Weekly Bulletin 10 January 2024

10^th January 2024

Dear Parents

Wishing you a very Happy New Year from all of us at Homerton.

Thank you again for all good wishes and kindness over the Christmas period, we hope you all had a good break. The children have been enjoying telling us all about their holidays and their different celebrations.

Chinese is our language of this half term.  Please see the attached sheet with fun activities for you to enjoy doing with your children. Thank you to Tamsin and Dong for putting this resource sheet together. Highlights for us this term include celebrating Chinese/Lunar New Year, which starts on 10^thFebruary, and is the year of the Dragon. We are lucky to have a number of staff who are experts on these celebrations, so can help us plan appropriate creative activities focusing particularly cooking, art and dance.

We are also continuing to celebrate story telling this half term with our Core book, which is ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’.  This ‘Once upon a time’ story gives the opportunity for children to learn about simple story structure, characterisation and plot. The staff are also hoping to put on a play of Goldilocks for the children to enjoy later in the term.

Both Shrove Tuesday (Pancake day), and Valentine’s day, fall in this half term, these festivals give us the chance to share more stories, cooking activities and card making activities.

You are warmly invited to a parent workshop on Thursday 1^st February at 7.30pm-8.45pm.  This workshop is being delivered by Jacqui Davies, our West Room teacher, and will focus on how we teach Communication, Language and Literacy here at Homerton and how you can help at home to develop these key skills for your child.  Please put this date in your diary, book yourselves a baby sitter, and come along.

Please remember to apply for a primary school place by Monday 15^th January 2024, if your child is due to go on to school in September 2024.

As the weather is much colder suddenly can I ask that you provide your children with warm layers of clothing, including a named warm coat, hat, gloves, and scarf.

Children in East Room have been using brushes in dry sand, and pencils on paper,  to practice writing their names, sometimes with the help of their name cards to see how the letter shapes are formed.

South Room have been playing with our jungle animals in a forest made from green shredded wrapping paper.

South Room have also been looking at the number puzzles and carefully deciding which puzzle piece goes with which number.

West Room have been celebrating birthdays from the holidays

Nest Yellow have been enjoying playing with playdough whilst also chatting to friends and developing turn taking skills as they share cutters.

And Nest Green have been playing the musical instruments to different nursery rhymes – when I took this photo they were all singing and playing along to ‘Old McDonald’, choosing different farm animals each time.

Thursday 1^st February 2024 – Parents evening workshop on Communication, Language and Literacy 7.30pm-8.45pm

Half Term holiday 19^th-23^rd February 2024 – holiday club will be running this week so please book your children in when Mel sends out the email. 

Applying for Reception places – Please remember the deadline for applications is 15^th January 2024