Autumn Term Week 3
All of the children are settling in so well, moving through the third week has been getting easier for those who feel a little upset at drop off as the routines are becoming families, names are being learnt and friendships made with peers and relationships growing with key ladies. We have a key person meeting on Monday to talk about how everyone has settled and to make a start on checking where children are developmentally and sharing that info with you. We are really good and supporting all children here to make fantastic progress whatever their starting point and we pride ourselves on working with each child as an individual and with their family. We will be sharing ideas for home learning in a couple of weeks and will share if we think your child will benefit from a little nurture time in their emotional development and feeling happy and safe here or in any of the areas of learning.
We follow the Early Years Framework and design our own planning and curriculum based on that and Birth 2 Five and Development Matters – all links are below.
A parents guide to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) | Family Corner
Early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
foundationyears.org.uk/files/2021/09/What-to-expect-in-the-EYFS-complete-FINAL-16.09-compressed.pdf
Development Matters – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Please do not hesitate to ask any questions either by email or chatting to any of our team.
We plan activities to really grab the children’s interests and to teach them, we use fascinating ideas, awe inspiring activities and games, resources and adult led group times to ensure there is learning throughout the pre-school to stumble across and enjoy.
Our focus for the week has been reading, writing, exploring and listening to stories with a strong purpose to develop communication and language skills.
The circle times for Star group this week have included Going on a Bear Hunt, Talking about favourite stories and TV programmes and characters, listening games such as spotting different animal noises, different farm animal noises as what those animals eat, mixing colours, drawing to music, naming fruits and veg and listening to instructions and exploring textures, using new vocab to describe items in the treasure basket.
The Sun and Moon groups (children leaving in July 2023) have also been learning about stories and books and developing their language abilities too. We have laughed along with Goldilocks being cheeky in her story, made our own Bear Hunt trail on a huge piece of paper, written our own stories using our favourite animal, listened carefully to tricky animal sounds and identified them, Billy Goats Gruff story sack and a shopping game which supports our listening skills too.
Our activities in free flow have been really fun, so many children are loving the farm shop and the flowers that Aldi donated smell fantastic and have brought the shop to life for all our senses, some of the apples for sale have been eaten!
Life is never dull for a moment here – from milking a cow…to a hen laying eggs….to mixing paint into foam….lighting a fire at Forest School….making potions in giant bottles…..or enjoying a story and a cuddle – just a tiny snapshot of the week!
Next week our focus is Autumn and Sensory play and “Fascinations!” – the group leaders will be creating awe and wonder in their circle times with exciting objects and sensory trays and in our free flow our farm shop will still be open to customers and we will be having a food theme inside on the Sun table – we would love donations of the following items please:- recipe books, vegetables, herbs and spices, rice, flour tortilla, cheese, tomato puree, frozen veg – thank you!