Welcome back to the Spring Term, we have been bathed in Spring sunshine and we have our wormery looking great, frogspawn that has already turned into tadpoles and a new baby stick insect and some lovely sweet pea plants that are growing well too!

The children have settled back in and this half term has so much fun and learning ahead! We have our wonderful Forest School sessions with Sophie, Eva and Louise with the Moons on a Thursday and the Sun group on a Friday now. Robot Reg comes to visit on a Thurs and Fri pm for the Sun and Moon groups which is super fun and a phonics based session – the children are always ready for a little change in routine now and having a different teacher come in is really exciting for them so we are really pleased to welcome Rebecca and Robot Reg back from maternity leave!

So much going on – we have World Book Day next week with two library visits on Tues and Wed am and then a day of dressing up on Thursday. We have Shrove Tuesday and the start of Ramadan as well next week. Then our Sponsored Bike Ride, more Robot Reg visits, Alfie from the Football Fun Factory and an afternoon tea for Grandparents and Easter prep!

The outside area of pre-school has turned into a Fire Station and we are hoping to take a walk up to the fire station soon so watch out for more “please help us walk” texts!! We really appreciate your help, Grandparents are welcome to help as well as we love getting out and about in our community.

We have been learning about community and our world, from family who live across the globe, to family in the UK, learning about travelling, different building and jobs too. Please send us photos from around the world, family or holidays and photos from the UK please.

We have a set of photos on facebook of the fine motor activities we have had on the round table first thing in the morning to welcome the children, building strength and dexterity in the hands is so important for early writing and the children have also enjoyed the fidget toys and spinners that we have had out during free flow.

Cafe role play has been really lovely during free flow in the sun room, lots of imaginative play and chat, menu lists and pretend food with lots of photos of meals from magazines that we have cut out and laminated for the area. We use real plates and mugs and they are heavy so build strength and ensure the children learn to take care of the toys we have, carrying them and packing them away carefully.

The circle times have had a community theme – the world, countries, music, language, flags and maps and passports and travel and jobs people do.

Sun and Moon – have drawn our planet, looked at the globe and maps, continents and which animals live where, built structures from around the world from blocks, used google earth and made passports, written our names and ages and drawn our faces and then gone on a little walk outside.

Star group – have looked at the buildings and places in our town, Cullompton using photos that we have taken on trips out, talked about holidays and travelling and looked at jobs and vehicles that we may see in our community.

We will have a story focus next week as we are celebrating World Book Day – your child can dress up on Thursday and Friday in a costume or in pyjamas! We will keep the fire station as well as the play has been so lovely and exciting, rescuing cats from trees and putting out fires!

The office are working on the register for the Autumn Term already so please book your child in for the hours you would like and you will also receive some info from us in the next week about opening hours during the holidays. We have now registered on the Childcare Register as well which allows us to open throughout the year for our pre-school children and siblings up to the age of 8.

We will start during the Easter Holiday so please be ready to book in and we look forward to a new phase in what we offer our local community!

The start of our week was a bit of a washout and our first fully wet days for a long time so we were all inside and undercover playing in our lovely shop and having a chill out zone with calm music in the Star room!

It was lovely to get back outside and we had a tidy up in our garden and set up lots of long car runs, using the steps and gutters and planks – rolling the cars along and working and playing together.

This week has been very special for one of our families who have been celebrating Chinese New Year so we have also been learning about this event, valuing the cultures of all our families is so wonderful and we have started to put the photos of your family around the world onto our big map so please keep sending them in. We have family pictures for Australia, China, New Zealand, USA and India so far! We will be making a UK version too after half term so will be adding to that display.

Our circle times have all been full of the wonderful colours of Chinese New Year, learning about the culture and the foods and the year of the Snake.

Star group – they have watched a video of a Chinese Dragon, dancing and moving and then made a dragon for their board in the Star room, they have painted snakes using bubble wrap, enjoyed sensory trays with foam and glitter getting very messy! The Stars have also made lanterns and sparkly firework and rocket pictures – really listening to the staff and taking in the learning – lots of skills have been on show – planning how to make a picture, using the resources on offer, taking time to make a creation, learning new vocabulary and hearing about and watching exciting videos of the dragon dancing.

