Happy New Year to all our families! We hope that you had a happy Christmas and New Year period and the children have settled straight back into our routines and are happy and busy and playing beautifully!

The Spring term is a lovely time for us here at pre-school, we look forward and learn about growth and change, we look at the world around us and explore nature and touch on topics such as health and wellbeing, exercise, sleep, teeth and illness and we learn about how to be healthy too.

We will have a focus on literacy for January and Maths for February but of course both of these creep into all of our games and role play and circle times daily too.

We also run lots of nurture groups and this half term we have groups of 2 or 3 children at a time working on friendships, confidence, physical development, emotions and “wanderers” – these are children that need a little extra adult support when out and about in free flow – free flow is from 10.15 – 11.35 and this can be a busy time and some children find it hard to decide what to play with when there is so much on offer so a guiding hand and gentle help supports them to make choices and learn how to play with friends or how to play with a particular activity that they may have never seen before. Our groups change based on the individual children’s needs each half term.

Our circle times this week have been a lovely welcome back and chats about Christmas presents!

Stars have been mark making, drawing presents which helps them to learn that marks have meaning, they have also looked at their names along our literacy theme and used pretty counters to follow the line of the first letter of their name, helping them to recognise it. They have sorted fruit and veg using real items to bring that to life and learnt about body awareness, singing head shoulders knees and toes and listening to their heart rate after running!

Sun and Moon groups have also created some wonderful pictures of Christmas presents too! Their skills at representing objects in drawings are really developing well. The groups have learnt about their bones and skeletons, using a pretend x ray scanner on our ipad and then drawing their hand or skull on black paper, we have looked at dinosaur x-rays as well and also explored lunch boxes looking for fruit and we are learning about a different food group each week over this half term. At lunchtimes we will be making a tally chart together, looking at who has which fruit, then which dairy product etc over the half term and I will share these charts on the whiteboard in Reception so please point them out to the children when you are in the queue and take the chance to count and talk about the foods on the list.

As a charity money is very very tight for us this year with rising costs, we know all families are feeling the rise in the cost of living but if anyone could possibly make donations of the following we would be so grateful – bird feeders and bird food (NUT FREE please) and rice and flour and vinegar and bicarb and cereals and for the activities next week we would love lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, tinned sweetcorn, frozen fruit, mini tortilla, cheese, mango, pomegranite, kiwi, fig, lime, lemon, pineapple (fresh) and any other fascinating fruits you may see!

I attended a course on Invasive Groups Strep A this week with the South West Public Health unit so information will be coming out via email but as always please get in touch if you have any concerns.

Next week we will be making smoothies, fruit kebabs, mini healthy pizzas, learning about nature, focusing on letters and their sounds. Moon group are enjoying Forest School on a Thursday and the Sun group on a Friday this half term. and this week they have reminded each other of the rules and how to be safe and also learnt about ladybirds! They know that ladybirds can eat 5000 insects in their lifetime, they are actually beetles and play dead to avoid being eaten and usually have 7 spots!

Christmas has really arrived at pre-school this week, we have been listening to Christmas songs and music, we have been practising our performance skills and dance and learning actions and sequences to build our confidence ready for our Nativity on the 13th December. We will be closed for normal sessions on that day so don’t come down to pre-school but please come to the Community Centre for your AM or PM session which was sent to you by email for the Christmas party, we will have our party first with some games and craft and then a visit from Father Christmas with a gift for you to collect. We will then have our party food and get ready for our Nativity, we will then walk over to the Church and enter from the side door and walk onto the stage to get ready!

We have lots of Christmas craft on the go so please check your child’s basket for work to go home, and we will try to pop any other items into the bag at the end of the day too for you to use for decorations at home.

