CCI Newsletter 1st - 5th December 2025

Cheam Common Infants' Academy

Weekly Newsletter

Monday 1st - Friday 5th December 2025

Cheam Common Infants' Academy: Balmoral Road, Worcester Park, KT4 8SS

Email: ccioffice@leoacademytrust.co.uk https://www.cheamcommoninfants.com/

Message from the Principal

Christmas excitement is truly mounting here at CCI! This week saw the arrival of many elves in our children's households and the arrival into school of many children full of advent calendar chocolate. Next week is packed with a range of Christmas celebrations: Reception and Nursery performances from Monday to Wednesday, followed by Christmas Jumper Day, a Rocksteady concert, and Christmas Lunch on Thursday. The week culminates with the Elf Run on Friday. Of course, between all the festive fun, we will be continuing with our regular lessons, from phonics, maths, and English to the wider curriculum. For the Elf Run on Friday, all children are welcome to wear trainers to school instead of their school shoes.

We heard your requests for a school-approved rucksack! Following on from our guidance on using book bags instead of oversized rucksacks, many parents explained that a rucksack was more practical for carrying packed lunches and water bottles. Schoolwear Inc has designed a suitably sized school rucksack that addresses these needs. It features a side pocket for water bottles and is sized to fit the plastic book bags used for children’s books. These rucksacks are not oversized and will hang neatly on pegs. Opting for the school rucksack means a separate school book bag is not required.

https://www.schoolwearinc.co.uk/school/cheam-common-infants/

Unfortunately, along with the Christmas cheer we've welcomed into school, a few unwelcome germs seem to have joined us too. Please remember we are only able to administer prescribed medication to your children and cannot give ad-hoc Calpol. We have increased our cleaning schedule and will contact you if your child is too unwell to attend school. Please ensure your contact details on Arbor are up to date so that we can reach you if necessary.

Wishing you a happy and healthy weekend.

Mrs Hughes

Parent Workshops

Seesaw Workshop Slides

Phonics Workshop Slides

Phonics: Yellow Group and Beyond Slides

Reception Curriculum Meeting Slides

Coming January 2026

Date TBC: English as an Additional Language - how to support your child

School Updates

☕️ SEND Coffee Morning ☕️

A reminder that our next SEND Coffee Morning is on Friday 12th December, hosted at CCJ at 8:45am.

If you would like to register your attendance or find out more information, please complete this Google Form.

🌱 Spring Term Clubs 🌱

You will have received information about how to book your child into Spring Term Clubs this week.

Please read the email carefully and complete the Google Form.

🎵 Christmas Performances 🎵

We hope you have these dates in your diary for our festive performances:

Reception (Badgers and Foxes): Monday 8th December (2pm)

Reception (Squirrels and Hedgehogs): Tuesday 9th December (2pm)

Nursery: Wednesday 10th December (9:15am)

Year 1 and 2: Tuesday 16th December (9:15am) - Year 1 parents invited @ Christ Church with St Philip

Year 1 and 2: Wednesday 17th December (9:15am) - Year 2 parents invited @ Christ Church with St Philip

🎄Christmas Jumper Day 🎄

We are welcoming all children to wear a Christmas jumper to school on Thursday 11th December.

As Christmas is a busy and expensive time of the year, we will be splitting any cash donations received on Friday 12th December between Save the Children and the Children's Trust. We hope that this helps us to continue supporting out families.

This day coincides with our Christmas Lunch, so we're hoping it can be a festive day all round!

Please do not feel that you have to buy a Christmas jumper for this occasion. Any red, green or sparkly jumper (or even school jumpers) will be perfect,

Elf Run

Friday 12th December

We have been invited to take part in the 'Elf Run' to raise money for the Children's Trust later this term. On Friday, we welcomed Marjorie, from the charity, who spoke to the children about the good work that the charity does.

On Friday 12th December, children will taking part in our Elf Run: they will be given elf hats to wear, and we will take time out of our school day to spend some time running in the playground, listening to festive tunes.

To raise money for this cause, you can donate here or bring in £1 on the day. You can find out more about the Children's Trust here. Please note that any cash donated will be split between Save the Children and the Children's Trust.

