Newsletter - 28th November 2025

FPIS is getting Festive!

With the half term holidays now a distant memory it has been back to school and back to Busy Learning for our children here at FPIS. We have had some exciting visits, visitors and memorable moments that have continued to bring our Autumn Term projects to life - and provide some wonderful learning opportunities. Please read on for more information about what has been happening in each Year Group below...

This week it has also started to look and feel a little festive in and around school. Today, our Early Years children, parents and families all enjoyed a Busy Learning Afternoon creating decorations for our Christmas tree - which will be displayed in our school hall. The lights will be officially turned on next week!

We have also made a start with our preparations for our Christmas productions. Dates for all performances are below. Please note, there will be four performances of our Year 1 and 2 production of 'I'm Gonna Shine!' but due to the limited space available we ask that parents and family members attend one performance ONLY. We also request that babies and younger siblings come along to the first performance on Monday 15th December @ 9:30 am, as our other performaces are for adults only. Thank you in advance for your support with this.

Dates for all our Christmas events in school have been sent out - and are also on our school website calendar. We are all looking forward these special and magical moments with our young children over the next few weeks of term - and maybe a surprise or two along the way as well!

We would also like to thank everyone who came along to our recent Parents' Meetings. Our Class Teachers really do value the oppprtunity to discuss children's progress and share their achievements, successes and next steps. We hope you found these conversations useful and would also like to say thank you for the many positive comments and helpful feedback, particularly around how well the children have settled into school so far this year. As always, we are very appreciative of your support.

Have a lovely weekend.

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...

Monday 1st December - Christmas Post Boxes OPEN

Friday 5th December - Non-uniform day (FPSA Christmas Fair donations)

Saturday 6th December - FPSA Christmas Fair (11:30am - 2:30pm)

Friday 12th December - Christmas Jumper Day (wear uniform plus a Christmas jumper)

Friday 12th December - FPJS Christmas Guitar Concert

Friday 12th December - Early Years Christmas Performance @ 2:00 pm - All Welcome

Monday 15th December - KS1 (Year 1 and 2) Christmas Performance 'I'm Gonna Shine!' @ 9:30 am - Babies and young children welcome

Monday 15th December - KS1 (Year 1 and 2) Christmas Performance 'I'm Gonna Shine!' @ 2:00 pm - Adults ONLY

Tuesday 16th December - KS1 (Year 1 and 2) Christmas Performance 'I'm Gonna Shine!' @ 9:30 am - Adults ONLY

Tuesday 16th December - KS1 (Year 1 and 2) Christmas Performance 'I'm Gonna Shine!' @ 2:00 pm - Adults ONLY

Wednesday 17th December - Children's Christmas Lunch

Wednesday 17th December - Last day for Christmas Post Boxes

Thursday 18th December - Christmas Assembly with Beth Gomm (Christian Connections in Schools)

Friday 19th December - Children's Christmas Parties (non-uniform day)

Friday 19th December - Term ends: school finishes at 1:30 pm

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. This week, SAM will be going to Beech Class who had a perfect attendance figure of 100%! 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

Beech 100.0%

Silver Birch 98.7%

Oak 98.3%

Holly 97.3%

Caterpillar 97.0%

Willow 95.7%

Hazel 94.5%

Dragonfly 94.3%

Bumblebee 92.3%

FPIS SEND Signpost

Children in Need 2025!

On Thursday 13th November all the children came into school looking spotty! It was great to see us all coming together to support such an important charity.

With all of your brilliant support our schools have raised an amazing £1081.00!

Thank you :)

We are delighted to announce that both our Infant and Junior schools are taking part in “Trunks Across the Thames” - Thames Hospice's very first art trail. This inspiring project will bring together businesses, schools, community groups and artists to create a free, fun and family-friendly trail of discovery for everyone in the local community to enjoy.

