%

Oak 89.3%

Silver Birch 61.4%

FPIS SEND Signpost

Miss Charlotte, Head of School (for the Day!)

Miss Charlotte had a very busy day today in her role as Head of School for the day.

After morning gate duty, she joined Mrs Indge in her office, helping with some tasks and paperwork. After a quick drink (and biscuit!) in the staff room, it was back to work organising and signing certificates and adding up the house points in preparation for assembly later on. The rest of the morning was taken up with editing the FPIS newsletter - as well as passing on some important messages to the staff team.

As a very special treat, in the afternoon, Miss Charlotte gave each class some popcorn to enjoy whilst allowing the children to watch a short movie (making her a very popular Head of School, indeed!) Miss Charlotte finished the day by presenting the Head of School Awards during Celebration Assembly.

Well done Charlotte! You did a great job today! You were so helpful and it was a pleasure to have you as Head of School for the day. :)

Safer Internet Day 2026

On Tuesday, we celebrated Safer Internet Day 2026. The theme for this year was 'Smart tech, safe choices – Exploring the safe and responsible use of AI,’ focusing upon teaching children and young people the skills to use AI technology safely and responsibly, and highlighting available support.

From voice assistants, to chatbots, to algorithms, AI technology is playing an increasingly large role in all our lives. It is important that we find time to discuss these tools and the impact they can have on our own and our families’ online experiences, including:

· the news and content we see,

· the way we work, including using AI for learning,

· and the risk of misuse of AI.

You can read the UK Safer Internet Centre’s tops tips for parents and carers here.

NSPCC Number Day 2026

We had a day filled with even more Marvellous Maths than usual as last Friday to show our support for NSPCC Number Day 2026. Everyone looked great in their number-related outfits and together our school community managed to raise £249!

Thank you to all those who were able to donate towards this very worthy cause :)

If you haven’t donated yet and would like to, you can help us hit our £300 target via our school’s Just Giving page using this link Furze Platt Infant School is fundraising for NSPCC All donations, however small, make a big difference when we all join together to keep children safe. If you are a UK taxpayer, please consider adding Gift Aid at no extra cost to you.

Great Athlete Visit!

We were incredibly delighted to welcome, not one but two athletes to our school this week. Nerys Pearce, Commonwealth and Invictus Games athlete who visited us in July 2024 was back alongside Olympic Cyclist, Kelly Murphy.

Nerys and Kelly led action packed sessions of physical challenges for our children during the morning. This was followed by a truly inspirational whole school assembly where Kelly shared her story and her motto of Dream, Believe, Achieve!

As you are aware, this was a sponsorship event, organised with the help of Great Athletes. Thanks to all those who raised money for our school - if you haven't already done so, please remember to pay in your sponsorship money online.

Thank you!

Early Years

Our Bumblebee, Caterpillar and Dragonfly children have been busy continuing with their project 'All About Animals'. They have been finding out lots of information and facts about animals through our non-fiction animal books. The children have been sorting books into fiction and non-fiction and discussing the differences between the two. Some children even had a go at creating their own fact sheet all about their favourite animal. They used non-fiction books to help them find out some fun facts about their chosen animal.

This term we read The Colour Monster by Anna Llenas and talked about the different colours we can attach to feelings. We labelled a life sized drawing of a child with where we might physically feel each emotion in our bodies. We noticed and talked about how this might be different for each person.

Early Years have been learning all about local wildlife in Maidenhead. The children have been wildlife photographers, using the I-pads to photograph the birds and other animals that they can see. Some children made a tally chart which they added too each time they spotted a bird! The children really enjoyed getting messy by creating bird feeders which are hanging up in the woodlands, we talked about how the texture of the bird feeders changed overnight from soft to hard. The children impressed us with their accurate and detailed observational drawings of their favourite bird. We were especially impressed with their paintbrush control and techniques!

The children have been busy learning about the Lunar New Year. The children have enjoyed seeing how Lunar New Year is celebrated around the world and were interested to learn the story of the Zodiac, making lots of links to our previous learning about animals and other celebrations. They have been challenging themselves and practising using chopsticks, developing their fine motor and hand eye coordination skills. The children learnt how to say 'Gong Hei Fat Choy' and sang the song together. Gong Hei Fat Choy and Happy Year of the Horse to all of our families celebrating during half term

Our Bumblebee, Caterpillar and Dragonfly children have been amazing authors and illustrators this week, creating their very own stories using the Tales Toolkit model. The children have been using their imagination to think of a character, setting, problem and a solution. They drew their illustrations and then had a go at labelling the different parts of the story. Some children even challenged themselves to write some sentences about their story. It has been lovely to hear the children confidentially reading their story to their friends and class.