⚽ Sutton United vs Shrewsbury Town ⚽

Fixture Highlight: Sutton United vs Shrewsbury Town - Emirates FA Cup - Sat 6 Dec, 15:00

This is a huge game for the club as we look to progress to the next round of the FA Cup, where we could face some of the biggest names in football! This could be the start of our next historic FA cup run and we would love for you to be a part of it. Under 14s tickets are just £2 and an adult and a child can attend for only £20, so let's fill the stands with as many fans as possible.

Tickets can be purchased directly via this link: https://suttonunitedfc.ktckts.com/product/SUTFACUPROUND2

We hope to see you there cheering the team on, it promises to be a fantastic atmosphere and a great day out for young fans, teams, and community groups.

👂Year 1: Routine Hearing Screening 👂

Please note that we will not be offering free routine hearing screenings in Year 1 this year.

If you are worried about your child's hearing, you can book a free hearing test at Boots. Click here for more information.

Breakfast and After School Club: How to change, book or update

Please email cciwac@leoacademytrust.co.uk or phone 07739360621.

Email communication

If you are emailing in with a message about your child, please include their name and class (ideally in the subject line). Collectively, this will save our office staff a huge amount of time.

Sutton School Nurse details

School Nurse leaflet 5-11.pdf

Important Information: School Place Applications for September 2026

Crucial information for parents regarding applications for both Reception and Year 3 Junior school places for September 2026. If you have already submitted your application or this does not relate to you, please ignore.

It is imperative that you submit an application, as current Nursery and Year 2 children do not automatically receive a place.

Key Information & Resources:

Application Deadline: The national deadline for both Reception and Year 3 is 15th January 2026.

Where to Apply:

For both Reception and Year 3 Junior School Places: You must complete the application for the Local Authority (LA) you pay your council tax to, regardless of where your preferred schools are located. If your LA is not the London Borough of Sutton, please refer to your own LA's admissions section.

London Borough of Sutton Rec Guidance Booklet: Primary School guidance booklet (for reception applications).

London Borough of Sutton Junior Guidance Booklet: Junior school guidance booklet (for Year 3 applications).

Primary Reception Key Dates

Junior School Key Dates

Online Application System: https://www.eadmissions.org.uk/

Video Guide: A video with screenshots to walk you through the online application process is available on YouTube.

Upcoming School Open Days

Local schools will be holding open days throughout the autumn term.

CCI open day dates are advertised on our website: https://www.cheamcommoninfants.com/720/admissions.

Please sign up for a specific tour time using the Google Form link provided on that webpage.

We look forward to welcoming you!

Important Information: Nursery Applications

Academic Year 2026/2027

Crucial information for parents apply for the Nursery for September 2026, January and April 2027 intake. If you have already submitted your application or this does not relate to you, please ignore.

It is imperative that you submit an application, directly to the school.

Key Information & Resources:

Application Deadline: The deadline is 15th January 2026 (no later than 3.30pm)

Nursery Application Form 2026/2027

CCIA Starting Nursery Guidance 2026/2027

Nursery Admissions Policy 2026/2027

Labelled belongings

It would be appreciated if all children's belongings were labelled clearly with their name, especially jumpers, coats and water bottles.

Family Support Worker - referral form

If you would like to explore ways that our Family Support Worker could support your family, please complete this Google Form.

Universal Breakfast Club

School lunches

Here are the lunch options for next week.

Please note Thursday's lunch choice will be Christmas dinner (details below).

You can see Autumn Term options here.

Weekly School and Sporting News Stories

Early Years

Reception have continued their learning about the story of The Gingerbread Man. They have made story maps and had great fun innovating some new characters to chase the Gingerbread Man. They also wrote alternative endings to the story such as the Gingerbread Man escaping on a skateboard. Christmas festivities have also started this week as the children have been busy rehearsing their nativity and helping to make decorations for the classroom.

Year 1

Year One has had a tremendously successful and engaging week!

In English, our new ability grouping system has proven incredibly effective, allowing us to deliver highly specific and targeted lessons; the children have enjoyed creating lists of supplies for the Queen's Royal Tea Party and writing a special invitation from Her Majesty to the Egg Box Dragon.