As part of the trail, each school will be 'adopting' a baby elephant to decorate. Once completed, our elephants will join the Thames Hospice herd that will be displayed throughout Slough and Windsor during summer 2026. We are very excited to be part of something so special and cannot wait to start on our FPIS elephant design! In order to adopt the elephant, each school needs to raise £1300. Our FPIS School Council, with the help of Miss Aggarwal and Miss Evmorfopoulos, will be leading the Infant School fundraising campaign - organising a variety of events throughout the year. Donations and money raised by the Infant School will be added to our FPIS Trunks Across the Thames JustGiving page, which is now LIVE! We would love as many children and families to get involved in our Trunks Across the Thames events over the next year - and you can also donate now via the link below:

https://www.justgiving.com/page/furze-platt-infant-school-3?utm_medium=FR&utm_source=CL

Our baby elephant will be arriving at school in February, and nearer the time we will be choosing a design. Please keep an eye out for more elephant-astic fundraising updates via our SchoolApp and newsletters!

We remember...

On Tuesday 11th November we came together to take part in a two-minute silence to show our respect. This was a great opportunity to reflect on one of our very important school values.

A huge thank you to Mr Thompson who played 'The Last Post' on his bugle to give our children the opportunity to hear this moving piece of music live.

'Sleeping Beauty' pantomime

This week, we had a wonderful time at a lively Sleeping Beauty pantomime! It was lots of fun from start to finish! Filled with colourful characters, catchy songs, and plenty of classic panto humour, the performance brought endless laughter, high fives, and plenty of “Oh yes you are!” and “Oh no you’re not!” moments.

The children enthusiastically joined in with the singing and dancing, and some even had the exciting opportunity to go up and join the cast at the front. The show ended beautifully with Princess Aurora marrying her prince, a magical moment and a fantastic way to begin the Christmas festivities!

Early Years

Our Early Years children have been making the most of the Autumnal weather with some sunshine, rain, fog, wind and even a little bit of snow too! Each day they have been so excited to be outside, exploring and observing the natural changes that take place during Autumn!

The Bumblebee, Caterpillar and Dragonfly children have been exploring how families around the world celebrate special events. We delved into the vibrant light of Diwali and the dazzling sparkle of Bonfire Night. Inspired by their own memories of fireworks, the children created spectacular firework artwork, waved shimmering ribbon streamers, and transformed their bodies into bursting fireworks in the sky! The children absolutely loved performing the dance to the song 'Firework by Katy Perry'. The video / photo's have been shared with you all on Seesaw!

In Maths we have been learning how to subitise to 5! The children have been using their "fast eyes" to say 'how many' they can see and they have even had a go at showing the amount on their fingers too. We have been challenging the children's subitising skills by counting things that we cannot see. The children were great listeners and had to count the number of beats on a drum that they could hear before saying and showing the final amount using their fingers! The children have also been learning about comparison. They have been using mathematical vocabulary 'more than' 'fewer than' and 'equal'. They have also been beginning to use stem sentences to help answer questions e.g. "........ has fewer than ......."

We have been particularly lucky this term to have had some professional visitors who have come into our school to speak to our Early Years children about being healthy and looking after our bodies! We were incredibly grateful to Dr Barton who came into school to speak to the children about human anatomy and how to keep our bodies healthy. Dr Barton spoke about what happens when we visit to the Doctors and showed the children a few of the real Doctor tools that she uses, explained what they are called and how they are used. Dr Barton also drew a picture of the body showing where all of the vital organs are and explained why they are important. Thank you Dr Barton for taking the time to come and share your knowledge with us! We are looking forward to our visit from the Dentist next week to learn all about oral hygiene.

The children have been incredibly inspired by Dr Barton and they have been involved in our Doctor role-play surgery during busy learning. Inspired by the doctor visit, the children have somehow come down with many mysterious 'poorly' symptoms...thankfully, they're all making speedy recoveries and have enjoyed taking on the role of the professionals and patients as well as making notes, lanyards to wear and writing prescriptions!