Moon and Sun – have also had a week full of Chinese culture, they learnt all about how the Chinese New Year has an animal attached to each new year and we played lots of games to learn the animals and made some lovely snakes! The children learnt about Red being a lucky colour, learnt about the dragon being an important part of celebrations and we made our own big dragon and danced through the sun room to some Chinese music. We looked at the difference between Chinese symbols/writing and our letters and created badges with our age on in Chinese and painted some wonderful Chinese symbols.

The highlight of the week was our wonderful Chinese lunch! Delivered by the Golden Lion and it was delicious! The family also donated a beautiful new calendar and fortune cookies and other lovely pieces for our display which we will pack away today and have it all ready for next year’s celebrations!

We will keep our multicultural shop for next week as the children are playing really well and imaginatively so please do send in packaging for foods from around the world – if you have fajitas or Chinese or curry ready meal boxes!

Our focus for the next two weeks will be foods and life cycles and our garden and growth and change and being strong!

Welcome back to all our families – we hope you all had a happy and healthy and safe Christmas and New Year!

We have settled straight back into pre-school life with lots of lovely activities and chat this week, lots of stories about Christmas presents and we have used our circle time to remember our routines and rules and to learn about emotions too.

The hospital and baby weigh in clinic has been very busy inside, lots of future doctors, nurses and carers have been playing beautifully together, some brilliant ideas for how to take care of people who are ill and the staff have been brilliant at extending the play with new vocabulary and stretching the children’s imaginations. Luckily we have a lot of stethoscopes as they were the most popular prop!

To support this we also used our Understanding the world boxes for learning opportunities – using the dentist box, doctor sets, food and health and body books and our jobs box too. Lots of photos, books, stories and non fiction posters bring each area to life. We have high aspirations for the resources that we use here and work hard to come up with new ideas for our boxes so that they are fascinating and engaging. I am working on putting together a list of items that we would like to add and will send this out over this half term – often charity shops are a great place to pick up interesting items and Tesco is fantastic for sourcing non fiction books for the boxes!

Maths is a focus for this half term as well, starting with shapes and pattern work. Lots of exploring, putting shapes together to make pictures and searching for shapes in the word around us too.

Circle times have been all about how we feel, it has been really sweet to listen to the children talk about feelings and come out of circle time saying ” we have been talking about our emotions”.

Sun and Moon – these groups have talked about lots of feelings and explored what they look like, physical feelings when we feel sad or happy or cross, how our families affect our feelings and how we feel at pre-school too. We have covered friendships, how our faces look when we feel a certain emotion and what makes us happy or sad or cross or angry or scared or worried. Some brilliant observations from both groups – including the following comments “My mum makes me happy because she does so much for me” – ” My Mum makes me happy because she sings really good songs” – “sharing toys makes me happy” – “my Mummy makes me happy because she cooks lots of dinner for me”! They groups had a brilliant time drawing each other – a circle that is hard to explain but you will see the pics on Tapestry – using pens to draw on a plastic page, recreating a shocked or smiley face!

Star group – practised their circle time skills, listening and joining the circle, read stories about emotions and feeling happy or sad, the book – Rainbow Fish is about sharing too and the group made happy and sad faces using buttons and pasta and created some really detailed transient art, some lovely photos on the blog this week from the Stars.

Outside has given us a lot of inspiration with the ice and we spent the week playing with the children and following their lead to give us ideas for our planning – ideas include buses and transport, vets and animals, ice and learning about weather, looking at clouds for shapes.

Next week we will be spending time in circles learning about shapes, learning about the weather on the Sun table and about concepts such as floating and sinking, weight, gravity and enjoying some science experiments too! Outside we will be taking part in lots of movement and exercise to keep warm and developing our role play house into a costa coffee shop.