In Mathematics, students are now confidently mastering odd and even numbers, using tools like Numicon and tens frames, explaining, for instance, that '6 is an even number because it has a flat top and is made of three pairs.' Design Technology saw great excitement as the children constructed their product: a slide! They were amazing at anchoring the structures, and although some found the joining of the slide, tower, and ladder challenging, every child finished the project successfully.

Finally, in Science, a fun investigation into the best umbrella material led them to test metal, plastic, paper, and fabric, concluding that plastic is superior due to its waterproof properties. It has truly been a busy, fun, and productive week of learning!

Year 2

This week in writing, Year 2 wrote heartfelt apology letters to ‘Blue Crayon’ offering suggestions of how to cheer up the exhausted, overworked crayon. The children demonstrated their developing composition skills by adding detail to clauses with subordinate conjunctions and using a range of punctuation. They also ensured they included all the features of informal letters.

In Maths, we have begun our work on 2D shape. The children learnt about the properties of polygons. They went on to explore a variety of regular and irregular 2D shapes, sorting them according to numbers of sides and vertices before working in pairs to create their own criteria for sorting them further. They really enjoyed developing their mathematical vocabulary and learning about octagons, nonagons and decagons!

On Thursday the children demonstrated some impressive cartography skills by drawing sketch maps of our local area. Their maps included a title, compass rose, a key, symbols and colours to represent different land use.

After weeks of finger fluency and designing the children were delighted to finally get the chance to bring their ideas to life in Design and Technology. Thank you to everyone who sent in cardboard boxes, your donations have been transformed into wonderfully colourful and fully functioning litter pickers!

Great work this week Year 2, well done!

Birthday celebrations

Polite reminder...

As you know, we are a healthy school and therefore ask if your child would like to celebrate their birthday, they donate a book to a library instead of bringing treats. This also ensures there are no concerns over allergies.

We will share any photos of children and their birthday books here every week!

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Govind (Year 1)

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⭐️ School Achievements ⭐️

🐝 Weekly 3 Bees Certificate 🐝

⭐️ Star of the Week ⭐️

This week's Explorer Value is 'Empathy.

🐝 Nursery 🐝

Cygnets - Grace

Ducklings - Hallie

🐝 Reception 🐝

Badgers - Maya

Foxes - Maya

Hedgehogs - Miley

Squirrels -

⭐️ Nursery ⭐️

Cygnets - Emily L

Ducklings - Izzy

⭐️ Reception ⭐️

Badgers - Harry

Foxes - Jaslyn

Hedgehogs - Khari

Squirrels -

🐝 Year 1 🐝

Finches - Khalid

Robins - Lochlan

Sparrows - Mark

Wrens - Penny

🐝 Year 2 🐝

Eagles - Raeesa

Falcons - Caden

Kestrels - Isaac

Owls - Aylin

⭐️ Year 1 ⭐️

Finches - Ethan

Robins - Felicity

Sparrows - Eeshal

Wrens - Govind

⭐️ Year 2 ⭐️

Eagles - Luke

Falcons - Jai

Kestrels - Robin

Owls - Marnie

Out of school achievements

If you would like to share your child's achievements outside of school with us, we'd love to hear them! Please complete this short form to tell us all about it!

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Abeer (Reception)

Abeer is proud of his second medal for football skills this term at JD Sports club. Well done, Abeer!

BLANK (Year 1)

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Autumn 2 Curriculum Newsletters and Home Learning

Click on the links below to read our curriculum newsletters. On these, you can find out the topics that your children will be learning about, as well as information about home learning, PE days and general reminders for their year group.

Reception Year 1 Year 2

Important information

Communication

To help us assist you more efficiently when you email the school office, we kindly request that you include your child's class along with their name in your correspondence.

While we know all our students very well, having the class information readily available helps us to quickly identify your child and address your queries without any delay or guesswork.

For example, please consider writing: "Regarding [Child's Full Name], [Class, e.g., Year R - Squirrels]" in the subject line or at the beginning of your email.

Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated and will help us continue to provide the best possible support to you and your children.

Thank you for your understanding.

Moving address

If you have moved address, it is imperative that you inform the school office as soon as you have moved. It is a requirement that the school has up to date details particularly in case of an emergency.

Please email the school office ccioffice@leoacademytrust.co.uk if your details need updating. Alternatively you can update them using the Arbor App.

Reporting Attendance

We ask that you use one of the google forms below to report absence.

