Infants

Reception

What is normality? Everyone’s “normal” is different, unique and completely right for that individual. However, for an average 4-5 year old, it is fairly safe to say that normality involves a lot of practical, hand-on, interactive and fun experiences. A life of watching, playing, interacting and exploring.

When lockdown arrived, everyone’s “normal” completely changed. All of a sudden, these little children had to cope with a whole different agenda, and wow! …did they cope with it so very well. In an ever-changing technological world, our cherubs learnt to meet us online each day and embrace communication and learning over the internet. They learnt so quickly that we can carry on and Covid would not hold us back. They remained positive and knew that one day we would be back in the classroom and back playing with our friends. The children have amazed us with their resilience, understanding and hopefulness. They have accepted the challenges and trusted the directions from adults, showing patience and acceptance. Indeed, our 4-5 year olds can teach us adults a few things too... that life goes on, that we can make the most of a difficult situation and that, in time, we will return to our “normal”, too. Should another obstacle come our way, we know that our Reception children can cope brilliantly and embrace the character-building notion that we all deep-down know is so true. Well done Reception, you are amazing!

Year 1

It has been another disrupted academic year for the children of Year 1 but, despite their young age, they have persevered and given of their best in all areas of the curriculum. Whether working at school or at home, the children were resilient and resourceful and simply got on with the job and made their teacher very proud!

It was a busy Autumn Term, with the highlight being the Infant Nativity. The children of Year 1 were delighted to be cast as the main characters and learnt the songs and their lines brilliantly. Although social distancing meant that the occasion was videoed without parents being able to see them perform live, the show still did go on and the children were amazing.

During lockdown, we had key worker children in school, ably supported by a variety of staff, and our daily story times, online, were lovely occasions for the children to ‘meet’ as a whole class. There was lots of waving, shouting and chatting but the story was read in the end! An impromptu ‘Friday dressing up day’ began to materialise with Harry Potter, fairies, Superman, princesses and snowmen, to name but a few, turned up for their lessons instead of the children! We also saw the welcome addition of kittens, puppies, mice and rabbits to the children’s home, via online technology, and we even tried to spot the pony in the paddock!

Whilst online learning went well, we were all delighted to be back together in bubble for the last three weeks of the Spring Term. With the luxury of being back in a beautiful classroom with great outside space, we have made the most of this on every

occasion. The children have loved being able to continue their learning inside and out. They performed their class assembly on ‘friendships’, and it was lovely to see their paintings and hear the special words they wrote about their friends.

Our class trip to Fisher’s Farm was sadly cancelled, but the children were once again amazing and we instead spent the day in the woods near the school, climbing trees, making dens, having a fabulous picnic lunch and generally having lots of fun.

Well done, Year 1, on all your efforts this year. We wish you a wonderful Year 2 as the ‘top infants’ and thank you for saying you’ll come back to help with “the little ones” next year!

Year 2

In January, the positive outcomes from the first lockdown became evident: everyone’s technology skills and levels of independence had grown significantly during remote learning. The obstacles to successful learning were no longer to do with understanding how to adapt to online learning, replaced instead by overcoming the challenges and frustrations of poor internet signals and faulty microphones.

With regular live lessons, the real highlight of home learning was the daily joy of seeing a screen full of happy smiley faces. Every lesson was full of enthusiasm and effort from the children, a testament to their love of learning. With so many hands up to answer questions, volunteers to share their work and a constant stream of completed home learning tasks on Seesaw, you could be forgiven for thinking we were still in the classroom.

Opportunities to get away from the screen and engage in practical activities were the most enjoyable. For Year 2, one such activity involved a hunt for shapes around the house. With a spinner choosing a random 3-D shape, each child had to race to find an object with the matching properties as quickly as possible and bring it back to the virtual lesson to share their discovery. They also enjoyed our topic in science investigating different states of matter, learning about solids, liquids and gases and getting very messy along the way! Through mixing ingredients, they made their own slime, an amazing substance with both properties of a liquid and a solid. It was runny and gooey to hold but when pushed became rock solid! Later, whilst investigating melting and freezing, there were some particularly mucky hands as children held tight to pieces of chocolate to see how quickly it would melt.

Emotions were mixed about returning to school but the overwhelming shared feeling was excitement to see friends again. Year 2 had a fantastic day out at the seaside engaging in lots of learning for our art, geography and history. However, it was the chance to spend the day together, playing by the sea and collecting stones and shells that made for such a memorable day. That, and witnessing the fierce ecowarriors they have become, sweeping across Hayling Island and tracking down every last piece of rubbish they could find!