Our Teddy Bear’s picnic here and at the CCA fields were defintely the highlight of the week! On Thursday morning we enjoyed games, a story, chasing bubbles, searching for teddies and a good sing song. The children loved the change from the usual routine and we enjoyed a picnic snack in the sunshine too. On Friday morning we were really lucky to be able to get out for a lovely walk to the CCA fields with our teddy bears and enjoy our snack and a play in the park. We are so pleased to be able to offer these great experiences to our children.

We have stayed with our pirate theme this week but will be moving onto exercise next week outside.

Our circle times have been fantastic in the Sun and Moon groups and they have made bridges to cross a pretend river and all came up with really individual ideas which is brilliant and really displayed amazing team work. We learnt about our 5 senses and tried lots of exoptic fruits, looking, feeling, tasting, smelling them and listening to the sounds as we cut them up. The children are learning about different countries as well, looking at the foods from around the world and buildings from around the world as well and this work will be going up on a new display in the Moon room.

The Stars have been super busy too with their brilliant circle times learning about sinking and floating, becoming more independant and pouring their own drinks and learning the differences between letters/numbers and drawings. They have also played lots of listening games – matching musical instrument sounds and playing musical statues and bumps together, they finish the week exploring music from around the world and different dancing.

Next week we have a focus on learning about our town so we would love you to take photos while you are out and about or pictures of your front door and send them into us and we can print them off to share with the children. We will be enjoying exercise in the garden, gym, yoga, activities and dancing and learning about rhyming and numbers as well with some work on our emotions too.

Nigel from Willand Tennis Club will be visiting next week to coach the children – he brings all the equipment with him and they have a lovely time trying a new sport!

Don’t forget the School Starter Information Evening on Monday at pre-school at 6pm! A relaxed hour with a cup of tea or coffee to chat about school and learn more about how to be “school ready”

We have started to celebrate Easter at pre-school with lots of craft and sensory trays and next week we will be cooking as well. Outside we have been playing with water – lots of creative ways to move it and carry it and creating foam and using our gutters and boats and ducks and paddling pools for ponds! We have a real pond in our back garden which has frogs in it so we have been taking inspiration from there and will be making a new pond in the growing garden this year as well and are hoping to find some frogspawn too!

The children have been enjoying story sacks and ring games in the Sun room and have helped me check all the puzzles that we have – organising a box of lost pieces and a box of puzzles that are missing pieces – we managed to put 12 different puzzle pieces back to create a full set!

Our role play has been the babies on the carpet, lots of very kind parents and carers looking after their babies, dressing them and brushing teeth – all a great learning experience while we talk about how to take care of children and how to be healthy.

Our circle times have looked at lots of different jobs together and we have a great list of who would like to be what when they grow up – one little girl would like Mandy’s job! The children have learnt about taking care of pigs, talked about journeys to pre-school and routes and road names, healthy eating has also featured in circle time, learning about treats and healthy items. Robot Reg came to visit on Thursday and a small group went to St Andrew’s on Friday afternoon for a lovely school experience. The star group have made houses using shapes, learnt about colour mixing, played hide and seek and What’s the time Mr Wolf, made daffodils and more easter craft as well.

Next week we will be baking and creating and exploring shape and pattern and learning about Easter, making potions, rivers, life cycle work and the weather too!

We have gone animal mad this week and we have created our own jungle in the Sun room! It is very atmospheric and the children have really loved playing “Longleat” and we even had photos of a monkey on a family’s car to share! The ladies have built safari cars and binoculars and set up a ticket office with laptops and leaflets from Longleat too. Alongside the safari park we have also learnt about sheep and cows and created animal fact sheets, we have made hungry caterpillar necklaces and Elmer craft with beautiful rainbow tissue paper.

Our Farm shop has been very busy undercover and the children have enjoyed the role play and have been carrying lots of shopping around the garden and the tills and play money are very popular – helping us to teach the language of money, look at the shapes of the coins and the numbers on them, matching them to the numbers on the tills.

The mud kitchen has been so busy this week with some wonderful herbs and petals, oats and out of date cereals to add into the mud pies.

We carry the theme of the week into our circle times as well and the Star group have danced and sung away to the Animal Boogie, they have made elephant footprints, taken part in animal yoga, made snakes for our display and paper plate chicks too.

The Sun and Moon group have learnt about turtles and parrots – we have had some fantastic feedback on our circle times during our parent consultations as the children do go home and chatter about what they have learnt which is so lovely for us! The group have made rainmakers to use in our pretend rain forest and really explored animal patterns and played a matching game on the laptop. The group have been really creative this week and are really learning to take their time and persevere and enjoy the process of making something rather than rushing back to free flow time. Robot Reg came last week but on Thursday the session was a literacy session with Michelle and the children were amazing, we can really measure the progress they are making.

We also had a lovely walk to the Walronds on Thursday afternoon with the Sun group – they explored the gardens there and we did the Willow trail which they loved! Lots of photos on the blog – we were hoping to take the Moon group on Friday afternoon but the weather is against us and we would have some very soggy children, we will rearrange the trip for another afternoon for them when the weather is brighter.

Next week we are continuing with our farm shop and creating a cafe as well – we would love donations of herbal tea bags, and any old metal tea pots, large or small to help us have enough for everyone to be pouring out the lovely fragrant tea for their customers! We will be concentrating on mark making and maths inside, and using the jungle for role play as well.