Dear Parents and Carers,

I hope you are all well. 

This week felt like a particularly busy week here at De Hav. On Monday, we were fortunate to call on the services of Mrs. Choudhury, who led two Eid assemblies for the children to enjoy. She was supported by Dua and Noor in Year Six who stepped up to show us the role-models they really are. The children learnt all about the famous Islamic festival, which is celebrated each year to mark the end of Ramadan. To all of our families who are celebrating on Monday, 'Eid Mubarak' to you and your family!

Also this week, we had a fantastic time celebrating World Maths Day on Wednesday! The children enthusiastically embraced the day’s activities, showcasing their problem-solving skills and creativity. From interactive maths games and number challenges to practical, real-world problem-solving tasks, the classrooms were buzzing with excitement. It was wonderful to see the children collaborating, thinking critically, and applying their maths knowledge in fun and engaging ways. A big thank you to Mrs. Jefferies and all of our teaching staff for organising such inspiring activities and to the children for all of their enthusiasm!

As we enter the final week of March and start to see the leaves appearing on our trees, I also have a favour to ask. During the holidays, Mr. Tate and I are planning to carry out some work on our outdoor area to ensure the site is looking tip top ahead of the summer term. The date we have identified is the afternoon of Wednesday 16th April, which also coincides with our Year Six Easter School. Therefore we would like to invite any parents, as well as supervised Year Five and Year Six children, to join us from 12:30pm for an afternoon of gardening in the (hopefully) sunshine. If this is something you would like to help us with, please can you contact the office, either by telephone or by email, so we can add your name(s) to our sign-up sheet. Thank you very much in advance.

Wishing you all a lovely weekend,

Mr. Bostock

Attendance This Week . . .

Whole School Weekly Attendance - 

95.1%

Best Attendance by Class

Early Years - Apple - 97.6%

Key Stage 1 - Chestnut - 97.7%

Key Stage 2 - Willow - 97.3%

Special Mentions Table

Early Years News

This week in nursery, we received an exciting letter from Farmer Tom, who told us he was finding life on the farm a bit too tricky. He asked for our help in thinking of new jobs he could try! The children put their creative thinking to work, drawing, writing, and posting their wonderful suggestions in our post box. In maths, we've been exploring the concepts of long and short, using caterpillars as our inspiration! The children had so much fun creating their own caterpillars with printing and playdough, then using cubes to measure them and compare which was the longest and which was the shortest.


With the beautiful weather this week, we made the most of our time outdoors, focusing on developing our gross motor skills through lots of active play. It’s been a fantastic week of learning, creativity, and movement! This week the children have been developing their creativity in story writing skills.We have been working really hard in retaining our sentences and reading back our sentences. In maths, they explored maps, planned routes, and practised directional language. Additionally, the children enjoyed junk modeling, using recycled materials to build houses and describe their creations using prepositions such as "under," "above," and "next to." These activities have encouraged critical thinking, spatial awareness, and enriched their language skills. 

School meal price increase

Unfortunately, we have to inform you of a price increase that will be applied to the cost of the schools catering provision from Tuesday 22 April 2025 when the school returns following the Easter break.

The school has been working with our catering provider Herts Catering Ltd in relation to inflationary pressures that are affecting food and labour including increase to the national living wage and national insurance. As a result of these additional costs we now need to apply a price increase to the catering provision at the school. I am very much aware of the cost pressures that are affecting the school community and have worked with the school caterers to keep the price increase as low as possible.

The price of a school meal from Tuesday 22 April 2025  will be £2.90 rising from the current price of £2.80. 

The Free School Meal allowance will be increased in line with this.Please visit Free School Meals via the Hertfordshire County Council website to check if you are eligible.

Key Stage 1 News

Wow! What super mathematicians Year 1 are! On Wednesday, World Maths Day, they worked really hard to solve different space themed maths challenges and managed to crack the code and open the prize box. Well done Year 1! Next week, we are looking forward to ending our term with a Purim celebration and a DT project all about wheels and axles. Have a wonderful weekend!

We want to start off by saying a HUGE well done, to all the children in Year 2 for completing their assessments. We are 3/4 of the way through! We also had a great time on Wednesday for World Maths Day, where the children completed many different challenges to open up their locked boxes! They did so well with the group challenges they had to complete in the hall, impressing not only us but the adults leading the session too:)

Not long now, 1 week to go (not that we're counting!)

Parking & Driving Survey

If you have not already done, please complete our parking survey to help us make the car park and roads surrounding our school safer. Thank you for your support.

Driving and Parking Survey 

Don't forget to enter the Easter Raffle

Don't forget to grab your tickets for the Easter Raffle! 🎉

📌 £1 per strip of 5 tickets

🏆 Joint 1st Prizes: 2 Panini Football Sticker Albums with stickers

🍫 10 Runner-Up Prizes: an Easter Egg

Get your tickets on Monday until Thursday lunchtime next week for a chance to win! 🌟

Lower Key Stage 2 News

Year 3 have been busy planning their hot writes this week.  They will be writing a letter about why recycling is important at school. We have all been demonstrating resilience whilst completing our quizzes and the children should be very proud of the way they have persevered.  Well done Year 3.

