At the time of writing the blog we are awaiting a lot of PCR test results for children who attend our pre-school, I hope that everyone is feeling well and not too poorly and we are very grateful to all of our families for your understanding at this difficult time. We have 4 positive cases within the pre-school at present and we all wish anyone feeling unwell a quick recovery. It is a very difficult decision to close a class which we do not undertake lightly but I am very sorry for the Stars who missed their session on Wednesday and we will offer you an alternative session over the coming weeks to compensate. We hope to be operating as usual for as long as possible but please do test your children – it is becoming increasingly clear that even with no symptoms the lateral flow tests are missing cases. If you or your child has any symptom at all – even a cold like illness please book a PCR test.

On to the more fun part of the blog – we have had a wonderful week despite the worry about families who have been affected by COVID. Forest School sessions have been a delight – the children exploring the garden in the November sunshine and building long water gutter systems and creating art on clear plastic using paint in spray bottles – excellent for building up strength in little hands and fingers!

Inside we have been creating space items and enjoying space activities to support our role play outside, this theme has been great and really captures the children’s interest! This has also been carried into the circle times for the Sun and Moon group who have made rockets using the letters in their name and then they have been extended by their group leader to copy the letters and write their name with some fantastic results. The Sun and Moons have been learning about Remembrance Day as well and we have made two poppy wreaths to lay on the Memorial in our town on Sunday. They really listened to the simple story that we taught them about people keeping us safe and how we give thanks for them. Part of our curriculum is to follow the calendar over the year and bring events to life for the children – helping them learn new vocabulary, new concepts and learn about our diverse world – please let us know if you have any special celebrations coming up? A wedding, Christening or a thanksgiving celebration with American relatives perhaps?

Outside we have been transported into Space, re-created a bonfire from our experiences over the weekend and chatted about all the fireworks that we saw. We are limiting the bikes over the next couple of weeks as the children play well together and make up some brilliant games when the bikes are not always available.

The Star group have been practising their ball skills, learning how to match animal patterns and used shapes to make rockets for the space theme. They have made so much progress and really enjoy their time with us!

Next week we progress along our theme to learning about our own planet – we will be exploring habitats and environments, recycling and the nature we can see around us. We would love donations of big cardboard boxes and newspaper please.

We have had a wonderful week full of the amazing autumn colours and experiences that come in October – lots of pumpkins and different squashes and we used the amazing autumn bags that you collected to create an autumn sensory tray. We have carved our own pumpkin and will make pumpkin soup next week and we have created giant pumpkins to decorate outside using brushes on long sticks to develop our gross motor strength. The children have loved the face paint and Halloween party so we will continue that next week and we invite the children to dress up in any outfits they would like, nothing to scary – we are easily frightened by those scary Scream masks! A donation of £1 for the week would be much appreciated as we are a charity so any money we make can be used to buy new face paints to use for the rest of the year.

We have been working hard in our garden this week, we now have lots of bulbs planted for the Spring and potatoes are also in ready to harvest in the late Spring – I have lots of willing helpers in my garden club and they were able to spot lots of cooking apples high in the trees for me to try and reach! I did need a long stick to give them a nudge and we had great fun as they fell down. We are still picking raspberries for snack and we would love any donations of bulbs and compost for the garden please.

Forest School has been a real treat in the Autumn sunshine and as I type I can hear the children having fun and can smell the woodsmoke. We are also off to the church next week for a harvest visit which we really enjoy – a text has gone out for helpers for that trip to make sure we are safe with walking the children up to the church.

Circle times have been busy as always with lots of learning happening during the fun activities that the group leaders plan. Stars are working very well together and really getting into the routines and joining in brilliantly with painting, exploring natural items such as feathers, looking at different colours, making a handprint autumn tree to display, exploring the back garden on a warm afternoon and learning about different objects and extending their vocabulary.

The Moon and Sun groups have been fantastic as well, we have had a refresher on hand hygiene with cases of COVID rising and the children had some brilliant comments about how you feel when you are unwell and what types of illness you have “if I get germs into my mouth and they go in my tummy, I will be ill and you will have to call my Mummy and I will go home and go to the doctor”! Lots of the children really understood how germs can be passed around and knew not to worry about them as long as we were good at washing hands and covering our mouths when we cough. They have also counted conkers to practice maths, made natural crowns with items from the collection bags that Andrea handed out and made pumpkins wrapping wool around balloons – very tricky and excellent for perseverance and fine motor skills.

Next week we will be cooking and having another Halloween party, we will be building outside, moving things around a bit and planning more circles based on comparing sizes and learning about the concept of size, a focus on literacy as well, developing independance and more work on families so please send in a selfie of your family if you haven’t done so already. The display is going up next week.

Our farming theme is great fun and we are really enjoying learning about harvest and where our food come from and we have been cooking and popping corn and making smoothies together and the children here really enjoy taking the time to sit and talk and learn and practice their new skills using the knives.

We would love donations of vegetables please for the shop, we will not waste them, we will use them for making soup and snacks during the week as well.

We have had a good job at sorting out the growing garden and have harvested our cooking apples as well. We have a few last raspberries which the children love to pick and eat. I would love any donations of spring bulbs for all my pots and compost too please and I am organising some seed potatoes so that we can plant those ready for harvesting in the Spring. The children love coming to my garden club and exploring and talking and digging.

We had one day with terrible torrential rain but we were happy undercover with our new playhouse and farm shop!

Forest School is such a wonderful experience for the children, the Sun group go on a Thursday and the Moon’s on a Friday and after half term we will swap around so that all the Sun and Moons have that experience. There are some photos on the blog this week as well.

Circle times have been wonderful, we have a new routine which allows the children more choice and more free flow time to extend their games and activities and learning but we still really value those small group times and we will be starting nurture groups as well with children to focus on different areas.

The Sun’s and Moon’s have enjoyed a visit from Gary, the Firefighter and we also welcomed Robot Reg with Rebecca who led a fantastic busy and active phonics sessions which the children loved so we are hoping to book a few more sessions for the Spring Term. They have also been out for a walk and collected autumn conkers, made a scarecrow, explored the Autumn treasure bags that Andrea sent home last week and made sweetcorn pictures, learnt about where things grow and how they are harvested!

The Star group are doing brilliantly, lots of great photos of them this week. They have used the Little Pigs Story sack, enjoyed physical activity together with a CD called Sticky Kids, lots of building towers and learning names and getting settled into the routine of the circle time.

Next week we are working on our farm theme again, we are doing more gardening and planning to develop our outside area as well. We are lucky enough to be on the TESCO blue token scheme from today so please put your blue token in our box!! We will be using the money for new outdoor equipment to support physical development.