Autumn Term Week 2

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!