Welcome back after the half term break, we hope you all had a good week off.

Pre-school has been so fun this week, it is lovely to come back together after a nice break and see all our plans come alive. We are learning about animals for the next few weeks and our Sun table has been a hive of activity this week – we have seen some really fantastic creations and paintings which will come home with the children. It is always a really lovely moment when the children display real pride when they have finished a painting and have really thought about the colours and patterns that they plan to use.

Pancake is always great fun at preschool with lots of laughing and shrieking when we are flipping pancakes, we enjoyed a delicious snack and made our own pancakes using eggs from my chickens. Pancake races and deciding on our favourite toppings were all great fun activties.

We chose to celebrate World Book Day by bringing in favourite books and so many children brought in a book from home and were confident to talk to their group about they story and explain what happened in their favourite book. Seeing their confidence grow in group time is wonderful to see. We will be dressing up for Comic Relief in a couple of weeks to raise money – watch this space/emails/texts for the theme this year! We will make it something easy to ensure everyone can join in. The Moon group had a slightly damp walk to the library on Wednesday morning, thank you very much to the families that helped with walking there, it is so important to get out and about in our community and the children behaved beautifully, completing the food treasure hunt and reading stories and choosing books to bring back to pre-school for our animal theme.

Robot Reg came to visit the sun and moon groups on Thursday and as always they were greeted with cheers and big smiles. The children LOVE Robot Reg, they laugh and learn and dance and it is a brilliantly run session, we are thrilled with how well it has gone and will definitely be booking that in again for next Spring.

Circle times have been a mixture this week – lots of learning taking place before the children then move back into free flow.

Star – the children have been working on learning about size and being able to arrange items from big to small and have done some fantastic independent work, they have also sorted sea animals from farm animals, learning about the differences. The Stars have practised counting with animals, learnt about penguins and enjoyed “Kim’s game” using animals which is where you lay out a tray of items, cover them up and take one away and the group have to spot which one is missing!

The Sun and Moon groups have chatted about and drawn their favourite animal, made them out of playdoh, celebrated world book day and played World Book Day I Spy, practised counting and made tally charts too!

This has been a brilliant week, ending with a visit from a week old baby lamb called Tyson, the children absolutely fell in love with him and he was brilliant!

Next week we are continuing to teach our groups about animals, we will be making a safari park and looking at Longleat so please send us photo’s of your visits to the safari park if you have been!

We would love donations of fresh fruit and veg to use in our farm shop role play please and we will also be mixing and making mud cakes and potions in our mud kitchen outside as well.

Our sponsored bike ride will start on the 14th March and we are fundraising for new literacy and maths equipment and more garden items too!

We have been expanding our horizons this week and learning about the wider world on our planet! We have celebrated Chinese New Year by learning all about the 12 zodiac animals and their story, we have tasted noodles and prawn crackers, explored cooked and raw rice and noodles, learnt about China as a country and enjoyed lots of craft as well making tiger masks and Chinese lanterns.

The Star group loved their trip to the library on Wednesday morning! We really enjoyed getting out and about, waving to people we know in the town (We saw Mandy on her day off with her Grandson!) and practising our “safe pedestrian” skills. Thank you to Albert and Elsie’s Mums who came along for the trip to help us hold hands and keep everyone safe. We would like to take the Wednesday Moon group out soon so watch out for a text asking for walkers, we cannot go on the trips without extra help for safety reasons so please offer if you can!

Thank you to the Theo and Imogen’s family for helping us move the tip pile!

Robot Reg came to visit again this week on Thursday and the forest school sessions have been another highlight of our week. The children take turns to light the fire and we had lots of children who were brilliant at explaining how they do it during a story time this week, they have been very well taught! They have also been using hammers and tools outside, learning how to be safe.

In our circle times we have had a focus on Chinese New Year, feelings, construction, colour, counting, puzzles and following instructions and ring games and looking at differences between us.

Outside we have our new cascading water station which has been very popular – sorry for all the wet clothes! We have been using warm water and lots of bubbles and colour! The children have helped to tidy up our fairy garden fence by cleaning off the old paint and re-painting the fence. There has been some very skillful jumping off the blocks and we are taking safety with our monkey bars very seriously and taking great care when children are using them.

Andrea has made another lovely set of learning trays this week, with a focus on literacy and fine motor skills.

We have sent an email out offering support for the cost of living increases that we are all facing and there is support available with groceries so if you need a bag from us please email the office on admin@cullomptonpreschool.org.

We are always here to help our families and have lots of support available to us and lots of advice we can seek as well for a wide range of family worries – diet, sleeping, health, money, mental health, behaviour, domestic abuse or bereavement and illness so please get in touch if things are tough for you.

Colour and fruit and shapes and bikes and building and sand and smoothies and independence and forest school and poo sticks and seesaws and fires and blocks and climbing and laughing and creating and dough disco have all been highlights of our week! We have had a wonderful week and the lunchtime snack tally chart is nearly complete!

The children absolutely love to make and bake and cook and create so we are making more plans for next week for lots more activities around food and cooking. Our continuous provision will focus on mark making and children need really strong shoulders and arms before they can use a pen correctly so we are going to be working on that too – more info will come home to you via email to help you work on gross and fine motor strength at home as well to support our learning here.

Our circle times have been varied and stimulating for the children.

The star group have learnt about emergency vehicles and have been matching the drivers in their uniforms to the right cars. They have taken part in wiggle and stretch for exercise and completed some excellent shape matching using our blocks and patterns on big sheets of paper. The Stars also had an explore of the back garden which is a great chance to practice putting on their own wellies and finding their coats – we do try to teach a lot of independence so please encourage your child to put their own coat on their peg and put wellies on too!

The Sun and Moon groups have been busy colour mixing, learning about treats and healthy foods and trying new foods. They have also worked hard on pattern recognition and shape bingo and tasting, smelling and drawing foods – learning new vocabulary and being able to sort food. A lovely 3 Pigs story sack finished off their week.

Forest School for Sun on Thursday and Moon on Friday was a delight, some wonderful photos and the children enjoyed the fresh sunny mornings around the fire, making poo sticks and walking to the tiny bridge over the brook to play. We have been lucky enough to be awarded a grant from Aldi to promote biodiversity in our back garden so Sophie and Jackie have lots of ideas for new plants to attract wildlife and birds and insects and veg to grow that they will then use in their cooking with the children.

We would love donations of the following items please :- tennis balls, cricket set, badminton set, cheap veg, old tights, compost and big plastic bottles! Thank you