This week has been colder and we have wrapped the children up warm when they play outside, we are a free flow setting so the children can go in and out as they play and we have lots of activities outside and inside. This week we have built a water wall section outside and have been using balls instead of water as it is quite cold! The library on the astro has been lovely and a really nice time to read stories as we are practising our songs in our lunchtime story at the moment and don’t want to miss out on the reading. The library cafe is great as well, lots of interesting orders such as a coffee with 1003 sugars and a doughnut with pink and purple sprinkles and a hamburger with green salad and fizzy orange!

Our theme for the week for circle time has been performing and music and we have had some brilliant fun singing along to lots of different kinds of music – learning a dance to the Spice Girls, watching breakdancing and ballet and Strictly and talking about how music makes us feel. We have also learnt about jobs as well and the children found it really interesting so please do chat to them about your jobs and what you do at work.

We are also working hard on toileting to make sure that we can support all of the children, so your child may come home with lots of stickers on their tops!

Forest School has been chilly but lovely and the children were glad for the warmth of the fire. They have been learning about the woodlouse this week. Interesting facts are that they are nocturnal, they eat strawberries and fruit and plants and live in damp dark places, they are eaten by other insects and birds and spiders and they conglobate….this is when they roll into a ball!

The Star group have been taking part in lots of music and movement and learning about jobs and vehicles too.

Our hairdressing salon has been extremely popular with some hilarious photos and hairstyles on show after a trip there! This has been independent play and the children have been brilliant and negotiating and turn taking as everyone wants the straighteners and the pretty hair clip!

Next week we are planning more xmas craft, we will be trying on the costumes for the show, some physical development activities inside and we will add in some doctor surgery role play too for the afternoons. Don’t forget to wear your Christmas jumpers (we have lots of spare jumpers if needed) and donate a £1 if you can for our fundraising pot.

A lovely settled week at pre-school and a wonderful time was had at our two Grandparents coffee mornings, the children really loved to welcome them and show them around and play and we hope all of the Grandparents enjoyed their morning here and their hot drinks and scones! Thank you to them all for coming and we will organise another one in the summer term on a different day of the week.

We have been really busy over the last week, another Robot Reg visit which was fantastic and a visit from a lovely lady called Carol who introduced us to story massage, and it was amazing. I have put some photos onto the blog and you will see the children sitting in a circle facing each other’s back and Carol reads us a story and demonstrates the massage movements and the children followed her instructions beautifully. It is voluntary to take part and a really good message is that each child asked their friends if they wanted a massage and children can say no.

We have been continuing our space theme and have been learning about all the planets and we have a great display in our cloakroom and in our moon room of the work we have done.

Thank you to all families who donated items for our pantry and kitchen snack cupboards – you have been incredibly generous and our cupboards are full. We are really grateful and this will save us a really good chunk of our shopping budget which can then be spent on resources for the children so thank you very much.

There are some lovely Forest School photos from last week and this on the blog – the children have been making leaf crowns this week and they focus on a minibeast each week. This week is it ants! They have learnt that ants have 6 legs, they can taste and smell and feel with their antenna and do not have ears. Two children found spiders and counted their legs, learning that spiders have more legs than ants and our frogs are still in the pond too.

Circle times have been space based as well as building on listening skills too. We have enjoyed making planets, playing a Nina and the Neurons game on the computer, balloon blast off and counting our space money too. The Stars have been practising learning about questions, who what and where and making houses and talking about their family. They learnt a solar system song and painted some moons too.

Other activities have included space role play outside and we have been so thrilled to hear children talking about planets and discussing the different colours and names during their play. We have built worlds on the floor of the sun room, a jungle and train track and farm and our town using photos we have printed. We have enjoyed lots of singing and stories and finger gym to strengthen hands.

Next week we will be enjoying soft play inside if it rains, we will be setting up a theatre outside to practise our performance skills as we will start to learn our Christmas songs ready for our amazing Nativity in St Andrew’s Church. The weeks will race past and we will send home a few of the songs for you to practice at home in a couple of weeks.

We hope you all have a lovely weekend