Our Reception and Y1-2 classes had a great school trip to the local Club Deportivo Squash to practise a range of new sports in a fun way. Having fun while exercising is the key to a healthier life which we try to embrace through our PE lessons at school. This trip has been a great launch to our ‘Healthy Me’ PSHE topic with which our pupils learn all about how the human body works and how to stay healthy. It is important not only to eat healthy, but to also live an active lifestyle.

KISE pupils from all classes have thought about the things they would like to include in the time capsule that has been buried in the garden to be opened in 25 years time on the 75th anniversary of King’s Group. The children have included photos of the school and of the activities we have done and a letter for the future generations of the school along with items they believe may be obsolete in 25 years time, such as scissors (we may cut with lasers!), glue, a phone, a plastic bottle, and a memory stick. Our school council was very interested to see how things have changed at King's College Schools over the last 50 years. Black and white photos of even of our own head teacher back in his days as a pupil. Our school counsellors also help bury the time capsule in the garden.

Every February we learn more about the Chinese culture while celebrating the Chinese New Year. We marked this special day by dressing in red, we made lanterns and dragons to decorate the halls and learnt about the year of the pig and the many traditions to welcome the new year with good luck and prosperity. Some on our Chinese pupils even shared their own traditions with the rest of the class.

Pupils are presented with their celebration certificates for their outstanding behaviour and learning at school. During our recent assembly our Star of the Week in Pre-Nursery was awarded a certificate for the amazing amount of English spoken in class. Nursery’s star was awarded a certificate for writing their name while Reception’s certificate went to the pupil with the most Class Dojo points for the week. Last but not least, Year 1 and Year 2’s star of the week incredibly achieved 10 out of 10 on spellings for the last 4 weeks!

During our latest KISE School Council meeting, composed of the elected representatives of Year 1 and Year 2, counsellors expressed their desire to raise awareness regarding environmental issues. Chosen “Eco Warriors” will now start performing Eco Walks to check that the school is being environmentally friendly: Ensuring lights and screens are turned off when not being used, scrap paper being reused or recycled, doors are closed to keep classrooms warm with the heating during the winter and fighting against single use plastic that would pollute the oceans of the Earth are amongst the different aspects our Eco Warriors will be on the lookout for. Let’s all do our part for the environment.

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world” - Mahatma Gandhi. Our pupils have been exploring the concept of peace through different classroom activities. Nursery and Reception have joined efforts to create a peace mural to decorate the school. Pre-Nursery has been busy creating and decorating doves that are “flying” around the school and Year 1 and Year 2 have created their own peace books with their thoughts on peace on Earth. We have reinforced the importance of respect, sharing, helping others in need and living together in harmony.

A large focus of the teaching and learning in our school is developing children’s spoken English and fostering a love of books, stories and rhymes.

This begins in pre-nursery where there is a ‘core song’ each fortnight which the children learn to sing, dance and perform actions to. They also complete other artwork and indoor and outdoor play linked to their core song. This month the songs were: “If you’re happy and you know it” and “Incy Wincy Spider.”

In nursery, the focus text has been “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” with lots of fantastic vocabulary developing as the children went on their very own bear hunt in the school grounds.

In Reception, following the “Funnybones” story to coincide with Halloween, the children moved on to “Aliens love underpants” which has linked with their knowledge of space as well as providing lots of cross-curricular learning across all areas of the Early Years Foundation Stage linked to colours, counting, reading and writing (about aliens and underpants!)

Finally, in Years 1 and 2, the core text has been a non-fiction one and the children have been busy researching, speaking and writing about nocturnal animals, before producing their own information booklets about their chosen animal.

All examples of can be found on display around our school - why not take a look?

Our Personal, Social and Health Education (PSHE) topic for this half of term is ‘Celebrating Differences’. The children in King’s Infant School, Elche have been learning about how we are all different and unique and how important that is to celebrate and respect differences in how we all look, speak, our beliefs, our hobbies and our skills.

The children have also been taught the importance of teamwork, as well as how they must show respect and kindness to everyone and how each class can work together to achieve great things by drawing on everyone’s individuality and their personal skills.

Rather than talk about ‘anti-bullying’, we have instead focussed on ‘Kindness’ with children taught about how important it is to use kind words and kind actions to each other.

Children in King’s Infant School, Elche were taught about the Hindu festival of Diwali which is celebrated by Hindus across the world to celebrate the Hindu new year. Also known as ‘the festival of light’ the bright and colourful festival is a sight to behold!

The children from pre-nursery to Year 2 made their own version of diva lamps (from paper plates or clay) which they decorated in bright colours and sparkles. The children also created rangoli patterns from a range of media.

There were ghosts, vampires, skeletons and lots of witches seen in the classes of King’s Infant School Elche to mark Halloween! The children dressed-up and participated in lots of fun Halloween craft activities, as well as Halloween songs, dancing and an afternoon Halloween party with some treats (and a few tricks!)

On Wednesday 10th October, the children at KISE participated in lots of sensory activities and messy play and held circle time sessions focussing on developing their awareness of their own feelings. The children enjoyed hand-painting, foot-printing and making art with melted chocolate! Our focus on children’s feelings, mental health and well-being will continue throughout the year as part of our weekly Personal, Social and Health Education lessons.

The first School Council has been elected at King’s Infant School Elche (KISE). The children voted for their council representatives and the children in Years 1 and 2 who were elected are very keen to hold their first meeting and to make some positive changes to their school. Already, the children have started ‘Playground Monitors’ to ensure the children are playing safely and using the equipment and climbing frame properly.

The School Council will also be responsible for fundraising and deciding which charities they want KISE to support throughout the year.

Royal celebrations at KISE in honour of the Royal Wedding between Harry and Meghan. The children were so excited; we had our celebrations, we sang along to songs, we played traditional British games and we learnt all about the special event. The children took turns walking down the aisle and acting out the royal wedding. We even had a special Royal Picnic in the patio.

Blue and Green Class have been reading Supertato, recreating the story and saving the world from the evil pea. The children designed their own super heroes, made their potatoes into “supertatos” and gave them the best superpowers to fight evil. ¡Squash, squish, pop! The evil pea stood no chance against our superheroes. The children acted out the scenes and gave voice to the heroes in their fight to save the veggies. We all had so much fun.

At the end of April we invited our children's families back to school once again for a Stay and Play session, but this time with a twist... Stay and Messy Play! We wanted to show them all the different kinds of activities we do at school and how much learning we get from these activities.... and also that it is OK to get messy! Everyone joined in with the variety of activities we had arranged and everyone got messy as well!

At the end of March we celebrated our first ever Stay and Play session with the parents of KISE. This was a session where parents/carers/family members were welcomed into school to see their children in their learning environments, play with them and get a chance to see the fantastic work the children have been doing this year. So many families came and there were lots of smiles on everyone's faces!
We plan to do many more of these in the future!