Midnight in the Toy Shop - Early Years Drama Workshop

Our Early Years Children had a great time at the 'Midnight in the Toy Shop' workshop on the 26th January!

Mrs Tuppence turned the children into lots of different toys in the toyshop. The toys had to come alive once the clock stuck midnight! The children had to listen to the instructions and practised freezing and unfreezing, remembering their poses and controlling their movements!

They showed great imagination, focus and lots of enjoyment while expressing themselves through expression, movement and dance!

Early Years Busy Learning Afternoon!

Our Early Years children were very excited to welcome their grown up's in for our Maths Busy Learning afternoon last Friday! Following a maths workshop, our parents and carers were able to join their children in the classroom. Mrs Wytchard challenged the grown up's to help their children to create five puppets to support mathematical learning at home. All children and parents were working together, talking about how many they needed to make and using mathematical language such as more and fewer. It was fantastic to also hear the children singing the rhymes to their grown-up's!

During the session we were also able to share our upcoming Mastering Number at Home Parent Project that is taking place after half term on 23rd, 25th and 26th February 2pm -3pm. You only need to attend one of the three sessions on the sign up form.

Please do sign up to a session if you are able too!

Early Years Forest School

Recently in Forest School we have enjoyed; cloud watching, creating bird tallies, observing wildlife, making bird feeders and lots of mindfulness yoga and music! The children have thoroughly enjoyed getting muddy and practising our Forest School Responsibilities:

Look after yourself

Look after each other

Look after nature

Oak Class: A Golden Performance at the Dance Festival

What an A-M-A-Z-I-N-G day Oak Class had at Braywick Leisure Centre yesterday! For the past 2 months they have been busy learning and perfecting their Planets Dance to the music of 'Golden'. We are so proud of all of their hard work and effort; they were absolutely wonderful! Well done superstars!

Year 1 Busy Learning Afternoon!

Year 1 were very excited to show their grown up's how we are all brilliant mathematicians during our Busy Learning afternoon! Maths was the focus, following a presentation about our mastery curriculum and what maths looks like in Year 1 at FPIS. It was lovely to see the children showing their parents and carers how to use some of our classroom resources like rekenrek's and tens frames and demonstrate how we use manipulatives to represent our learning. The grown up's even got to meet 'Tiny' and find out about his catchphrase '3 ways is a clever day!' as the children showed off their marvellous maths skills. Thank you to everyone who came along and got hands on with maths!

Year 1 PCSO Visit

Last week our local PCSO Lorraine came to visit Year 1 from Thames Valley Police. Lorraine told us all about the important role of the police in our community and the many different things that they do to help keep us safe. We were amazed at the many different hats that police officers wear, depending upon the type of duty that they are on. We loved learning all about the special equipment that the police use for different things and finding out what Lorraine gets up to as part of her job! We then had the opportunity to try on the many different hats and even a police vest, which we discovered was SO heavy! Lorraine also brought along a police van and we were VERY excited to be shown its flashing lights and get the chance to sit inside the cage at the back of the vehicle! Thank you to Lorraine for such an informative and memorable morning!

Year 1

In Year 1, we have been busy learning about the artist Laurie Hastings and how she uses different types of lines to create her sea inspired art work. Firstly, we explored lines and patterns and studied some of Laurie Hastings work to see how she incorporated these into her paintings. We then designed our own seascapes and learnt how to copy our designs onto styrofoam. We used the styrofoam as a template in order to make a print of our original design. It was a real 'WOW!' moment when our prints were revealed for the first time. We are very proud of our final results!

We have also been very busy transforming our donated boxes into emergency vehicles! Following on from our Sticky Knowledge about axles and wheels our challenge was to create a vehicle that moved. We spent time designing, building and evaluating our models to ensure they were the best they could be!

In maths we have been learning how to write the numbers 11-20 in words. We have also been exploring capacity and volume and working hard on understanding the difference. We have been investigating this by using different units such as paperclips, scrunched up paper, cubes and water. This has enabled us to use lots of comparative vocabulary and involved us having lots of fun with different resources! We then looked at mass, using the balance scales to measure the mass of different classroom objects and comparing their weight.

In outdoor learning we have still been enjoying our outdoor space despite the wet weather! We even managed to catch the odd glimpse of sun! We were SO happy to have noticed our daffodils have started to grow, we planted our bulbs at the beginning of December!

