We have had a wonderful week, albeit a very wet one – sorry about all the wet clothes coming home but it has been worth it, the children have absolutely loved playing with the water in the exciting set ups that the staff have helped them create! We added in lots of height to help build strength lifting the cylinders and jugs of water up high! The children showed brilliant “characteristics of learning” which show us the different ways in which they explore and learn and join in with lots of imagination, working out how to move the water and how to create different runs with the gutters and the tanks and the barrels. One group worked out that they could use the big gutter and put a cylinder underneath so that when the water gushed out it sprayed them! The solar fountains are also really popular so we will be ordering more of those, a lovely way to discuss solar power and hard work to collect the water as it sprays up into the air.

Inside we have been enjoying hairdresser role play and nail salon role play and there are some lovely photos of the children playing really well together, we have also been looking at feelings and talking about them using books and other resources that we have.

Our tennis coach Nigel came back in on Monday morning for another fun session and we also had two beautiful Forest School sessions with Sophie, Eva and Louise. The Sun group will swap to going out on a Friday and the Moons will go on a Thursday after half term but just for a couple of weeks before we give the Star group a turn and then one final session before we finish where will be probably alternate over two weeks so all of the Thursday/Friday children have a “last” session out there.

We have been exploring weather in circle times this week using a mini focus of fine motor skills too so lots of brilliant learning about usual and extreme weather, great vocabulary development and craft, wonderful turn taking and painting with water outside to watch it evaporate, drawing around our shadows, making big collages and hanging out washing to dry, bumble bee craft, making bird feeders, painting with cotton buds in the star room as well as their focus has very much been on fine motor skills as well.

Our pirate play has been great fun this week – we have used the children’s interest in this theme to lead counting and maths work in our group times which has worked brilliantly!

Stars have been playing pop up pirate and counting the swords and taking turns, they have counted Pirate treasure and counted gems and started to learn to recognise numbers. The Stars have learnt a pirate counting song and explored pirate patterns and counting using dice.

The Sun and Moon groups have received letters from Pirate Pete, reading their names and the numbers inside and counting out gold coins, they have played a game where they roll a dice and carry out the pirate action for that number, played “What’s the time Mr Pirate” and played a canon ball water balloon game, counting how many they managed to make splash me!

We love building all the learning goals into fun activities and to hearing what has been happening in your families too and one idea has led to a whole week of planning! One family sent in a video and photos of sheep shearing so we are going to set up a farm yard in our garden! We would love any donations of farm leaflets, tractor magazines or anything else you think we could use! Photos from farm visits, leaflets of farm days out perhaps or photos of animals you spot while out on a walk!

Our chatter box has been popular on the table, we have added a photo onto facebook and on Tapestry as well for you to see the array of interesting items that the staff found to bring in!

Outside we have been working on our Maths – we have been counting and collecting natural items and laying them out on the patio in number order. We have made a big clock on the fence and used sprayers to spray numbers on cars and played lots of pirate games too! Canonball games, made eye patches and pirate flags and walked the plank – a lot!

Our second mindful Thursday was wonderful! Peaceful, breathing activities in the group, feeling the bubbles land on us and then gently catching the feathers, one each before washing hands for lunch.

We hope everyone has a lovely bank holiday weekend and see you all on Tuesday.

Colour explosions at pre-school this week! We have really enjoyed creating and mixing and choosing and learning new vocabulary for colours and learning about prime colours and which colours mix! The circle times have been really imaginative and exciting for the children and we hope we have created a new generation of artists!!

Star – this group have mixed colours and made handprints, mixed coloured water, made coloured mashed potato, matched objects by colour, mixed shaving foam and colours to make pictures and used the pipettes to drop colour onto cotton wool

Sun and Moon – these groups have mixed paint on a big scale on bubble wrap over tables, used shaving foam to make marble pictures, used the curly pipettes to add water to paint to make green and purple and orange and mixed colours in jars, learnt a colour magic trick and sorted colours and made their own mini rainbow book marks!

Our welcome tray has been full of beautiful transient art, we have loved dough disco on the sun table first thing and spring playdoh on the round table.

The sun table has been a hub for Science Week – lots of amazing experiments, learning together to follow the instructions on Pinterest, comparing our outcomes with the photos and videos and talking about the ingredients we have used, the vocabulary for the reactions and it has been a really popular activity.

Outside has also been very busy with the nice warm sunshine! We have set up a group of chairs and left the children to lead the play based on journeys – some lovely child led ideas with an adult there to support and extend – including a plane flight to the seaside, a bus to the beach, a bus to each other’s homes, a bus trip to Bear Town, a trip to Disneyland on a plane and a flight to Australia and even a rollercoaster! We will continue this next week inside with the whole sun room being used as a train – please send in photos of any trains you may have and books and trips and leaflets please!

The activity lead outside has also been having fun with the children playing playground games together – teaching them What’s the Time Mr Wolf and Duck, Duck, Goose – playing football and parachute games and hide and seek too.

Next week we will be enjoying Easter craft, learning about trains and journeys, 3D shapes and numbers, and unpacking our new big blocks that we have paid for with our fund raising efforts – thank you to our committee of parents!! We have our Bingo on Saturday night and our wonderful summer fete on the 28th June and a shopping list in draft form on my laptop ready to go!