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.

Winter sunshine and new toys! We have new equipment this week which has been funded by the money from the Tesco book stall and is providing some great challenge in the garden, we are really noticing that lots of the children have really strong legs from all their lockdown walks but arms are not so strong as the parks and soft play areas were closed. It is so fascinating to see the effects of the pandemic on the children but we will be identifying any little areas to work on over the coming months to ensure all of the children are ready for the next stage in their learning.

We will be exploring the wider world over the coming weeks – Chinese New Year, the Winter Olympics and a festival that one of our families celebrate in the Dominican Republic – The Carnival which is celebrated through February into the Holy Week in March. We will also learn about Holi when we come back after half term and our theme of colour will bring it all to life. During these themes we add in all our learning and our over riding aim to to create awe and wonder about the world around us and beyond – we use our ideas to teach the children, to cover all aspects of the areas of learning within each idea and extend and support where needed. Our globe will be on the table next week while we look at different countries, music, food and climates.

We have had a brilliantly colourful week, enjoying so many different activities that have promoted listening skills, turn taking, science, maths, speech, new vocab and processes and individual ideas. There are some lovely pics of the week on facebook, including a mini Forest School album to look at and Andrea’s Story Sack week too. Our learning will focus on adding Maths and Literacy as well for key workers to check their children are on track in these areas and we can share some home learning ideas for you as well.

Circle times this week:-

Sun and Moon groups – have learnt about the natural world locally, compared summer hydranga blooms with the cuttings from a shrub that are now crispy and brown due to winter, we are working hard to learn to draw and use colour, the children have been engrossed in learning their letters and writing their names and learning how to recreate patterns (maths).

Star group – the children have been sorting items by colour, matching brick shapes, enjoyed a number hunt in the back garden and learnt nursery rhymes and played listening games with musical instruments.

We are planning the next few months at the moment, looking at getting out and about in our community so that we can learn about our town and experiences and compare those to other children and families around the world. Please do help with walking with us if you can, we always need extra hands as we like to have a high ratio when we go out on a trip to ensure everyone is safe and can relax and enjoy the outing.