Our week has been full of visitors and trips and we have had such a lovely time! We loved welcoming all of the parents in on Monday and Tuesday for the Easter craft mornings and there are some lovely photos on the gallery and we have had lots of parent help and grandparent help for the trips to the milkshake shed and St Andrew’s Church too.

We have been collecting in the Easter Egg design entries and will be awarding the prizes on the first day back after the Easter holiday to each winner and 2nd and 3rd place in the Sun and Moon and Star groups.

This week we have continued our number focus outside in between the rain showers, we have enjoyed our mud kitchen as well making mud hot cross buns complete with stick crosses. The children have enjoyed different tray activities that Andrea has set out undercover and we even had enough sunshine for the mini solar fountains to work on Thursday!

The week of show and tell has also been a great success – we have a few items that have gone astray which we will search for when we clear up today. The children have loved sharing their treasures with friends and their confidence has grown over the week, enabling everyone to talk about their special item in front of a group. The school role play has also been brilliant fun and some hilarious observations of children reminding each other about rules! There are certainly some very gifted teachers for future generations!

Forest School has continued in the almost dry conditions on Thursday and definitely wet conditions on Friday! Our tadpoles are now out by the pond as they have legs at the back now and we will keep caring for them until they are big enough to climb out onto the log and hop into the pond.

Our circle times have focused on how and why, show and tell and Easter with our two trips out as well! The children have learnt how to use a sewing machine this week with Louise W. The Stars have loved their Easter week of craft and colour and eggs hunts outside!

We wish you all a very happy two weeks off and hope they are filled with fun and chocolate and happy times. We look forward to welcoming you all back from the 17th April onwards.

Circus skills, hoopla, climbing, sand, hats and coats, animals and mirrors, being special, lunchtimes, friends, chatting, rain, shapes and colours, babies and soft toys, vet medicine and stethoscopes, safari display, yoga, soft play, gymnastics, rules, tidying up, helping the ladies, wobbly bridge, cleaning up, exploring the garden, nature inside, all about me, jobs, our home, our family, sore knees, split milk, big smiles and lots of photos! Just a snapshot of our week!

We have been very busy and although the weather put paid to some of our time outside this week, we got the soft play out and carried on inside! Lots of turn taking and waiting for the next available slot using the whiteboard and a list of names, good skills to learn. We have now tidied away our circus games and will be moving into a garage role play and workshop set up outside for next week, with a book area and lots of space to chat and explore themes in a group on the astro. We have also planned more stories for inside, some sensory play on our carpet and some cafe role play inside as well.

We are fundraising a lot at the moment and an email will be coming out to share a campaign with you about the future of pre-schools and how we are funded as there is a crisis. We are a charity so we do not make a profit but we are likely to make a loss which is not sustainable. Please have a read and if you would like to offer support please let me know – Michelle and two parents Rhi and Nick are going to do a sky dive for us to raise much needed funds for equipment outside and for some storage and baby role play equipment and a woodwork station too! Our bike ride starts on Monday 20th March and our Summer Fete will be an exciting event too.

The children have had a very special week in Sun and Moon group, learning about being special and there are some wonderful drawings and observations and chat from the groups.

The Stars have had a brilliant week learning about jobs and exploring the back garden and bringing nature inside – including real worms!

Some tadpoles should arrive next week which will be really exciting.

We hope everyone who is unwell feels better soon and we will look forward to another busy week next week!

Staff photos are now on the fence! I will put up the pictures each day to show which staff are in and you can chat to the children about which lady is their key person and which other ladies are special to them! All staff know all the children because we are a free flow setting so it is lovely to watch all the relationships growing and the children came in this week saying “I saw your photo Amelia!”.

Our last week before half term has been a sunny one and a happy one, we have enjoyed making bread on the sun table and eating it for snack and we have been dressing up all week in the Sun room, promoting turn taking (it is hard to wait to be Spiderman or have the best Elsa dress!) and independence in getting changed yourself. We are collecting info on the children’s interests at home as well to use for planning next half term. We are going to learn about the circus and the fairground for the first two weeks and would love to invite you in to talk about your job or let us know what jobs you do so that we can learn about them and role play that in our free flow time.

We have enjoyed a trip to make milkshakes which was brilliant on Thursday afternoon but sadly the Friday afternoon trip was postponed due to staff illness. Thank you to my Dad for donating the money for the milkshakes! The children had a brilliant trip with Michelle and Sophie and our helpers.

There have been lots of love hearts around pre-school this week as we move towards Valentines Day and we have been practising our sounds of letters. More farmer role play outside and mud kitchen play has kept everyone busy!

Circle times have been based on life cycles and have covered frogs and snails and caterpillars! All groups have explored these ideas. The Star group have explored different materials and textures and made some wonderful collages.

Forest School has been another wonderful couple of sessions and the children learnt about worms this week! Matching nicely with our life cycle work, they learnt that worms have no arms or legs or eyes. There can be 1 million worms in 1 acre of land and they don’t have lungs – they breathe through their skin! The children were fascinated “Blackbirds eat worms” said one little girl and “they live in dirt” and “They are underground” said another.

We wish all of our families a very happy half term and look forward to welcoming you back from Monday 20th February!