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!

Snow at pre-school! We have had a lovely week, despite the very cold conditions and we have had to block off some of our top patio area as it is so slippy and all of our rock salt had frozen solid! The children have loved exploring the ice and playing out in the snow on Wednesday. We have also been learning all about Chinese New year – the week ahs been action packed, full of activities and craft and dancing and dragons and the beautiful red and gold of the Chinese New Year colours. The China Orchid donated some absolutely beautiful decorations for us which the children have taken great care of and we will store those away safely for next year too. Lots tried prawn crackers and noodles in circle time, learnt which animal represents the year they were born and about traditions too. We have loved learning all about the difference concepts and ideas and celebrations.

Lunchtimes have been full of spotting dairy items this week, looking for butter in our sandwiches and talking about different yoghurts and cheeses. There are still a few lunchboxes that have too many sweet items in them, just one is ideal.

The Star group have milked a pretend cow, made butter and enjoyed milk experiments, they painted a Chinese dragon and had some lovely story times. They also welcomed a visit from the Sun and Moon’s dancing Chinese Dragon which they loved!

The Sun and Moon groups have really had a focus on Chinese New Year, so many ways to learn and practice so many other skills within such a vibrant theme. Colour, language, celebrations, names of the year, numbers, patterns, mark making, imagination, food, texture, taste and so much more.

Our Forest School children wrapped up warm in the frost and have had an amazing time in the garden with the fire, enjoying porridge and hot chocolate and learning all about spiders this week – the largest is the Goliath tarantula, their webs are so big that they catch birds! Female spiders can lay 3,000 eggs at a time. Spiders can jump 50 x their own length.

Next week we will be moving into learning about where our food comes from and lots of lovely home corner role play in the Sun room – a favourite moment from this week was one little boy sat on the mini sofa in front of the pretend TV, wrapped up warm in a blanket watching the pretend TV while holding an empty tub of celebrations! Very cosy and relaxed!

Next week we are going to explore construction outside as well and any building magazines or home improvement magazines would be very welcome please!