Newsletter 1 - 6th September 2024

Welcome Back To School!

Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you have all had a restful summer. The staff have been busy over the holiday preparing their classrooms and the school site ready for the children to return this week. It has been a delight to welcome the children in Year 1 and 2 back to school and to meet the children who have just joined us in Early Years.

We have made some exciting changes to the way we teach reading, writing and phonics, by adopting the Pip and Pap Phonics programme.  The children have also been excited to learn how to improve their letter formation and handwriting using Kinetic Letters.  We will provide you with further information in due course about both of these approaches.

We have a number of exciting events coming up this term, including family assemblies, the Laser Show and ultimately the Christmas Fayre and Christmas performances.   We send out a newsletter every Friday to keep you informed of key events and provide you with any important information you may need.  This can also be found on our school website.

We are looking forward to working with you and your children this academic year.  As always if you have any questions or queries do not hesitate to speak to your child's class teacher in the first instance.

Ms N Riches, Headteacher

Learning This Week

Year 1

Year 1 have had a wonderful first week and have settled in brilliantly. The children have been enjoying exploring their new classrooms and have started their first Art unit on self portraits. They have been using oil pastels, crayons and chalk to practise their drawing skills and have tried out different sketching pencils ready to draw their own masterpieces. Well done Year 1!  


If any one has any cardboard boxes, please may you bring them into Year One on Monday morning, for their English lesson? Thank you!

Year 2

What an incredible week Year 2 have had! The children were buzzing with excitement as they dove into the story of Little Answer, using their brilliant inference skills to uncover how the characters might be feeling just from the front cover. In Computing, they have been having so much fun learning how to take a photograph correctly and then explored different types of equipment that could be used to do this. They then had a set of challenges to take different types of photos such as a 'selfie'. It's been a joyful and fantastic start to Year 2, and the children can't wait for all the adventures to come! 

Welcome Back Menu!

Our catering provider, Aspens are laying on a special "Welcome Back" menu on Thursday 19th September. All children with special diet menus will be provided with a allergy / intolerance safe option of the menu on this day. 


Flu Immunisations

FLU POSTER - PRIMARY.pdf

The school nurses are coming in on Wednesday 16th October to administer the flu vaccinations to the children. In order for your child to receive their dose, you will need to complete the form online via the attached poster. You can scan the QR code or go to the website here. Consent needs to be given no later 2 working days beforehand.

Please complete the form to confirm even if you do not want your child to have their vaccine.


Managing Illnesses & Absences

We understand that it can sometimes be tricky to know when your child is well enough to come to school, and when they should be kept at home. 

Please see the following NHS website for more information on Is my child too ill for school?

We do have a child in Year One in our school who is immunocompromised. This means they are taking medications and / or having treatments which do not allow their body to fight illnesses as well as others. A common cold for one child may mean weeks of illness for an immunocompromised child. Please be sensitive to this when considering if your child is well enough for school, especially if they may have come into contact with Chicken Pox, etc. 

Please keep in mind that the spread of illness can affect our children, staff and anyone visiting or volunteering at our school.  Sickness & diarrhoea is always a 48 hour exclusion period from the last episode.

FISHES News

We would like to thank you all again for the incredible amount you helped us to raise last school year.  We have lots of fun and exciting events planned for this year including a couple of new things! Please see attached the list of dates and make a note in diary - more information will follow about each of them nearer the time.

Thank you to all our new parents that came to our coffee afternoon on Thursday it was nice to meet lots of new faces and we hope to see you at lots of our future events. If you would like to find out more about getting involved please do get in contact at freegroundsfishes@gmail.com


Asda's Cashpot for Schools

This is really exciting! Asda have teamed up with Joe Wicks and are doing Cashpots for Schools. If you can download the Asda Rewards app and select our school we will receive a percentage of your spend (this will not affect any of your rewards). And that’s not all — every time a customer chooses us, Asda will donate £1 to our Cashpot, plus a further £50 when the first customer shops. So even if you don't shop at Asda please download the app and choose our school!