This week we have been focusing on the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. The children have had a go at drawing their own story map which is carefully sequenced with a beginning, middle and an end. To bring the story to life, the children had the opportunity to taste Baby Bear's porridge for snack on Monday which went down a treat. Some children said it was "too hot", "too cold" but the majority thought it was "just right" and gobbled it all up!

Nursery Rhyme Week!

Our Early Years children had great fun taking part in our 'Magnificent Middle!' They thoroughly enjoyed dressing up as a character from a nursery rhyme! We were so impressed with the children's costumes and dedication to Nursery rhyme week. Most importantly, the children were SO brilliant at getting into character and they showed confidence when performing their nursery rhyme to their class on our pretend stage. They also had many opportunities during the week to get involved in nursery rhyme based activities! What a fun week we had! :-)

Year 1 trip to Windsor Castle

As part of our project 'Super-Duper Heroes!' the Year 1 children visited Windsor Castle!

We had a fun-filled day of activities which included: visiting St. George's Chapel, looking at the Guards that were stood on duty and watching them change, marching like soldiers around Windsor Castle and visiting the State Apartments.

Each class also took part in an 'All about Castles' workshop where we learnt about the history of Windsor Castle starting all the way back to when it was first built nearly 1000 years ago! We got to learn about how and why castles were built and the important defence systems around the castle too.

Year 1 had an amazing trip, and it was a wonderful way to finish our project and consolidate everything we had learnt about Windsor Castle and the Royal Family.

Guardsman Indge visits Year 1

Year 1 were extremely lucky to have a visit from Guardsman Indge! George is a Grenadier Guard and knew Year 1 had been learning all about the role of a guard, so he decided to pop in to FPIS and speak to us about his duties! He brought in his spectacular uniform for us to look at and even his super shiny boots (which he told us he cleans for up to 2 hours to give them that shine!). Gdsm Indge told us all about his role and how he trained to have such an important job. We were all so fascinated by his stories and he answered lots of our questions so we could learn even more! Thank you Gdsm Indge, we loved having you visit us!

Year 1

Year 1 have been busy being creative, marching like soldiers and even becoming castle builders!

Just after half term, we were learning about the Hindu and Sikh festival of Diwali. We used clay to create our own diva lamps and then gathered in the hall as a year group to light our lamps together. We also enjoyed a Diwali workshop where we learnt about the story of Rama and Sita and had a chance to practise some traditional South Asian dance moves to music. It was lovely to be able to come together and learn something new!

This week, we set ourselves an enormous challenge… to build Windsor Castle from scratch! Each class tackled a different part of the castle and made lots of soldiers to guard the entire place! We used our designing, painting, cutting and sticking skills and had so much fun! This has really supported our understanding of the different features of a castle, as we have been studying different castles around the world and why they are built the way they are.

We have also been busy learning about the role of the guards at Windsor Castle. We have been learning about the different companies of guards that look after the sovereign and their royal residencies. We made our own bearskin hats and chose the coloured plume we wanted to wear which represented: the Coldstream, Grenadier, Welsh, Scots or Irish guards. We studied the changing of the guard parade and practised marching like soldiers. We then assembled in the hall with our newly made bearskin hats and proudly marched around the castle!

In Maths we have been adding and subtracting! We have been making our own first, then and now stories using a range of equipment and looking at different ways we can represent our thinking. We have also been looking at length and height. We’ve had lots of fun comparing our heights with our friends and measuring classroom items.

In Outdoor Learning we have started to notice some seasonal changes and have been using our senses to discuss the environment around us and how the weather is constantly changing. We have had lots of fun investigating fossils, drawing nature pictures, listening to the birds and cloud watching. We've also enjoyed using Poddely to construct different buildings in our outdoor space!

Year 2 trip to Oaken Grove Park!

