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!

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!