We really can’t believe that we are at the end of the Spring Term! We have had such a happy term and we still have so much to look forward to for our summer term – we have booked tennis lessons, we are going to the CCA fields for a Teddy Bears picnic, we are going to arrange a Grandparents coffee morning, celebrate the Jubilee and we will be going to Orchard Lea to sing with the residents there. We will also be visiting the schools again, we will be working with the primary schools on transitions for our Sun and Moon group and when we return on the 25th April we will know who is going to which school! Our graduation ceremonies will be on Thursday 14th and Friday 15th July and the office will be in touch to let you know all the details.

This week we have got quite muddy outside, after the sunshine dried up all the mud the rain then came back! We have also loved the water play outside, it is a really lovely, calming and exploring activity. The children spend happy hours building different water routes and adding in the boats and ducks and colour and herbs!

Our activities are planned each week in order to make sure the children are learning through play and making good progress, we love to plan for the circle times and this week has been a busy Easter craft week!

The Star, Sun and Moon groups were all thrilled to bits when Jade brought in her puppies on Monday morning, they are absolutely gorgeous and the children were quiet and gentle and loved cuddling and stroking them.

The Star group have decorated Easter eggs, been on a pattern matching egg hunt in the back garden, learnt about sinking and floating with different kinds of eggs, marble painted the eggs, made Easter bonnets and listened to the Hoppity Skip little chick book.

The Sun and Moon group have taken part in an Easter Yoga session, Easter egg hunts in the garden, enjoyed an I Spy Easter sheet which they love to take part in, carefully circling each item as I read them out and learning to look really hard at the sheet. We also discovered the magic of magnets! Lots of laughter as I made the magnet fly off my hand by repelling it!

After the Easter holiday we will be exploring the world of Pirates and having a Science week on the Sun table too! We would love donations of any pirate items you may have, any old jewellery or jewellery boxes for treasure, any round stones for me to make more song stones as we have a lovely list of new songs that we have learnt! We would also love cornflour, empty egg boxes, bicarbonate of soda, lemons, vinegar, sunflower oil and shaving cream.

Another super busy and active week at pre-school! We have welcomed Sporty Mini’s into the setting on Tuesday morning for a trial session for the Sun and Moon groups which they really loved. Lots of exercise and ball skills practice. Robot Reg visited the Sun group while the Moons went off to St Andrew’s Church for an Easter visit and then Robot Reg played with our little Star group and they were amazing! Rebecca was really impressed with how well they took part and enjoyed all the activities and we hope to book her for more sessions in the Summer Term.

Our sponsored bike ride has been going really well this week, despite some very heavy rain showers! Most children have completed all their laps and the amount that has been pledged so far is absolutely incredible, it will be the most we have ever raised – we will wait until all the money has come in but we can share it is a 4 figure sum – WOW and a huge thank you from us all for getting so many sponsors. We have a great list of things we need to buy to enhance all the lovely activities and sets that we have to play with and we will share photos of all the things that we buy so that you can see!

Our Sun and Moon circles have played lots of animal games and used animals to count, dance, follow actions, counted out animal foods and learnt animal facts. The groups also enjoyed Forest School – working hard to get some seeds planted to grow their own veg. The children also worked on sorting skills – please do practice this at home as some children found it really hard to separate coins and plastic lids into matching pairs – they would match the colours but not the intricacies of patterns and size as well. For Example some found it hard to see the difference between 1 and 2 p coins and differences between the same colour plastic lids that had different patterns on the sides.

The Star group have been creative, they have following instructions, moved to music and used instruments, enjoyed a story sack, had a mini beast hunt in the back garden, dough gym to animal songs and Rosie the Rabbit came to visit us on Monday and all of the children loved cuddling her and she was so soft and gentle with them. We have really enjoyed our animal theme and learnt so much. Thank you for all the pet photos so far, we will be using them next week and adding them to our animal experiences display so do have a look and spot your pet!

Next week we will be enhancing our cafe outside with lots of play food activities and we will be taking part in Maths activities on a large scale outside as well. In the Sun room we will be making large scale worlds on the floor – laying out big sheets of paper, collecting props and making building, cutting grass to stick on – all to create a different world each am and pm. We will also be working on fine motor skills, puzzles, perseverance, more number work and story sacks inside as well.

Thank you for all the donations and please remember to link us to your Amazon account as every time you shop Amazon give money to us! The info can be found in our Newsletter.

We have finished our first half of the spring term with a week full of partying and carnival fun! We have been face painting, exploring world music, dancing and playing games and enjoying looking at lots of photos of carnivals around the world and in Santa Domingo where one of our children will be moving to in March. We were very envious of the blue skies in the photos as we look out over a very muddy pre-school garden!

We were very sorry to be closed on Friday to keep everyone safe from Storm Eunice but some staff live quite far away and with the advice not to travel we could not risk them coming in and also with the local schools announcing their closures we then did not have enough staff to open either so a mixture of reasons and sadly nothing we could change. We will check the guidance when we return after the half term break about alternative sessions and refunds for those who pay.

The staff will now be enjoying a well earned break from pre-school for half term, it has been a very long half term at 7 weeks and a very enjoyable one and we will be ready to come back full of new ideas and energy for the next half of term. We have lots of trips and visits planned which will be brilliant and our wonderful Forest School will also continue. This was a real highlight of the last week – Sophie and Jackie made a bigger fire than usual and cooked soup which all of the children enjoyed very much and they toasted marshmallows and had a really special morning out in the back garden.

We wish you all a very happy and healthy half term break and look forward to sharing our planning ideas in the next blog.