We have continued with our pirate theme this week following on from the wonderful role play and games last week, it has been a really engaging theme and I wish I had taken a photo of every single one of the brilliant games, puzzles, activities, …
Welcome to the summer term at Pre-School! We hope everyone had a lovely Easter break and we were really excited to see you all again after the holidays! We have lots to look forward to this term, our annual Hungry Caterpillar picnic party in our …
A very wet end to our week but we have made it outside most mornings and afternoons and these are some of the happy moments and activities that I spotted going on!
Easter sensory trays, imaginative ball games, boys creating challenge in their play, pretend cooking, “the floor is lava” game, tractor ride – turn taking, little corners with children chatting, practising with walking on stilts!
We have been out on a few spontaneous walks as well, this week we had chance to go to the river with a group and we had a wonderful walk to the fairy garden.
We added the total miles (12!) to our Walk the Moon target which is now at 1242 with 917 to go – we have raised £280 so far so please keep donating and walking and recording the total miles!
Our Easter craft mornings were a great success and we really enjoyed having you all come in and take part in the craft and Easter egg hunt with your children, they really love to have someone here with them and we may do something similar in the summer term as well so keep an eye on your emails!
Important date for next term is our Summer Fete – Saturday 22nd June!
We do have a few trips and experiences over the coming summer term and we do need walkers to help us so please ask grandparents if they would be able to help us out with coming along to the Church or to have milkshake at the leisure centre please, we know it is hard to help us when you are working.
We wish you all a very Happy Easter holiday and look forward to welcoming you all back for the summer term.
We are so lucky to have such a fun group of children this year, they just love to have a go at whatever we plan and organise and make the very most of it all – learning and playing at the same time which is …
We had a few visitors this week which has been really fun and created a lovely buzz around pre-school. PCSO’s Kevin and Carrie came to visit on Tuesday morning and brought lots of dressing up and stickers and colouring and most importantly a Police Van, …
World Book day is such a lovely celebration of the world of books, we read all the time here at pre-school and reading to your child at bedtime every night is a really good way of supporting their learning, nice quite time together snuggled up and talking about the book as well as reading the story really helps children to settle down for a nice sleep. There is a brilliant website called Tiny, Happy People from the BBC with loads of advice on all sorts of topics and worries and activities.
Baby and toddler bedtime routine: Top tips for parents – BBC Tiny Happy People
The Moon group had a trip to the library on Thursday afternoon and loved reading books there before coming back to pre-school to play. We have had our story sacks out each morning and the children have been acting out the Billy Goats Gruff story on our own wobbly bridge!
Circle times have had a focus for learning about jobs, people who keep us safe and people who help us and we have welcomed Pauline in for a visit who is the lollipop lady from St Andrews. She is very good to us and pops down with her lollipop stick and hats and coats for the children to dress up in and stays for a while for a play in the garden, directing the children on the bikes and talking about road safety. We are also hoping to welcome a parent in the Royal Navy to talk about his work and the ship he works on, the local community police, Lisa from Tesco and a fire fighter. If anyone reading this has any contacts or would like to come in and share their work we would love to hear from you – any kind of work is interesting to us, not just the high profile high vis 999 professions.
We have been looking at the vehicles people need for their work, talking about jobs and work our families do, using posters and mini figures, toys and videos as well.
The Star children have used lots of different hats to learn about jobs, looked at emergency vehicles, watched a video of lots of different vehicles at work and matched equipment to jobs as well.
We have enjoyed vet role play inside, had lots of different transport toys out and outside we have been playing shops, using the role play to talk about size and pattern and money and counting and turn taking. Our fossil area has been popular too and we will leave this out for the children to now explore on their own having modelled the play and drawn maps, hunted for frozen dino eggs, used hammers, made fossils and bones, we are now leaving that as a child led area with all the equipment they need to enjoy the play with their new vocabulary.
Forest School has been a delight again this week as always, really wonderful sessions in the back garden with Sophie and Jackie.
Fossils, saltdough lollipops, flowers and photos, jars and hand made labels, making bones from sponges, finding dinosaurs, mud, more mud, mud kitchen, cleaning the mud kitchen, water, rain, more rain, puddles and bubbles, a zoo, a farm, a jungle, zoo leaflets from Tesco, a trip …
Welcome back after half term to all our families, we hope you all had a happy and lovely half term break. The children are pleased to be back and have had a really good week – a few tears are common after a break from …
What an exciting week! BBC Spotlight came to film and interview us this week as part of a news feature about underfunding in Early Years – we really hope that you all enjoyed the moments that were captured by the cameraman and we all thought pre-school looked bright and fun and full of happy faces. A moment of stardom for us and I had lots of children saying “I saw you on my TV!” It was a really fun moment and I was really glad that I said “Yes” when we got the call. The children have absolutely loved our wonderful Lunar New Year celebrations this week. The whole pre-school has been full of beautiful colour and craft and food and we have two families that celebrate Chinese New Year with their wider family and it has been really lovely to hear how they celebrate and to try some of the delicious food from the Golden Lion which was donated to us for lunch on Friday! It was a really special moment to see the children eating their noodles and spring rolls and talking about the food and the celebration. We felt very luck indeed to have the Golden Lion share their food with us today – thank you very much indeed.
Our free flow activities have been busy this week too – lots of role play with looking after the babies, there are two new babies in families at pre-school – Congratulations so some role play has been a nice way to help talk about a new sister. Outside we have decorated our Chinese Restaurant and had pretend takeaways and banquets and lots of playground games – egg and spoon races, skittles, parachute games and shape hunts.
Forest School have made valentines hearts using little pebbles and filled their tummies with porridge cooked on the fire.
All circle times have been using our Chinese New Year theme to teach lots of skills and give opportunities for craft and creativity, language and vocabulary, maths and patterns and letters and words, different ways of writing and food that they may not have tried before too. We have been watching dragon dancing displays, made lanterns, firework painting, learning about the different animals through the calendar and made dumplings with playdoh!
After half term we are going to set up an explorer’s area with fossil hunting and binoculars and bird spotting amongst other ideas. If you go out and about over half term and there are particular things that interest your child on a day out please let us know!
We hope you have a wonderful half term break and see you all from the 19th February onwards
New ladies have arrived!! We are thrilled to announce that we have 3 new ladies joining our team here to support the children. We have Zoe who is very experienced and qualified and will take on key children and work in all areas of our …