Another amazing week settling 9 new children in and with beautiful autumn sunshine to help us! Our Forest School sessions have been bathed in autumn light and our garage and our mini mechanics have been super busy fixing and cleaning our bikes outside.

Our circle times have had a focus on physical development and we have had so much fun!
The Moon and Sun groups have played lots of games including a parachute game, a competitive ball game, lots of cheering each other on with quick hand movements needed and good co-ordination too! They have enjoyed a tricky obstacle course, balloon games, some yoga, some action songs and dances and a scoop and balance game – great learning through great ideas from the group leaders!

The Star group have also been active and jumping around! They have played a spin the arrow movement game, sticky kids which is a CD we have that has lots of movement songs, some stop and start action games, catching and throwing, over and under hoops and dough gym to build arm strength and ribbon dancing too.

There are some wonderful photos of our week on the parent gallery so please do have a look with your child and chat about the children’s names, we can see some lovely friendships forming too.

We have been exploring maths on the sun table during free flow and construction and our colourful mud kitchen outside has been a big hit with the children so this will continue to be played with next week too.

Next week we will be learning about Autumn on the sun table during free flow, please can you collect leaves and some twigs for us to use in our craft! We will also be playing outside, clearing the astro and using the ideas from circle time to play games to develop our physical and co-ordination skills – hoping for more sunshine too!

All children will have an on entry sheet over the next two week which plots their starting point with us and helps us plan our activities and circle times to ensure all children make progress with us, this info will be shared with you in paper form for you to make notes on for your key person to read to inform all our work here. We have a key person meeting on Monday and we chat about how everyone has settled in and any worries that we have and what we can be working on. This includes speech and language groups so if you have any worries about understanding your child please do let your key person know and your child can join our Launch into Language programme.

Our AGM is on Monday and I will be preparing a report for that to share with you all and we look forward to welcoming a new committee to work with Mandy and myself. A Teams link will be sent today.

We just can’t believe that this is our last full week! We have one more day on Monday when we are open as usual and then our annual sort out and clean up day! Then Holiday Club will open on Tuesday 5th August and will run every Tuesday and Wednesday through August from 8am – 4.30pm – the club is pretty full but do enquire if you would like to book in as there are a couple of spaces towards the end of August at the moment.

We have had a lovely week, it is very sad to say goodbye to our school starters – they have been a brilliant cohort and we have thoroughly enjoyed teaching them all. Lots of amazing memories from circle times to role play, making friends, forest school and trips out and about in our community. We have welcomed grandparents in for afternoon tea and morning coffee – celebrating the role they play in the children’s lives too.

Add in an Outstanding Ofsted report and we really have had a brilliant year – the graduation is a lovely way to say goodbye and also to say thank you to the whole team here, everyone works hard and everyone has such a commitment to the children.

We wish all our school starters the very best of luck for their journey into primary school and we look forward to welcoming back our current families in the Autumn and to seeing the new children settle in and start their journey with us! Amelia

One of our favourite weeks of the year – our butterflies appeared over the weekend with the warm weather and we released them into the Forest School garden on Tuesday afternoon, with a lovely party and picnic and story and face paint! The children absolutely loved watching the butterflies fly away and there are extra videos and photos on Tapestry for you to have a look at with the children too, so sorry to anyone who missed out on that afternoon but once they emerge the butterflies have to be released in a couple of days.

Our circle focus has been numbers this week, and we have created lots of different games and activities to support learning and we have lots of brilliant observations to share with the key workers as they start to complete the special book ready for giving to families at the graduation celebration at the end of the term.

The Sun and Moon groups have been representing numbers, counting and subitising, linking numerals to amounts, tricky bingo, shape and number cutting games, making and adding big numbers using numicon, knocking down a tower and counting how many bricks fell and adding two totals together and also looking at how clocks use numbers too.

The Star children have also been working on their number skills too, they have had a number hunt, shape and number sorting tray in foam, counting wooden blocks, and number songs! The Stars have had Forest School sessions on Thurs and Fri am and the photos are so wonderful!

We have visited St Andrew’s School this week for a lovely trip which the children enjoyed and two teachers from Willowbank have also visited us too so the feeling of a transition ahead is real!

We have been building rivers with planks and gutters and tubes all week which has been great for imaginative play and solving problems and for getting very wet!

Inside we have been exploring colour and making rainbows all week, ready to use in our display for the fete on Saturday! Come along and support us – 11.30am – 2pm – so much to do and eat and drink and enjoy and we hear the weather will be great too!