11/09/2026
🌟 Welcome Back to The Beacon! 🌟
What a fantastic start to a fresh academic year! 💛 We have loved welcoming our pupils back and seeing them begin to settle into their routines, reconnect with familiar faces and get ready for another year of learning, growing and belonging.
💜 New faces, new beginnings!
A new academic year has brought two brilliant new additions to our Beacon family, and we are so pleased to have them with us!
🍃 A very warm welcome to Mr Kimpton, our new Lavender Class teacher. Mr Kimpton joins us with a wealth of experience, knowledge and enthusiasm – and, most importantly, a real understanding of the children he works with. Alongside being a fantastic teacher, he brings a kind, patient and therapeutic approach to the classroom. He knows that children learn best when they feel safe, understood and valued, and he is already building those all-important positive relationships with our pupils.
🌻 We are also very lucky to welcome Mrs Abbott, our new Teaching Assistant. Mrs Abbott brings her own wealth of experience and knowledge to The Beacon, alongside a wonderfully calm, nurturing and reassuring presence. She has already been getting stuck into Beacon life – supporting learning, celebrating successes, encouraging independence and being another trusted adult our pupils can turn to when they need a little help.
From The Beacon... all the way back to the Stone Age! Our new topic is The Stone Age, and the children have been using their awesome imaginations to travel thousands of years back in time! We have thought about what we might have seen, heard, smelled, touched and even tasted if we had lived during this period. Did you know? Early humans used stone to make tools and weapons, lived as hunter-gatherers for much of the Stone Age and eventually began farming and settling in communities. In Britain, the Stone Age lasted for an incredibly long time – from the earliest evidence of humans hundreds of thousands of years ago until around 2500 BC. For our cooking lesson, we even became Stone Age cooks! Our pupils made their own Hunter-Gatherer Honey Oat Cakes, getting hands-on with measuring, mashing, mixing and shaping while thinking about the simple ingredients and foods people may have had available thousands of years ago. The best part, of course, was the all-important taste test!
🧠 Looking after our brains AND bodies. Our body movement breaks are back! Movement breaks give pupils an opportunity to reset between periods of concentration, release some energy and return to learning feeling more alert and ready to engage. We have also continued our mindful moments. 🌿 These short periods of calm give us time to slow things down, notice our breathing and bodies, and practise strategies we can use when things begin to feel a little too big.
We have been talking openly about feelings and emotions too – remembering that all feelings are okay, even the big and uncomfortable ones. Together, we have explored strategies that might help, such as movement, breathing, taking some space, talking to a trusted adult, drawing, listening to music or simply having some quiet time. 💚
And, now the weather has finally dried up, we have made sure we are getting outside for that all-important fresh air and movement whenever we can. ☀️🌳
📚 Reading, reading, reading! Reading has been a BIG focus already and our pupils are flying through their reading books! ✈️📖 We are seeing confidence grow and reading becoming more fluent every day. A little bit of reading at home really does add up. Even 10–15 relaxed minutes together can provide valuable practice. Reading doesn't always have to mean a school book either – comics, recipes, magazines, instructions, fact books and subtitles all count!
🌙 Back-to-school sleep Getting back into an academic-year routine can be tiring. Children aged 6–12 generally need around 9–12 hours of sleep in every 24 hours. A predictable evening routine can make a real difference – keeping bedtime and wake-up times fairly consistent and allowing plenty of time to wind down.
📵 A screen-free wind-down can really help. Where possible, try switching off all screens – including phones, tablets, games and TV – for around an hour before bedtime. Screens can keep children's brains alert and engaged when they need to be slowing down, while the light they give off can interfere with the body's natural signals that it is time for sleep.Replacing screens with something calmer, such as a bath or shower, reading together, colouring, quiet music or simply chatting about the day, can help the brain and body begin to settle.
💤 Good sleep supports so much more than tiredness. It helps children with concentration, memory and learning, emotional regulation, behaviour and physical wellbeing – all things that help them arrive at school feeling ready for the day ahead. And, of course, a bedtime story or a few pages of their reading book ticks two boxes at once! 📚💛
🍂 Autumn is on its way. As we move towards autumn, mornings will become cooler and the days gradually shorter. Please keep an eye on the forecast and send children with a named coat or waterproof layer when needed – we still want to make the most of being outside!
