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!

We have been super busy organising our fete which is on Saturday at 11.30am – 2pm and we can’t wait to welcome you all!

There will be a BBQ and a cafe and bar and stalls and a bouncy castle in the back garden too, lots of amazing prizes to be won on the “Pick your own Prize raffle”

We have had a lovely week at pre-school, our trip to feed the ducks was so fun on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday afternoon and thank you to all the parents and grandparents that helped us to walk there. The children really loved it, there are some really nice photos on the gallery. We have also welcomed Marie from Animals 2 U and she gave the children a brilliant experience, holding a big snake and gheko. It is a real treat to be able to book visitors in to come and see the children – we hope our fete will make a good profit so that we can invest in new experiences for the coming year.

The children have loved our beach set up outside and have been really happy playing under the event shelter, we have had a great laugh catching water balloons and finding it hilarious when they pop making our feet wet! Our ice cream shop has been a lovely area for learning as well and lots of counting and ordering and imagination and turn taking with a really nice ice cream play set that we bought with fundraising money.

Inside the children have really taken great care of the china plates and equipment in our home corner, there have been some great moments of role play, being Mum’s and checking texts and our favourite was a little boy who suddenly shouted – “I’ve got a text from my Daddy, he says he loves me” – so sweet!

Our circle times have been lots of chat about moving up to school, looking at photos and trying on uniform, lots more shape work too.

Other activities have included making lots of under the sea craft for our display, singing and disco Thursday, Small world set up on the carpet and making cakes for the fete too!

Next week is our last week and we have a Forest School session which can include parents – the Moon parents on the Thursday and the Sun parents on the Friday – we are sorry if you are not able to attend or the sessions don’t fit with your child’s group but we cannot accommodate both groups in both sessions as we would have 28 children plus parents!

We will have our graduation celebration on Thursday and Friday afternoons and a disco next Monday 17th July!

The children have made the most of the sunshine again this week with lots of water play outside to keep cool and we have popped our event shelter up for some extra shade. We take our drinks trolley outside and ensure the children refill their bottles during the day but please check with us if you are worried at all about how much your child is drinking.

We have welcomed Mrs Kyte from Willowbank School in this week to meet the children who will go into foundation class there and we will welcome St Andrew’s next week as well. The transition to school is very important and we share info with the new teachers to help them prepare for the arrival of our school starters. We know the children really well so can really help that process.

We are also starting to fill our spaces for September but we do still have space which people may not be aware of so we would be very grateful if you could share the facebook post so that we can get the message out to our community.

In our sun room, we have enjoyed hairdresser role play – an experience most of the children have knowledge of and with adults supporting the play there are so many learning opportunities. Mark making and talking about appointments and time and good vocabulary and learning all about different colour and types of hair and styles and nationalities.

We have been painting after circles times as well and exploring a different theme each morning on the carpet – we have covered health and our body, jobs and vehicles and life cycles and birds.

Our circle times have had a focus on minibeasts and maths. The Star group have used ladybirds and practising counting their spots, they have explored and learnt about the butterfly life cycles and acted out the Hungry Caterpillar story sack, drawn minibeast and produced some wonderful butterfly symmetry painting pictures.

The Sun group are enjoying their Forest School sessions on Thursday and Friday, they have one more week and then it will be the turn of the Moon group.

The Moon and Sun circles time have focused on recognising numbers and matching them, and there has been some really great progress in the last few weeks. They have practised making patterns which is part of the maths curriculum and have made caterpillars and butterflies with clay, and then painted those. Our caterpillars are already in cocoons so we are expecting to see butterflies emerge in a week or so and then we will have our wonderful Hungry Caterpillar Picnic Party!

Next week we have a busy week with two grandparents afternoon tea which are going to be well attended and we will look forward to welcoming you for some activities and a cup of tea and a piece of cake! The sessions are from 1-2pm on Monday and Wednesday afternoon.

Our planning for next week includes lots of mark making and drawing, shape games and rhyming games, castle role play and train tracks and water play.