This week we had a Christmas send off for Andrea, she loves Christmas and is a superb help to me during the festive period, writing the play and organising the scenery and costumes and creating Christmas magic wherever she goes! We had a surprise Christmas party day for her and she was really touched, especially to see the children were also involved by wearing Christmas jumpers too!

Forest School sessions this week were brilliant, lots of sawing and hard work! Lighting the fire and playing with the gutters and cause and effect and the mini beast of the week was the centipede! The Sun group take part on a Thursday and the Moon group on a Friday and this swaps around each half term. The groups learnt that the centipede can have from 14 – 177 pairs of legs and each pair in one a single segment. They eat cockroaches and flies and worms and spiders and can regrow their legs! They never have exactly 100 legs! Some lovely comments too – one little girl knew that “they eat words”, one chap knew where to find them “there might be a centipede under that rock as it is dark” and a good question too “do centipedes eat leaves?” and one chap was inspired “I want to go and find a centipede in a dark place” and off he went!

Circle times have had a shape focus this week:-

Stars – have looked at shapes and played shape matching games, drawn shapes and drawn around shapes and matched brick shapes onto templates.

Sun and Moons – have learnt about 3 D shapes, drawn around shapes, played shape bingo, helped me sort out a big shape mess I created and enjoyed a shape hunt too.

We have also learnt about our Planet, made mini earth art and explored the concepts of recycling, growing, change and where our food comes from.

We have had a very wet week here at pre-school which is a shame, but we have lots of good activities planning inside for wet days and the children keep playing and learning and we get out into the garden as much as we can in wet weather gear! We have a new set of water wall equipment which we are hoping to put up next week in the dryer weather and will use balls and boats on that instead of water if it is colder.

We have been running obstacle courses and different physical activities designed to promote strength and co-ordination. Next week we will set up some role play outside too with a mini library and cafe and I would love you to take photos of your food! Please send in pictures from your phone of your plates with the food on and I will laminate them for the cafe – you breakfast lunch or tea, slices of cake or a fruit snack please!

We will also be encouraging the children to borrow books for real at the end of the day and our boards will have your child’s name on it and the book they have chosen, we will keep a list and then please do bring them back after a few days and we can lend out another one.

There will be a library style trail to follow as well (Christmas themed!) and lots of books to enjoy.

We also have some Christmassy games and things inside and will be exploring ice inside in the warm!

We have some hairdresser role play on offer too in the sun room in free flow so we are hoping for a lovely busy week!

Welcome back to pre-school after the October half term, we hope all of our families had a lovely holiday and a happy Halloween – although it was extremely wet! We celebrated Halloween here on Monday with lots of dressing up and facepainting and party games and have now moved on to learning about Bonfire Night and Space! We have created a space rocket outside with a control panel and office and next week will spend lots of time role playing and learning more about our planets to help our play come to life.

We had our first visit of the year from Robot Reg who helps us learn about letters over a half term and he comes on a Tuesday afternoon at the moment and will return later in the year to meet the children who miss out on this half term’s fun sessions.

Forest School this week was wonderful as always and they even managed to have two beautiful sunny morning sessions on Thursday and Friday. This week the groups have swapped over and the Sun group are out on a Thursday and the Moon on a Friday. They have spent time learning the rules and being taught how to be safe around the fire and explored the garden, made firework pictures with sticks and played hide and seek and sang “Down in the forest” – it is always a treat to be doing my paperwork day in the office and be able to listen to them all out in the back garden having such a wonderful time.

Our Sun and Moon groups have been working on their listening and attention skills through a variety of fun games such as matching sounds, listening to instructions on how to make a rocket picture, listening and matching instruments and their sounds and went on a listening walk with Michelle.

The Star group have been guessing the animal using sounds and listening really carefully, followed instructions and enjoyed an obstacle course as well, listening to the order they need to follow. On the wet days we have danced and played inside and had the train track out and made some brilliant bonfire night craft on the sun table.

Don’t forget to check your child’s basket which is under their peg as there are lots of lovely items in there which the children have made, we will try to ensure they collect their full baskets every so often and have them on the carpet at home time too.

Our week has been full of fun and joy, enjoying our outside area when we can between heavy rain showers and making the most of the Autumn sunshine! We have been learning about transport and there are some amazing photos of all of the different stations we have made this week. The children loved being in charge of the train station and have made a boat and tickets and worked really well together to take part in some lovely role play. We have had the cars inside too and have been exploring cause and effect by rolling the cars along track and planks and gutters!

The children have helped to make lots of playdoh this week and we have also had the clay out as well – both of these activities are excellent for hand strength which is needed for good pen grip later in the year. The sun activity has been to read stories in the morning so we have had a lovely chilled out time with cushions and blankets reading to small groups of children. Reading every day is so important and is one of the things you can do at home to really make a difference to your child’s speech and language and overall well being. We have books that you can borrow if you would like to – please ask and you can take one home to enjoy together.

The big blocks have been out during free flow, they are a brilliant resource and accessible to all children, you can build whatever you like and then help to organise them and tidy them away afterwards.

Circle times have been great fun in the Moon and Sun group with a week of learning about colour, lots of colour mixing and artwork and experiments and patterns as well. We have practised our counting and tested our understanding of concepts and will be working a lot more on understanding over the coming weeks too.

The Star group are so settled and again, there are some lovely photos of the children enjoying small group circle times before snack time. They have moved and danced to the animal boogie, pretending to be the different animals, they have enjoyed mark making in foam and with paint and cars and made marks to music too.

Lunchtimes are great and the children have learnt the routine well, they unpack their own lunches onto a plate, we have knives and forks and spoons for them to use and scissors so that they can cut open their own frubes or packets. We would prefer that whole packets of crisps were not sent it ideally as we are responsible via Ofsted and the Dept Of Education for promoting healthy lunches so a few crisps in a little pot or bit of cling film would be better please. In line with our policy no sweets or chocolate should be in the lunchboxes either.

We hope you all have a really lovely weekend and next week we will be exploring our light box and more colour work, tidying our growing garden for the Autumn and harvesting our last veg. We will be learning about Autumn next week and would love you to collect leaves and conkers and twigs and donate any pumpkins for us to investigate over the next two weeks leading up to half term – thank you.