Welcome back after a half term holiday to all our families, we have had a lovely if slightly shorter week that we would like. We are so sorry that we were not able to open on Thursday – the advice from Devon County Council was to close but when we awoke on Thursday morning the storm seemed to much less of a concern so we are glad everyone was safe and we will be offering replacement sessions to the children over the coming weeks.

The highlight of our first week back has been the two Grandparents mornings. On Monday and Wednesday we welcomed lots of Grandparents in to spend time with their grandchildren, making Halloween craft on Monday and Bonfire night craft on Wednesday. We have 26 Grandparents in total and it was a lovely morning, with a coffee and a cake and a play in the sunshine – we have had lovely feedback and we really hope they all had a wonderful time with us. We will arrange another afternoon tea in the summer term and if any Grandparents would like to help us on trips we would be very grateful.

Our circle times have been full of craft and exercise this week! Our learning this half term focuses on being healthy and we will be sharing lots of ideas via this blog and facebook and email around diet and sleep and physical activity and oral hygiene.

The Star group have been enjoying lots of dancing and Halloween Yoga moves, making glitter fireworks, blow painting fireworks and some lovely ribbon dancing and circle songs such as hokey cokey and head shoulders, knees and toes!

The Sun and Moon group have also made lots of Halloween and Bonfire night craft too – fireworks pictures, salt dough pumpkins and rockets alongside learning how to be safe around fireworks, some Halloween dance moves and building independence with dressing up.

Next week we will be moving towards building on our space theme with activities and learning inside and role play outside – we would love donations of plastic bottles – the big coke bottle size please so that we can make rocket packs! We will continue our literacy focus for the half term as well, working on story times and talking about books.

We hope you all have a dry, safe and happy Fireworks Night!

We have been learning about and exploring Autumn this week – learning about the seasons and our world is really important and part of our curriculum that we have designed which follows the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. We will be starting to create some wonderful displays at pre-school now that everyone is settled in and enjoying all the activities we have on offer.

In the main room we will build a display called “Our Year” starting with Autumn, in the Moon cloakroom we will display our curriculum ideas and plans so please do stay to have a look, we also have our All about Me display in the Sun room with family photos and individual photos to create a sense of belonging and in the Moon room we will be celebrating culture and languages that are spoken by our families.

We know it is always busy at collecting time but please find your key person for a chat each day if you can – they may be in a different room at the end of the day for story time as we all move around all week so that we spend time with our key children. If you would like a chat you can ring your key person, chat at the end of the day and book in for our parent chats in November – more info to follow. We do try to find you to give feedback each day but if you are rushing off to a school pick up it can be hard and we know you would all like to hear what your child has enjoyed each day.

Forest School sessions have been wonderful, they have a smart new kettle which makes a fantastic fire and the children take turns to light the fire each week. They have also used a new hand tool that Sophie bought to make holes in conkers and have made caterpillars.

Our circle themes this week have been based on exploring Autumn.

The Star group have painted with sticks, made beautiful Autumn creations with natural items and playdoh, looked at conkers and sorted Autumn leaves, learnt about hedgehogs and made one in clay and learnt a new song, enjoyed an autumn hunt in the garden and played a hide the hedgehog game to learn about prepositions. What a lot of learning in one week!

The Sun and Moon children have been given Autumn bags to go out and about to collect treasures to bring back in for sensory trays next week, they have also sorted real Autumn leaves into colour and size, collected leaves from our garden and learnt a new song called Autumn Leaves. More clay hedgehogs, hedgehog facts and we watched a video and looked into our hedgehog’s home in the garden to see if he has built his nest for hibernation. Lots of beautiful Autumn colour mixing and autumn maths pattern work too.

Our free flow is jam packed with learning opportunities which we plan each week – we have been cooking again and made gingerbread, we explored lots of citrus fruit and learnt about harvest, we made smoothies and bread for snack time too. Next week our circle times will be concentrating on a focus on independence and self care and being healthy.

We will be building a bike workshop outside so we would love any old spanners and tools, bike magazines and bike pumps and old tyres please!

The children are settling in so well now and we hope they are starting to talk to you about their times with us and all the activities and friends that they are enjoying.

We have kept our home corner and baby role play going outside and introduced a hairdressing salon inside with some brilliant donations from two parents for the set, thank you! The ladies have had some interesting salon experiences and listening to all the chat and laughter has been lovely.

Outside has also been a base for lots of large scale mark making which is great for arm and shoulder strength, painting the fence and spray bottle painting and using items in our garden to paint – blackberries and mud and grass too, all squished up and used for creating pictures. We have laid out painting inside as well – fine brushes and watercolours, painting bubble wrap and foil and using big brushes for painting on long rolls of paper. Lots of loose parts out as well for fine motor skills.

We have been looking at how strong and co-ordinated the children are and making observations on that area too. Obstacle courses, bike rides and balancing and climbing activities have been great outside in the slightly cooler temperatures this week.

The circle times for Sun and Moons have been great, learning the routines is going well and we have also enjoyed some story sacks which the children have loved, talked about our families and drawn pictures of them and of our houses – the groups loved looking at photos of Cullompton too – shouting out when the recognise a place like Tesco or the high street “my house is near there” and looking at photos on google images of their own houses!

The Star group are amazing and happily sit for a circle time with their friends, singing and chatting and joining in. They have had a lovely mix of activities from building a house, making a face with playdough, dancing to the animal boogie, story sacks and singing as well.

We will be writing settling in notes for our new starters so we will share those with you next week, your key person will hand you the notes they have made and we will be working on ideas to support play and learning at home over the coming weeks to share as well. There is a section on our website for home learning and also our planning sheets are available which have ideas as well.

Next week we will start Forest School for the Sun and Moon groups and you will have a letter explaining what we do – not all Sun and Moons take part this half term. If you haven’t had a letter is will be your child’s group that does it next half term instead. Sun on a Thursday and Moon on a Friday this half term – no need for any extra clothes or boots as we have all of the kit here and we will look forward to sharing the photos from those sessions.

We will also be exploring Harvest, setting up Farm shop role play which supports communication and language, learning about money and the world around us, creative arts and writing and numbers on the price labels! We would love donations of vegetables (hard ones please like potatoes and carrots and swedes) and food colouring and brown labels for pricing and lemon squeezers too!