Weekly Bulletin 8 January 2025

8th January 2025  

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 29thJanuary. It is the year of the Snake. We are lucky to have some staff and parents 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. I will send out a simple version of the story for you to enjoy with your children in next week’s bulletin. 

Both Chinese/Lunar New Year and Valentines Day, take place during this half term, these festivals give us the chance to share more stories, cooking activities and card making activities.  

This term we are also holding a parent evening workshop focusing on the development of Communication Language and Literacy. The workshop is on Tuesday 11th 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 at Homerton, and how you can help at home to develop these key skills for your child, so please put this date in your diary and come along if you can. The workshop is just for adults.  

Please remember to apply for a primary school place by Wednesday 15th January 2025, if your child is due to go on to school in September 2025.  

Homerton has a vacancy for a parent governor so if any parents are interested in taking on this valuable role please come and talk to me and I can tell you a little more about it. The office will be sending out a separate email about this later today.  

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

When I walked around the Nursery this morning it was great to see how quickly the children have settled back into life at Homerton, and how happy they were playing and learning together. I hope you will enjoy looking at the photos I took this morning.  

Tuesday 11th February 2025 – Parents evening workshop on Communication, Language and Literacy 7.30pm-8.45pm 

Half Term holiday 17th– 21st February 2025 – 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 15th January 2025