We have welcomed our Star children over the course of this week and have really enjoyed watching them start to explore and start to learn the routines! Some tears of course and they are to be expected, but we can already see that our nurturing and distracting and playing can make a difference to even the most upset little person so we feel really encouraged by that and hope that you are all OK as you get used to dropping them off and please do ring in any time you would like for an update on what they are up to!

We have had a brilliant week outside playing in our farm shop, we have made pretend gingerbread men to sell, doughnuts and pretend bread rolls -all from salt dough. We have also made a cow and then milked it by filling plastic gloves with milky water! There is no end to our imagination!

We have also taken two groups up to the fire station again this week – this time we were able to organise going inside and having a sit in the fire engine! We always need volunteers on our trips out as we like to go with a high ratio so keep an eye out for a text request for helpers as we set the date for some trips.

We have had some lovely circle times based on learning about size and height and pattern and shape and colour for the Sun and Moon group. We used our lovely natural items to make pictures after being inspired by the transient art in a gingerbread man story book and made a beautiful rainbow together learning about pattern and colour.

The Star group enjoy some quiet time together, sing a little Hello song and enjoy the instruments before having snack and then go outside to play.

The Sun group had their first Forest School on Thursday and the Moon enjoyed their session today, we will alternate each Thursday and Friday and now that we have two trained staff we will be running sessions for all children over the course of the year.

We have lots of areas on our website to share our ethos and planning and curriculum with you so please do take a look and you will see lots of info about the Early Years Foundation Stage there which is what we follow when caring for and teaching your children.

Next week we will carry on earning about farming and food and harvest time and hope to be visiting the church at some point for a harvest experience.

This week our Sun and Moon children have really settled into a good circle routine, please chat to them about their group times, the Moons are called by a tambourine and the Suns by a triangle. We have a photo of every child in each group which they love looking at. We have also looked at the family selfies too and taken pictures of ourselves in group time, we have also talked about how tall we are and looked at very tall building and recreated them out of blocks. We have enjoyed some physical exercise and activity looking at shapes as well and listened carefully to story sacks.

We have had a really wonderful end to our summer term, ending with our graduation ceremony in the sunshine and it was brilliant to be able to welcome families back into the pre-school to watch, the last one we did with families was 2019!

We hope our families enjoyed the celebration of your child’s time with us, and that they love their books and the delicious very special cake made by Victoria, one of our parents so a huge thank you to her.

The children are so ready to move onto school, we are proud to have prepared them well and to see our little Stars move into the school starter groups in the Autumn. All children have made happy memories and lovely progress with us through the dedication of the staff and the support from you all as their families.

This week has been full of “favourite moments” from learning to dance in Strictly style to noodles with Louise W, Andrea made beautiful handprints as a lovely memory to keep with a big hug at the end of the circle time as well.

We had a lovely visit from St Andrew’s teachers and there were two stay and play sessions for children at Willowbank too.

Animals2U came in to give the children an animal experience on Thursday and Friday mornings and Maria commented on how well the children behaved and how well they understood the natural world and loved meeting Huff and Puff the mice, the snake, the stick insect and a tortoise.

We would like to take the opportunity to wish you all a very happy summer holiday and thank you for all your support over the last year and we look forward to welcoming our stars and new families back in the Autumn.

We held our first ever Grandparents coffee mornings this week to celebrate that wonderful relationship and we were thrilled to have 18 grandparents on Tuesday and the same again on Wednesday! We had a brilliant time together and the children absolutely loved having their Grandparents here with them, making flowers for a new display and then enjoying a coffee and a scone. After that they went outside to play with the children and then we sang a song for them and waved them goodbye and there were a few tears from the children as they said goodbye but we have put the photos onto the gallery that we took so you can see what a happy morning we had! We will certainly do this again in the Autumn Term for new families and hope we can persuade some of the Grandparents to come on trips or come in and share a craft activity over the year ahead.

The Star group are loving Forest School and this week they have made potions with Japanese role petals, found 6 frogs in the pond and we thought we only had 4 and they ate wild strawberries that were picked and read “Apples are magic”. The children also found a moth in the garden and were keen to know what it was called – it was a Scarlet Tiger Moth.

Two butterflies appeared on Thursday after the hot weather and a few more have emerged today, we will leave them lots of nectar and fruit to eat over the weekend and they will be ready to fly away at our party next week.

Our circle times have been busy learning about rhythm and rhyme, looking at baby pics and how we have changed, we talked about emotions and being worried or excited and the children made some wonderful butterfly pictures too.

The stars have used shapes to make pictures – rockets and houses and been counting bricks to make tall towers, they have enjoyed transient art and learning about letters and numbers too.

Outside the garden centre has been very busy and the digging pit has also been well used – we will take a break from that now to ensure the children keep making progress and learn different skills (sorry for all the muddy clothes and shoes!) and we will be building castles outside next week and have set up a creation station as well. Inside on the sun table we have made mini gardens together which has been so lovely!