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.

What a wonderful week we have had, we have introduced some role play into our week which has been brilliant – the fire station play has been really fun and the children have really engaged in that play. We have used our circle times to teach fire safety and look at fire engines and watch video’s on kidstube as well. The teaching in those circles then comes out in their play and we have some great photos on the blog. We also took the Moon group out to the Fire Station in Cullompton and enjoyed peeking into the windows to look at the fire engine and we chatted all the way there and back! We have made walkie talkies, fire extinguishers, a fire station office and even small pretend fires to put out around pre-school!

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.

Another highlight of the week was our walk with all of the children – 27 in all to the Proclamation of the King in the Bull Ring on Monday, it was very sobering to think about the loss of the Queen and share the moment about the new King with the children and give him 3 cheers and one chap also remembered to say “God Save the King” at the end, nice and loudly and that made everyone smile.

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, we have learnt about fire safety as well and explored the back garden and took time together to draw the items that we found.

We have been 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, 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, making bread, 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!

Have a lovely weekend and we will be thinking of the Queen and her family on Monday.

We enjoyed our last Forest School of the year this week and celebrated Sophie and Jackie completing their Level 3 Forest School award. This is a huge commitment as it takes a year and is a lot of work so we are really lucky to be able to run our Forest School weekly for the children with Sophie and Jackie in charge. The children get a huge amount out of learning outside and by being in our back garden which is a wonderful space.

Home corner role play has been really popular this week with the children making a pretend TV and watching it, pointing the remote control at it and chattering away about what they would like to watch! Paw Patrol was the main choice.

We have been practising our graduation song ready for the celebration next week Thursday and Friday afternoons.

The St Andrew’s children enjoyed two visits to school this week and next week it is Willowbank’s turn for two stay and play sessions.

Outside we have been working in the garden and listening to Fairy Tales outside and writing them up on the wall too, lots of dressing up and role play and craft and exercise outside too.

Our circle times for the Stars have involved lots of music and songs and story sacks and ring games and cosmic yoga!

The Sun and Moon groups have loved their last Forest School sessions all together and have also been matching sounds, made little models of themselves with their new school jumpers on, worked hard in an exercise session lifting heavy things across the room and transporting them, and made insects with shapes and taken part in a treasure hunt in the back garden, listening to clues, finding objects and counting them too.

A lovely week and we have also met more of the children that are starting with us in the Autumn too.

Next week we will have a visit to the setting from an animal experience which will be really exciting for the Sun and Moon children as a treat before they go to school!

We would love it if any parents would like to buy us any of the following items to help us save a few last pennies!

Cornflour, herbal tea bags, shave foam, food colouring, buttons or any craft items! Thank you.