Inspired by all our learning about real-life superheroes we decided to become heroes ourselves! After wrapping up nice and warm and wearing our wellies we took a walk along to Oaken Grove Park where we had three challenges to complete! The first challenge was to explore the nature we could spot in our local area. We loved looking at the autumnal changes which are occurring. We had a list of things to find and got very excited when we spotted some huge mushrooms, different coloured leaves but the highlight was spotting a squirrel! The second challenge was to visit the Sir Nicholas Winton memorial garden. It was a great opportunity for us to explore how Nicholas Winton is remembered and how the Kindertransport has been represented in different ways. Lots of us had seen this before but it was exciting to go and visit it with our newly learnt knowledge. The third and final challenge led us to the picnic area in the park, where we put on some gloves and went to investigate how much litter we could find. We couldn’t believe how much there was and so transformed into real-life superheroes and completed our own litter picking challenge! The picnic area looked amazing once we had given it a good clean!

Despite a range of wintery, chilly weather (including snow!!) the grown-ups were SO impressed with our enthusiasm and commitment to completing all three challenges even though it was cold!

We are very lucky to have such fantastic real-life superheroes representing our school! 😊

Year 2

The Year 2 children have been busy learning all about the role and importance of different real-life superheroes from the past and the present. Part of our Sticky Knowledge for this half term has been to learn about Sir Nicholas Winton and the important role he played in the Kindertransport mission. We have been thinking about how he is remembered as well as other real-life superheroes. This has inspired us to design our own memorials for Nicholas Winton and others. We also learnt about the real-life superheroes we remember for Remembrance Day, this included humans and animals including Sergeant Stubby who we all thought was a real-life superhero for looking after soldiers during the Second World War.

This has also given us inspiration to think about different representations of our world and our School Values. We have been exploring different techniques that we can use with clay to help us design and create our own representations of our School Values. Look out for the results in our next newsletter!

We have also been thinking about how we can be real-life superheroes getting inspiration from the 3R’s (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle). We created our own mind maps about how we can look after our local area including litter picking, promoting the idea of reusing old materials, walking, scooting, or cycling to school rather than using a car and recycling the correct materials.

In Maths we have been exploring addition and subtraction focusing on using our knowledge of number bonds to 10 to support us. This has helped us solve a range of addition problems to 10 and across 10. We have enjoyed using the concrete objects and our newly learnt 'sausage method' during our maths lessons to show our working out!

COP30 assembly - Year 2

Our year 2 children were invited to an exciting online assembly hosted live from COP30. We learnt that COP30 stands for the 30th Conference of the Parties, which is the annual United Nations climate change conference where member countries meet to discuss and negotiate goals to tackle climate change. This year it was held in Brazil and so we participated in an online assembly with lots of other schools from different countries all around the world. It gave us a chance to reflect on the impact of COP30 and we completed an activity where we had to reflect on the questions we would ask world leaders about climate change.

Thanks to Picture News for providing such an insightful opportunity for our children to take part in.

Eco Team

This half term, our Eco Team have been busy learning all about recycling and how small changes can make a big difference! The children enjoyed talking about the importance of looking after our planet by reducing waste and reusing what we can.

Together, the Eco Team explored what items can be recycled at school and at home. To spread the message across the school, the children worked hard to create posters that are now displayed in classrooms and around the building to remind their friends to recycle! The Eco Team hope these will encourage everyone to stop and think before they throw something away!

Well done, Eco Team!

Top Eco Tip: Read the Little Labels! Before recycling a packet or bottle, take a moment to check the on-pack recycling symbols. These tell you what kind of packaging it is, whether it needs rinsing or if it belongs in your compost bin!

School Council

Our School Council did a fantastic job supporting this year's Poppy Appeal. They helped sell poppies, snap bands and a range of other charity gifts to children and families throughout the week. We are very proud of their hard work and enthusiasm, and we'd like to thank everyone who contributed by making a purchase. Together we helped raise money for a very important cause.

