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

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.