Autumn Term Week 11
We have enjoyed a lovely week at pre-school, building our listening skills through a variety of games and activities.
This is an important area for us to ensure the children are secure in because it is the foundation of all the other areas of learning, we are working on focus, listening to instructions and following them while being able to concentrate on short tasks. We do encourage parents to ensure screen time is low before coming into pre-school as new research shows some children will have difficulties adjusting from screens to settings and the shift of attention can cause a dopameine drop resulting in some dysregulation. Lots more reading to do on this and the amazing Royal Foundation, led by the Princess of Wales has a really interesting article – link below.
The Power of Human Connection in a Distracted World – Centre for Early Childhood
We have some good info on our Tapestry documents section about online safety and screen use, positives and negatives and will add more info from new research.
Our circle times have also had a focus on listening skills, using music and instruments to engage and promote following actions and instructions. We have danced and used a metronome to copy a beat and rhythm, we have matched instruments and played them quickly and slowly and loudly and quietly – all really good activities to play and we will revisit those on the carpet next week as well.
Outside we had a group treasure hunt experience – our aim was to involve every child on a short ten minute group activity to search for a number of items and then complete the task to earn a group reward, we were looking for children who found it hard to concentrate so that we could support them to re-engage. It went so well and we searched for 45 bricks in our building site disaster hunt, 65 dinosaurs, 54 alphabet hunt and lots of other games – rewards included having all the bikes out, balloons for everyone and bubbles too!
We have started to build our Christmas Coffee Shop – SnowBucks, promoting writing and chatting, ideas for cafe role play and fine motor skills.
In our sun room during free flow we have had a wonderful Christmas post office, lots of mark making and chatting about gifts and food and being on the good list came up a few times! Stories about seeing Santa already and lovely letters to Santa as well.
Christmas has even crept into our Forest School sessions with some really pretty natural tree decorations, Forest school is going so well and the children really benefit from the atmosphere and the outdoor learning opportunities.
Here are two of the songs that we would love you to practice at home!
Christmas lights
Twinkle twinkle Christmas lights
Lighting up December nights
Red and yellow, orange, and blue
Making such a lovely view
Twinkle twinkle Christmas lights
Lighting up December nights
Donkey Donkey
Donkey donkey don’t you stop
Just let your feet go clippety clop
Your tail goes swish
And you say “Eeyore”
You’re nearly at the stable door