We have loved seeing everyone’s Christmas jumpers this week and we have been taking lots of photos of the children enjoying their week ready for a slide show while you wait for us to start our performance in the church on Tuesday! Hopefully you will enjoy seeing the pictures of all the children taking part in activities and play over the week. We are really excited about our performance next Tuesday – please do chat to your child about the change to their usual day, we won’t be at pre-school at all on Tuesday and this may unsettle some of the children. They have been practising lots and the songs are sounding excellent now so we hope having an audience won’t make everyone too shy! Please feel free to share the live stream with your family, we won’t be recording the Nativity and the link will be live for 30 minutes after each show so is not saved online to watch later. You are welcome to record the performance but we do not have permission for anyone to share it online so please don’t post to any social media.

We have been making lots of Christmas decorations over the week which we will send home in your child’s basket and we are delivering all the Christmas cards too and thank you very much for our cards too!

Next week will be full of games and fun as always and we will be taking out our soft play equipment to support exercise inside as well and building tricky obstacle courses outside. We will be learning some yoga moves as well and some party games and dancing to Christmas songs will happen too! Our plans also include creating some lovely Christmas trays and reading stories with the children.

Our circle times this week have had a Christmas theme of course, and we have been making scenery for the play. The children have tried on their costumes and played Christmas sound matching games, made snowmen, played hide and snap, Christmas pairs games and learnt about Christmas around the world. The stars have enjoyed lots of Christmas pattern matching and made extra Christmas cards and learnt number songs and talked about textures and favourite books too.

We have been very busy outside, splashing in very muddy puddles after the rain and cycling the bikes through the mud pits the children have made! We then took time to wash the bikes together with some warm soapy water. We are wrapping all the children up in waterproof trousers and coats and we do our best but they will come home muddy at times after enjoying a great time outside.

We would love donations of any outgrown Christmas jumpers if possible please and a huge thank you to everyone who has donated bows and ribbons for us and socks and crafty bits and some amazing Christmas fabric decorations which we have made into lovely wreaths for the Christmas performance!

Next week is our last week before the holidays and we will be back on Tuesday 4th January.

We have thoroughly enjoyed seeing everyone dressed up in pyjamas for the last two days to support Children In Need, the photos are lovely again this week – we have had a fun filled week!

Exploring the different citrus fruits and herbs in the mud kitchen, using the knives carefully which supports being safe and building strength and care using tools. The children have been in charge of turning the playhouse into different ideas for the week and the most popular were recreating “Mandy’s Office”! and “McDonalds”!

We are starting to think about Christmas now and will start to learn our songs for the Nativity – if you have any questions about plans for the party morning or afternoon please let us know.

We have been moving from learning about space to learning about our own planet and how to help to repair it, we have been talking about the nature all around us and we have bought some bird seeds and fat balls and feeders for the garden – if you have any spare ones at home or if you could donate one from home bargains we would love more (no peanuts or feed with nuts in please as we are a nut free setting!)

The Star group been working on the concepts of size, sorting and organising different items, they have made Pudsey bear masks for Children in Need and enjoyed making gingerbread men and developing their imaginations with pretend role play – a birthday party and a picnic! They really love to eat their snack together before heading outside and are all really confident now with the older children.

the Sun and Moon groups have learnt about jobs people do and what jobs they might like, and about birds and how they need help with food in the winter. The groups have also worked on what is healthy in lunchboxes and talked and practised what and how to recycle waste. They spent time out in the back garden, looking for birds, completing a tally chart of things they could see in our garden and then a tally chart of things they could hear too.

Our sun table has been a hive of papier mache – making our own Earth’s before our new globe arrives next week. The cardboard boxes have also been well used with lots of children building with them and sitting in them! Creating their own games and play.

Next week we continue with learning about planet Earth, we will also talk about Father Christmas and link how he travels around it visiting all the countries on Christmas Eve, we would like to know if you have any special traditions in your family culture for Christmas so that we can learn more about how different families celebrate.

It is amazing to think we have already completed 7 weeks of the year at pre-school and this half term has been filled with joy – and ending in two trips up to St Andrew’s Church for the school starter children. What a treat it has been to get out and about in our community again and we had a wonderful time – exploring the beautiful church and a warm welcome (and party rings!) from Carrie the Families Minister there. We will be back in the church in December to perform our Nativity for you and the new stage looks fantastic!

We have lots of other ideas for trips and in order to carry these out we do need extra helpers to ensure the children are safe and well looked after while we walk, we are hoping to get to Tufty Park, to visit the schools, to the CCA fields and to the train and motorway bridges, to the Walronds, and on the bus for an exciting adventure! Please do offer to help if you can. We are also planning to welcome visitors back into our setting – the lollipop lady is always lovely, dancers, children from CCC with musical instruments, we are hoping to hold an afternoon tea for grandparents, invite sports coaches in as well – we would also love to hear from you if you have any fun hobbies or skills you can share with us!

The children have had a really enjoyable week, we have dressed up and had our faces painted, been on treasure hunts, explored pumpkins and squashes, made banana ghosts for snack, made apple cake for snack, challenged ourselves on the new climbing blocks, played with the train tracks, enjoyed stories, made lots of Halloween craft and learnt new vocabulary, taken part in circle times and developed our ideas in our construction area outside. We have also had the hairdressers set out too and we have some wonderfully careful children who have obviously watched their Mum’s straightener their hair!

Circle times have been very popular again, the Stars have loved their Forest School experience this Friday morning which they took part in while the older children were out on a trip! They have also been using the instruments to take part in listening and attention games, made Halloween masks, made pumpkin pictures by apple printing. The group also got all dressed up and went for a pumpkin hunt and loved the sensory gloopy Halloween tray.

The Sun and Moon groups loved decorating Halloween biscuits and acted out the Room on the Broom story. We heard lots of laughter during Andrea’s 5 little duck game and great exercise as they jumped over a pretend river and during Michelle’s Halloween spider game! They all behaved beautifully on our Church visit, walking carefully, holding hands and following all the rules and they listened carefully to Carrie at the Church.

After half term we will be focusing on speech and language, learning about books, and we will have a book of the week which we would love you to read at home as well if you have a copy. We will also be lending books out to you to take home to promote reading at bedtime. We will also be learning about our planet and space for 4 weeks before thinking about Christmas and family memories.