Autumn Term Week 5

We have been learning about and exploring Autumn this week – learning about the seasons and our world is really important and part of our curriculum that we have designed which follows the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework. We will be starting to create some wonderful displays at pre-school now that everyone is settled in and enjoying all the activities we have on offer.

In the main room we will build a display called “Our Year” starting with Autumn, in the Moon cloakroom we will display our curriculum ideas and plans so please do stay to have a look, we also have our All about Me display in the Sun room with family photos and individual photos to create a sense of belonging and in the Moon room we will be celebrating culture and languages that are spoken by our families.

We know it is always busy at collecting time but please find your key person for a chat each day if you can – they may be in a different room at the end of the day for story time as we all move around all week so that we spend time with our key children. If you would like a chat you can ring your key person, chat at the end of the day and book in for our parent chats in November – more info to follow. We do try to find you to give feedback each day but if you are rushing off to a school pick up it can be hard and we know you would all like to hear what your child has enjoyed each day.

Forest School sessions have been wonderful, they have a smart new kettle which makes a fantastic fire and the children take turns to light the fire each week. They have also used a new hand tool that Sophie bought to make holes in conkers and have made caterpillars.

Our circle themes this week have been based on exploring Autumn.

The Star group have painted with sticks, made beautiful Autumn creations with natural items and playdoh, looked at conkers and sorted Autumn leaves, learnt about hedgehogs and made one in clay and learnt a new song, enjoyed an autumn hunt in the garden and played a hide the hedgehog game to learn about prepositions. What a lot of learning in one week!

The Sun and Moon children have been given Autumn bags to go out and about to collect treasures to bring back in for sensory trays next week, they have also sorted real Autumn leaves into colour and size, collected leaves from our garden and learnt a new song called Autumn Leaves. More clay hedgehogs, hedgehog facts and we watched a video and looked into our hedgehog’s home in the garden to see if he has built his nest for hibernation. Lots of beautiful Autumn colour mixing and autumn maths pattern work too.

Our free flow is jam packed with learning opportunities which we plan each week – we have been cooking again and made gingerbread, we explored lots of citrus fruit and learnt about harvest, we made smoothies and bread for snack time too. Next week our circle times will be concentrating on a focus on independence and self care and being healthy.

We will be building a bike workshop outside so we would love any old spanners and tools, bike magazines and bike pumps and old tyres please!