Year 2

We have continued to be authors over the last few weeks, writing some exciting dragon stories and travel brochures to magical dragon lands! We have also been thinking carefully about including descriptive words and phrases such as adjectives, expanded noun phrases and similes. We also acted out some possible scenarios as part of the planning process and created some art work to support us. We have also been thinking about our acronym A VAN to help us think about the exciting vocabulary we can include in our writing. Ask us if we have remembered A VAN.

As part of our Inventor Sticky Knowledge, we finally put all of our skills and ideas into practice and created our very own dragon stew. We all helped to prepare the ingredients (tomatoes being the trickiest to cut!!), cook and taste the stew. We all agreed that dragons have excellent taste as we all enjoyed trying some. We certainly have some budding chefs who even went home and cooked their own version of dragon stew!

We finished our focus on warm and cold colours thinking carefully about creating our very own Fire and Ice collages using a range of colours and materials. Some amazing masterpieces were created! We have also been exploring the techniques used by artist Leonid Afremov and have been creating our own paintings using palette knives and oil paints. It has been great to explore a different technique and medium to create some beautiful pieces of artwork.

In PE we have just had our final cricket session. We have loved learning the skills needed to be a successful cricket player. This has included throwing, batting and fielding skills. A HUGE thank you to Ally and Penelope from the Berkshire Cricket Foundation for providing such amazing workshops for us! :-)

During maths we have been learning about multiplication and division and finding different ways to show our learning. We have also been looking at doubles and halves and how these are linked to multiplication and division.

Year 2 Busy Learning Afternoon

Thank you so much to everyone who came and supported our Spelling themed Busy Learning Afternoon. It was a great opportunity to introduce you all to our ELS Spelling programme. We hope that you found the breakdown of the spelling rules covered in Year 2 helpful and insightful. The children loved sharing their spelling knowledge with you!

Eco Team

Big Schools' Birdwatch 2026

The Eco Club has been very busy over the past few weeks, enjoying some exciting bird watching around our school as part of our Big School Birdwatch. The children loved spotting various species, listening to their songs, and discussing where birds like to live and what they prefer to eat.

After noticing that we didn’t see as many birds as we had hoped, the children refused to be discouraged; instead, they took action!

To encourage more feathered visitors to our school environment, the Eco representatives worked together to make their own bird feeders using a mixture of seeds, water, and flour. They showed fantastic teamwork and concentration, carefully crafting the feeders to be hung outside.

We are looking forward to monitoring our feeders and seeing if more birds come to visit! Keep an eye out and see if you can spot our homemade creations around the grounds.

School Council

School Council have been busy selling cupcakes to raise money for Trunks Across the Thames! We were delighted to see so many generous people donate yummy cakes for us to sell and we had lots of fun selling them to everyone after school! A big thank you to everyone who bought or baked cakes for us - we really appreciate it! We were also VERY excited to meet our elephant who has arrived at FPIS. Over the next few weeks we will be getting creative and exploring ideas for designing and decorating our elephant, and of course choosing the perfect name!

Nurture Group

In nurture the children have been busy making things in line with our Year 1 topic of "Emergency" and Year 2 topic "Fire, Fire!". First we cut out parts of Fire Engines and Ambulances and stuck them together in the correct order. Next we made wonderful red and green dragons, we painted bubblewrap and printed on coloured paper to give our dragons a lovely texture. Then we learnt the different parts of a dragon and labelled a dragon picture . Finally as an end of term treat we decorated biscuits with icing and sprinkles.

FPIS Forest School

With the wet weather continuing over the past few weeks, we have had some very muddy and mucky Forest School sessions! We have been very glad to have had the use of the Early Years waterproofs to help keep everyone warm and dry.

We have been practising our whittling skills using the vegetable peelers and short sticks. We had a go at peeling away some of the bark to create a nest-type hole - and then added an owl inside using a permanent marker pen.

Awesome Achievements!

Hannah is proudly sharing her gymnastics award. "I got this for showing confidence in everything that I do and being kind." Well done superstar!

Well done to Lucas who is proudly sharing his medal he was awarded for go-karting. "I got this because I had to race a lot of my friends." Super job!

Congratulations to William who is proudly sharing his wristbands he was awarded in fencing. "I got one band for each term I completed fencing. So, I have been there for four terms now!" Well done!

Lewis is proudly sharing his wristbands he was awarded in fencing. "For the green one I showed self-confidence". Well done superstar!

Well done to Roman who is sharing his badge he was awarded in fencing club. "I needed to work hard and help other people and listen to the coach." Super job!

Congratulations to Ara who is proudly sharing her band she was awarded in fencing. "I had to show self-confidence." Well done!

Roman is proudly sharing his trophy he was awarded at his Football club. "I got this trophy for helping my team mates and working hard and scoring lots of goals. I also showed good listening to the coach." Well done Roman, we are very proud of you!

