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!
 

Our second visit to Elche seniors, the retirement home opposite our school, has been a great success. We put on some music and everyone joined in our Dough Disco activity.  All shapes and designs made possible through the precision crafting of our home made play dough. What a lovely way to share some time with the residents of Elche Seniors while we play together.

Green Class has been busy reading and recreating the story of Goldilocks and the three bears this week. By carefully mixing the different ingredients and following the instructions our little chefs have been able to make the perfect porridge! Not too hot… Not too cold… Just right, it even satisfied their appetite!

 

Everyone at KISE had been practising very hard for our upcoming Christmas performance. We were delighted to invite the Year 1 children from KCA to come and watch our show to practise before the big performance for our parents. The Year 1's came over on a bus and were very excited. Everyone enjoyed the performance and we especially enjoyed sharing snack time together and showing them our new climbing frame. What a super morning! We hope you can come back soon. 

It was a chilly morning late in December and the children of KISE suddenly heard a jingle bell... what could it be? Who could be coming? We followed the noise and suddenly heard a 'ho ho ho'! It was Santa!! Everyone was so excited. We sang him songs we know about Santa and then were so lucky to receive a present from him. We are all feeling very Christmassy and ready for the holidays!

On the 14th of December the children were very excited to be visiting Elche Seniors, the retirement home opposite our school. We carefully walked there and once there got our Christmas hats ready to perform our Christmas Show. The children sang beautifully and waved hello to all the elderly people there. The audience were fantastic and thoroughly enjoyed the show, with everyone joining in with the song Feliz Navidad at the end. It was so heartwarming to see the children and elderly people interacting and we will be visiting monthly in the future. 

Blue and Green Class were extremely excited about our trip to KCA for a Teddy Bear's picnic. We were very sensible getting the bus and happily sung lots of songs on the way. When we arrived we met all the Reception children at KCA and had lots of fun playing games and singing songs! We then ate the sandwiches that Green class had carefully made for us at school before getting the bus back to KISE. What a great day we had! 

Yellow Class had a fantastic morning reading the story of Whatever Next, making their own jam sandwiches and then flying to the moon to have a picnic! The children were so excited and when the rest of the school returned from their picnic at KCA were eagerly telling us in English that they had been to the moon! 

Green Class have had a super month in class. We have been learning lots of new vocabulary in English through our Core Texts, and have been practising writing sentences in phonics and English lessons. In our creative curriculum we have learnt about animals and their habitats and Space following our core text and also the children's interests. Today we have made Jam sandwiches for the whole school ready to take with us on our first school trip to KCA tomorrow! We are all very excited. Pictures to follow! 

Nursery have had a wonderful 'Bear' filled month with our Core Texts being Bear Hunt and Peace at Last. The children have been learning in lots of different ways, making pictures, role playing the stories, using instruments to sing a long, jumping in puddles and lots more. To end the month we will be joining the Reception classes at our sister school in Alicante to have a Teddy Bear's Picnic all together! Pictures to follow! 

Pre Nursery Yellow Class have been exploring lots of different ways to make marks this month in KISE. Outside painting, using different materials and objects to mark with... and having lots of fun and getting messy of course!! I think we have a few artists in the making here! 

We were delighted to welcome Simon Manley, the British Ambassador to Spain to our school on the 22nd of November. We were proud to show him the progress we have made at school and how fanstastically the children are doing. Simon was 'delighted to visit the latest jewel in the King's Group crown'! 

What a spooky Halloween we enjoyed at KISE! The children and teachers all came to school dressed as scary characters and we did some fantastic art activities to make the school super spooky. Our core song and core text for the week before Halloween were Incy Wincy Spider and Room on the Broom which really got us in a spooky mood! Everyone loved our Halloween party we had altogether playing apple bobbing, donuts on a string and even drawing scary faces on our afternoon snack!