Nurture Group

In nurture the children made some lovely firework pictures with black paper chalk. We also made some colourful pictures with white paper and masking tape placed in the shape of each child's initials, we painted over the masking tape then removed it.

In line with our KS1 topic of superheroes, we have been leaning about Hattie the hedgehog who helped her friends get ready for hibernation, this includes an activity around animals that hibernate and sequencing the story.

Awesome Achievements!

Well done Zach for getting a medal from your kickboxing club!

Well done to Orla who is proudly sharing her gymnastics award.

Congratulations to Sienna who has been awarded a Level 2 swimming certificate.

Orla is proudly sharing her swiming badge. Well done super swimmer!

Well done to Lewis who is proudly sharing his Level 2 swimming certificate.

House Points

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 28th November.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 28th November.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

Bingo Night (Friday 14th November)

Bingo Bob was back at the Juniors for another fun night of bingo. There were 8 games in total, 4 traditional numbers bingo and 4 musical bingo games with lots of sing songs in the hall. Well done to all the winners including Danielle who took home the £100 jackpot at the end! Thank you to everyone who came to the event, we hope you enjoyed it.

Oakwood Estates Christmas Fair boards

Thank you to everyone who signed up to have an Oakwood Estates board up outside their house advertising the Christmas Fair. These boards have helped us raise around £450 for both schools.

Tesco Stronger Starts - Every Little Blue Token Helps!

Next time you shop at Tesco, please don't forget to ask for a blue token or two and pop them in the middle box (FPSA). We could win £1,500!

Please take a look at the following video involving none other than British Olympic Champion, Jessica Ennis-Hill.

https://strongerstarts.tesco.com/video/a0434bce-c535-4b59-a8f6-237cb13eab6d

The following stores have voting boxes for you to place the blue tokens into:

Tesco Express, Furze Platt (closest to FPIS & FPJS)
Tesco Express, Maidenhead Bath Road (next to Majestic Wine)
Tesco Express, Maidenhead High Street
Tesco Superstore, Taplow (Bishops Centre)
Tesco Express, Slough
Tesco Express, Burnham

Christmas Cards

Thank you for placing orders recently, we hope to have the goods back in early December. We hope to have raised ~£750 from this fundraiser!

Personalised name label stickers

We have an updated discount code for buying school uniform labels and labels for water bottles etc. from the 'Easy2Name' company. 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. 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.

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

Copas Farms - Turkey Cashback Scheme

Copas Farms based locally in Cookham, are once again supporting the FPSA. For every order placed with them using the code FPJS24PTA, we will receive 5% of the order value.

Dates for your Diary:

Christmas Fair - Saturday 6th December (11.30am - 2.30pm)

With only a week to go, we still need lots of help with running the Christmas Fair please. In particular, we have many stalls that need volunteers to help run them. Please can you spare an hour of your time to go on a stall? Without enough volunteers, stalls will open late, close early or worse, not run at all.

Here is the volunteer link: https://volunteersignup.org/9QPTK

This week, your child came home with an important letter about the Christmas Fair as well as 2 empty tombola cups. Cups are to be filled with toys, stationery, stickers and sweets, then covered with cling film or foil. Filled cups should be brought back to school on Friday 5th December and in return, your child can come in non-uniform that day.

Junior Discos - Thursday 11th December

If you have child at the Junior School, tickets are on sale for the upcoming discos with DJs King and Sawle back in action.

Tickets can be purchased at www.pta-events.co.uk/fpsa

Murder Mystery Event - Friday 27th February 2026

Tickets are now on sale for our very first ever 'Murder Mystery' event which takes place at the end of February next year. The Juniors hall will be turned into an old library in a 'Death at Dinner Club' performance from Moonstone Murder Mysteries company.

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

Useful Information for Parents and Families

Drop in flu clinic poster.pdf

tracking-devices.pdf

ai-generated-videos.pdf

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