This week Year 4 have had themselves a selection of fantastic experiences. Firstly, starting the week with a wonderful performance of Young Voices songs, much the delight of the pupils and parents alike. Next, Wednesday brought our Maths day and our exciting opportunities to take part in external workshops and an exciting crack the code challenge! Finally, the week has been rounded off with our final swimming session of the year allowing the pupils to showcase what they have learnt in a fun swim session.

Follow us...

Please make sure to follow dehavnurseryandprimaryschool on Instagram to keep up with all our latest news!

Red Nose Day 2025

Thanks to your generous donations the school managed to raise a  substantial £233 for Comic Relief.

Early finish on 

Friday 4th April

Don't forget! School finishes at 1pm next Friday 4 April as the spring term comes to an end.

School wil reopen on Tuesday 22 April, after the Easter holiday.

Upper Key Stage 2 News

Life in Year 5 has returned to normal somewhat, after an exhausting 2 week schedule of rehearsals, performances and Bikeability. We have been very impressed by the maturity and high focus levels of children in both classes during this week's assessments and we look forward to using the outcomes to determine how to best support areas of need and build upon areas of strength in the months to come. In Geography, the children recapped all learning from this term by updating their knowledge organisers and previewed an exciting visit to the Food and Farming event which we will be attending in the summer term (details to follow soon). World Maths Day was greatly enjoyed by all, as the children worked collaboratively in their workshops and in class to unlock the secrets of our mystery box. Science also brought about a termly recap whilst in Computing, we practised the skills for creating stop-start animations. Due to the magnificent efforts of the children in Year 5 this week, there will be no additional home learning beyond the nightly reading, which remains the expectation, please.

Year 6 thoroughly enjoyed celebrating World Maths Day on Wednesday by completing some 'Escape Room' style questions. These questions enabled us to explore a range of problem solving skills using our mathematical critical thinking to help us work out a code to unlock our class padlock! As well as this, we have continued to explore the topic of area and perimeter and have learnt how to find the area of parallelograms. In our English learning, we have chosen some debate questions to write our own 'for and against' pieces including our key devices from our writers toolkit such as causal conjunctions, fronted adverbials and facts and statistics. As part of our Frozen Kingdom project, we have worked in groups to find out about the different indigenous people of the Arctic and presented our findings to the class. 

WANTED!

The Active and Safer Travel Team  are disappointed to advise you that the School Crossing Patrol that was due to start today can no longer fill the position. We are still urgently trying to recruit someone who would be interested in becoming the School Crossing Patrol at De Havilland Primary

THE PAY IS £12.26 PER HOUR

(excluding enhancements)

Job Share Considered


if you are or you know anyone who is interested and would like further information please contact Joanne Morris on 

01992 556803

Hertfordshire County Council, Active and Safer Travel Team, Farnham House, Six Hills Way, Stevenage SG1 2ST

scp.enquiries@hertfordshire.gov.uk 

Sept 2024

Can we please respectfully remind you that it is parental responsibility to get your child

to and from school safely

Dates for your diary

Monday 31st March - Nursery admissions closes

Friday 4th April - End of term 1pm finish



Fully funded parenting courses

Courses run by Families Feeling Safe

For all enquiries and to make a referral please email enquiries@familiesfeelingsafe.co.uk  or call 07850 518216

Please click here for your parent registration form (or email for a word version)… 


Hertfordshire County Council

Relationship support for parents 


Nessie Therapeutic Parenting Programmes

Helping parents to effectively manage and support their children’s behaviour as they grow and develop 


Supporting Links courses

Talking Teens at Oakleaf Primary School, Hemel Hempstead

Wednesdays 7pm to 9pm  26th February to 2nd April (6 weeks)

Parents and carers do not have to live in Hemel to attend. If they can travel here, they would be most welcome to join the group. There is plenty of parking but I am not sure how good the bus service is I'm afraid. 

Talking Dads for parents of young children (0-11):

Thursdays 7.45pm to 9.15pm   27th February to 3rd April (6 weeks)

Talking Dads of Teens:

Wednesdays   7.45pm to 9.15pm   26th February to 2nd April (6 weeks)

Online Talking Anxiety in Teens course, for parents of children from age 12, has a couple of places available.

Mondays 7.45pm to 9.30pm  24th February to 31st March (6 weeks)

Talking ASD/ADHD: Sibling Struggles  - 13th February 2024

Talking ASD/ADHD: Responding to Anger - 2nd April 2024

Talking ASD/ADHD: The Teenage Years – 4th March 2024

Step 2 Skills courses - New updated information

Please follow the link for the latest opportunities


Skills to pay the bills 

Family Centre

Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust runs a confidential secure text messaging service for parents of children aged 0-5 years called ChatHealth. The service operates Monday to Friday between 9am and 5pm, excluding bank holidays. All texts will be responded to by a health visitor within 24 hours. Outside of the service working hours, you’ll receive a message back to inform you that your text will be responded to once the service reopens.


ChatHealth messaging service: text 07480 635164

Family Centre Service (Health Visiting and Family Support): phone 0300 123 7572