Huge congratulations to Theo who is proudly sharing his football medal. "I got this for good training and helping other people." Well done superstar!

Well done to Orla who is proudly sharing her gymnastics certificate. "I got this for doing good round offs and cartwheels." Great job!

Imogen is proudly sharing her Star of the Week award for brilliant casting on a bar!

Tallulah got 'Gymnast of the Week' for her super cartwheels!

Theo got this band for his self confidence in fencing!

Imogen got this award for climbing 622 steps in the Monument for the Great Fire of London!

Congratulations to Naomie who is proudly sharing her gymnastics certificate for 'Gymnast of the week!' Well done Naomie, keep up the excellent effort!

Well done to Elise who has been working hard on her swimming skills including swimming 10 metres on her front and her back. She has achieved her Level 3 swimming certificate and badge.

Congratulations to Jorja who recieved this certificate from her gymnastics class! "I got it for being gymnast of the week!"

Congratulations to Harper who has received a certificate for her amazing gymnastics! Well done!

House Points

Phoenix win the House Cup!

Our congratulations to our red house team Phoenix for earning the most house point this half term - 866 in total!

Well done everyone - a fab 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 13th February 2026.pdf

SuperPoWeR Awards

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.

Super-PoWeR Awards 13th Febraury.pptx

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 Miss Dexter, Miss Edmondson, Miss Aggarwal and Mrs Indge 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 updates

Personalised name label stickers for clothes/water bottles etc.

There are 2 easy options for buying personalised labels. Simply order your labels below whilst also raising funds for our schools. These labels will help the schools return mislaid uniform and will help cut down on the lost property including water bottles and lunchboxes as well as uniform.

1 Easy2Name

Simply order from the following site: https://www.easy2name.com/stickeasy, quote code 'FR-FPIS-72' and not only will you will get free delivery, the FPSA will receive 20% of the order value.

2 MyNameTags

Simply order from the following site: https://www.mynametags.com and use fundraising code 19450. A donation is made to the FPSA per order.

Windsor & Maidenhead Community Lottery

This is a weekly lottery that raises money for good causes in the Royal Borough including the FPSA. Tickets for the lottery cost just £1 and from that 60p goes to good causes including 50p to the FPSA. Each ticket has a 1 in 50 chance to win a prize each week with a top prize of £25,000! So please sign up and buy a weekly ticket or two using the link: https://www.windsorandmaidenheadcommunitylottery.co.uk/support/furze-platt-schools-association

Dates for your Diary:

Murder Mystery Event - Friday 27th February 2026

There are just a few tickets left for our very first ever 'Murder Mystery' event which takes place at the end of this month. The Juniors hall will be turned into an old library in a 'Death at a Dinner Club' performance from Moonstone Murder Mysteries company. Work in teams or go solo as live actors bring the drama to life - can you solve the crime?

Tickets available at https://fpsa.charityhive.co.uk/tickets/1/murder-mystery-evening.

Happy School Bags Collection - Thursday 5th March

A time to get rid of unwanted clothes and other items to help raise money for our schools. Please bring your filled bags to the Infants gates at drop-off. You can also use standard bin bags too.

FPSA AGM - Tuesday 24th March (8-9pm)

Our annual meeting takes place at the Infants School. Come and hear what events we ran in 2025, the money that was raised, what was spent by both schools and what is on their wish list for this year and beyond.

Cheese & Wine evening - Friday 24th April

Another brand new event for 2026! Look out for more information soon.

Mr T's (10th anniversary) Quiz Night - Friday 15th May (8pm-11pm)

The quiz night is celebrating 10 years, having started with the first one back in May 2016. This time there will be fancy dress with prizes for best team fancy dress and best individual. Don't miss it!

Summer Fair - Saturday 27th June (11.30am-3pm)

Please save the date for our biggest fundraiser of the year!

Useful Information for Parents and Families

10-top-tips-for-parents-and-educators-fostering-a-sense-of-belonging.pdf

top-tips-for-parents-educators-supporting-safe-use-of-ai.pdf

The Great BIG Bug Show!

Poet Simon Mole has visited FPIS many times and is a firm favourite with our Key Stage 1 children. After its premiere at the Natural History Museum, Simon will be performing his new show with musician Gecko at Norden Farm on Saturday 21st February.

The Great Big Bug Show is packed full of poems, raps and songs about all your favourite bugs (and some you haven’t heard of yet!). Expect Minibeasts and Massive Beats. In this show, every tune is an earworm - even the ones about woodlice!

Tickets are available here: https://norden.farm/events/the-great-big-bug-show

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