Seahorses and Starfish Everywhere!
Welcome to the blog page for the Foundation Unit.
We are calling our room "The Rockpool" this year as our whole school is learning about the animals that live in the oceans.
Our F1 class will be known as "Seahorses"
Our F2 class will be known as "Starfish"
You have already had your first newsletter, but I have attached it to the bottom of this blog should you need another copy.
Click here to see how busy they have all been already over the last few days!
We have really appreciated your patience this week allowing us to get used to the new routines and classroom arrangements. As you can appreciate we have a big F2 class this year and drop off and pick up times are work in progress. We are confident that as the children become more independent and routines become familiar, this handover period will settle into a calm, safe transition.
Things that you can do to help...
Bear with us!
The room is set up hopefully to have a flow. As the children come in, they could firstly find their named starfish or seahorse and put it onto the correct dinner board. They could then drop off their book bag into the correct basket and finally hang up their coats and leave their packed lunches in the crates. Then they will be ready to independently move to their Starfish or Seahorse corners where a member of staff will be waiting.
It would greatly assist us if, as soon as your child has happily gone to their corner, you could leave the cloakroom area allowing other parents to help their children and keeping the zone as free flow as possible. With such a lot of children all coming in at the same time it can get congested. A member of staff will be outside if you want to pass a message on or have a chat about your child. Or, if you just want to have general catch up with each other please feel free to do this just outside the cloakroom too.
At the end of the day we are currently hoping to encourage the children to get their own coats, lunch boxes and drinks bottles. As we see you arrive to pick up your child we will open the doors to the cloakroom zone where you could find your child's book bag and choose one of the "Fifty Favourite Stories" we have put together for you to borrow. Alternatively you could wait for your child to be handed safely over and they could choose the book they would like.
F1 children are released first at 3:20pm. On the odd occasion if you are running late, do not worry as we will put them in with the F2 children to keep them happy and not get anxious. They will then be released at 3:30pm with the Starfish class.
If we feel the cloakroom area is getting too congested we will let a few parents and children in at a time so we can make sure the transition time is a safe and calm experience for everyone. This may mean having to wait just a few minutes extra but safety is obviously paramount.
We are very much looking forward to working in "The Rockpool". We want to build a strong relationship with you and your children so please feel free to talk to us about any concerns you have or even better any good news you would like to share!
Our Foundation Team are
Starfish Class - Mrs Lindley ( Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday) and Mrs Gerrard (Thursday and Friday)
Seahorse Class - Mrs Boon
Classroom assistants - Mrs Gibaldi, Mrs James, Miss Robinson and Miss Waugh.
We will also be welcoming Miss Baxter to assist her with her training.