Bags2School

We have our next bag2school collection on 26th September. Please see attached information sheet of what items we are able to take - please do not bring your bags to school until the morning of this date. This will also be a non-uniform day in return for any donations. Whilst we appreciate any donation for this event, children that do not have anything to donate are still welcome to come in non-uniform. All bags are to be put in the wooden shelter on the playground on this morning. If you are dropping your child to Pippins earlier in the morning, the playground will be accessible for you to drop your bag off at this time.


Quiz Night

We are really excited about the return of our quiz night! These are always lots of fun and a good way to meet others within the school. Doors open at 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start and it's held in the school hall. Entry is £5 per person, and teams can be up to 8 people - please bring your own drinks (alcoholic or otherwise) and snacks/food. There are lots of new rounds and the opportunity to purchase other things on the night so please bring cash with you. Tickets can be purchased from http://buytickets.at.fishes


Laser Show

We have been overwhelmed by ticket sales for the upcoming Laser Show. As we had sold 100% of tickets we managed to secure permission to increase our numbers so if you have not got your tickets yet make sure you do soon to take advantage of the early bird price! We are also still looking for sponsors for the event, so if you would like some advertising of your company please do contact us and we can send you over the information as there are a number of different packages. Sponsorship provides advertising for the company but also helps us to maximise our fundraising efforts.


AGM

FISHES are holding their AGM on Tuesday 8th October at 6.30pm in school. Everyone is invited to this and it is a good opportunity to find out about the past year and what is coming up in the new year. You are welcome to share ideas and find out how you can help.  We look forward to seeing as many of you there as possible. Please could we ask you to complete the following google form - all committee members are required to stand down from their roles and there is an opportunity to make any nominations on this form. https://forms.gle/ayY1pypPgBnqGbjN8 Please also see attached the agenda for this meeting, if there is anything you would like added please do let us know. 


Southampton Marathon

You may remember a few newsletters back that we said a couple of us were doing the Southampton Marathon in April 2025 and we will be fundraising for FISHES. This is just a reminder that others are more than welcome to join us and there is still time to sign up and train! If you do not want to do a full marathon there is still the option for 10k and a half marathon. You will also see that in the attached list of dates we will be getting the children involved in this also - more information to follow. 


Emotional Wellbeing

The Priory have designed an emotional wellbeing programme for children - please take some time to look through the website which contains videos, excercises and handouts which may be of benefit to your child(ren).

Nut Free School

We would like to remind parents that we are a nut free school. We have members of both the staff and student community who are anaphylactic to nuts of all varieties. This includes obvious things like hazelnut spread in sandwiches, but also many types of cereal bars and biscuits also contain nuts. Please check the ingredients list of all food items that you send into school. 

Year Group Home Learning Newsletters

Please see links below to the most recent home learning newsletters.

EYFS

Year 1

Year 2


Attendance This Week

If you are struggling to get your child/ren to school on time each day, please do get in touch so we can try to help.



Dates for Your Diary

Class Assemblies

All class assemblies will be in the school hall @ 9.00am.


Parent Lunches (EYFS only)

More information on these will be sent nearer the time.


FISHES Dates



INSET Days 2024/2025

You can view Hampshire term dates at any time here.

Head Teacher Awards

Green Class - Axel for Independence and Thinking, Alba for Resilience

Orange Class  - Orien for Independence, Arthur for Resilience

Purple Class  - Rhys for Creatvity, Evan for Respect

Scarlet Class  - Maria K for Independence & Thinking, Toby for Respect, Thinking & Creativity

Turquoise Class  - Ruben for Respect, Jessie for Independence

Our Values

At Freegrounds we have a set of Values which underpin the children’s spiritual, moral, cultural and social development and learning. As a school we decided what values were important to us and we strongly believe that they are central to good citizenship and lifelong learning. We have taken some time as a school to revisit and modify our values.  They are…