Request for Exceptional Absence form in advance for future appointments and exception absence.

Cheam Common Infants' Absence Form for sickness and same day medical appointments.

They are also available to complete on our website using the parent tab.

We do not authorise holidays during term time. If your child is going to be off school due to an exceptional circumstance, then please complete this form:

You can also log same-day absences for your children directly through the Parent Portal or Arbor App. Simply navigate to the Attendance section, click "Log Absence," and fill in the details. You can adjust the start and end times if it is not a full-day absence. Once submitted, school staff will review and either approve or reject the request. You will see approved absences in the Attendance tab.

Please note, this feature is only for same-day absences; for any extended or future absences, please continue to complete and submit the request for exceptional absence. We will also continue to use the same day absence google form. If you need to change an unapproved absence request, you will need to delete it and create a new one, as editing is not possible. Once an absence is approved, it cannot be deleted through the app, so you will need to contact the school for any further modifications

Autumn Term Dates

Please find below all the key dates and times for the Autumn Term.

PTA events are shown in this colour. Please see below for more details.

New dates

2025 - 2026 Term dates

Monday 8th December: Badgers and Foxes Christmas Performance (2pm)

Tuesday 9th December: Squirrels and Hedgehogs Christmas Performance (2pm)

Wednesday 10th December: Nursery Christmas Performance (9:15am)

Thursday 11th December: Rocksteady Concert (9:30am)

Thursday 11th December: Christmas Jumper Day

Thursday 11th December: Christmas Lunch

Friday 12th December: SEND Coffee Morning

Friday 12th December: Elf Run

Tuesday 16th December: 9.15 Christmas Performance (Y1 and Y2 performing) Y1 parents/carers invited

Wednesday 17th December: 9.15 Christmas Performance (Y1 and Y2 performing) Y2 parents/carers invited

Friday 19th December: End of term, early finish 2.10pm

Friends of Cheam Common - Updates

The Friends of Cheam Common now has Facebook group, where you can follow any updates on upcoming events or how you can get involved.

Secondhand Uniform

A gentle reminder, please only donate the items listed below.

Logo jumper

Logo cardigan

Logo fleece

Logo waterproof jacket

Logo PE tshirt

Logo polo shirts

Junior PE black quarter zip top

Ties

Red PE shorts

Please do not donate, shirts, or grey uniform items; we have very limited storage space and we can’t store those items currently. We will let you know when we are able to accept these items again.

Thank you so much for supporting the second hand uniform sale on Friday. We are delighted that good quality school uniform can be reused and help families.

Going forward, we need to reduce the uniform service that we offer unfortunately. We will no longer be taking uniform email requests for the foreseeable future. The uniform service has expanded immensely with donations and requests over the past year. Whilst it has been absolutely wonderful to offer this service to the school community; sadly, we don't have the volunteers to sustain the huge amount of time this service requires.

However, we are very happy to still offer a termly uniform sale, where we'll have plenty of uniform on offer to stock up for the term ahead.

Please leave donations at either the Infants’ or Junior’s office.

We hope you understand the decision we've had to take, and we thank you, as always, for your continued support.

SEND & Inclusion Updates

Click the image above for further information!

Sutton Dyslexia Association

The next meeting of Sutton Dyslexia Association will be via zoom. It is a 2 Part course for parents, entitled "How to help your child with Dyslexia"

Monday 1st December 2025, 8-9 pm

Monday 26th January 2026, 8-9 pm.

The first session deals with the experience of dyslexia for child and parent and how to give support.

The second session is looking at reading, spelling, and writing, and how to help. It also looks at the school structure and the exam process.

The course will be led by Louise Selby, who is a teacher with a level 7 specialist qualification in teaching and assessing learners with specific learning difficulties and dyslexia. She has written a program called Morph Mastery.

If you would like to join the meeting, please send your first name, surname and email address to

admin@suttondyslexia.org

You will be sent access details the morning of the meeting , so that you can join the talk from 7.45 pm.

Keeping Safe Online

DIGI Safe - Keeping Children Safe Online

LGFL have launched a wonderfully informative and practical website full of resources to help keep children safe online. With videos, informative guides and top tips, there is lots to explore to help keep your child safe whilst online. To visit, click here.

Family Support