We have had a really fantastic week and we have enjoyed our annual Hungry Caterpillar Party in our back garden on Thursday and Friday afternoons. It is always a really special moment when the children sing the caterpillar song and we release the butterflies and wait for them to fly out of their homes into the fresh air. Lots of cheering and then some yummy picnic party food all taken from the story book. We hope you enjoy the photos that we took. We have had real problems with getting the blog and the photos onto the gallery so we apologise for this and hope to get the photos on soon.

In other areas of our preschool life we have been exploring the stream at the bottom of the garden and we also went out on brilliant walk to the motorway bridge and watched the lorries and even saw two trains zooming along the track as well!

The sun and moon groups have been walking about their time at home over the weekends and playing lots of football and lots of chat about the Euro championships! The children have been great at learning the names of the footballers! We have played football I spy and learnt about bridges, played poo sticks and have been magnet fishing in the leat. the children have also make up their own patterns for football shirts and made name badges practising their writing.

The Star group are getting ready to be moons and suns from September and have made bridges too, copy me movement games, more work on patterns and learning routines and first and next games. They are doing so well and we can’t wait to welcome them back in the Autumn with new friends joining them too,.

Our graduations will be held for the school starters on Thursday 15th and Friday 16th June – you should have the details you need but please do ask if you have any questions.

We had a wonderful week in the warm weather, exploring outside in the back garden in many of our circle times and we started a mini forest school session for the Star groups as well on a  Thursday and Friday which they really enjoyed! A little practice for the main sessions which include a fire in the Autumn term.

For the families who have children going to school you will be asked to have a read of your child’s transition document which goes off to school to support the primary schools to get to know your child ahead of them starting and to give the schools a good view of where the children are as they move onwards in their learning journey!

We are starting to talk about school a bit now, we have had the uniforms out, the lunch trays out to play with, we have got the book bags and PE kit bags and some great photos of the classrooms to look at as well and of the playground. We know that the schools are sending out information to you all and offering visits now and we absolutely encourage you to take your child to those as at present we do not have any visits booked in to walk up to the schools as we usually do. You are then welcome to bring your child back to pre-school once your visit has finished.

The children are all making really fantastic progress and we are really pleased with all of the groups and the circle times.  We are running small nurture groups for children to support friendships and will concentrate on who is going to the same schools as well.

We enjoyed a fun week playing playground games with adults leading and the children then taking on the ideas and playing on their own, we also kept the garage role play going as well which lots of the children really enjoyed – looking at the Haynes manuals and using the old laptops to pretend to book appointments. We had out vet role play equipment out inside as well and observed lots of wonderful imaginative role play, and we had a great donation of lots of shoe boxes which were perfect for making lots of beds for our vets!

Circle times for the Moon and Suns – lots of physical development work, throwing and catching and kicking and dribbling and playing football, lots of dancing and learning actions to pop songs, dressing up for school and learning about animal patterns and patterns using natural items.

The Star group learnt about acting out stories, parachute games and lots of fantastic number recognition and talking about feelings too.

Next week we are changing the role play to Castles and Knights, princesses and princes and we will be making lots of craft to support this too. Perhaps you could have a look as images of castles on your phones and send us your favourite pic!

Baking for snack time, bug hunting, gardening, watering, sand play, capacity, Forest School, minibeast sorting, minibeast making, creating with clay, stage set up, ticket making, a lot of singing, colourful wigs, learning about safety, taking care when using scissors, weather boxes (mainly the rainy one!!) and parachute games – just a few of our activities this week and this list doesn’t even include child led ideas and play!

A wonderful week of observations of friendships and chatter, the Star group are making such fantastic progress and will be ready to turn into Suns/Moons in September! You will find out after half term which group your child will move into, the two groups are equal and both enjoy the different activities that the group leaders plan.

Our circle times this week have been based on some theme work and learning other skills.

Star – have been working hard on learning shapes and spotting them in the room and outside, they have also been talking about shape characteristics and learning some good vocabulary such as massive, huge, tiny etc. They have been testing out which items sink or float and we have been chatting about road safety and lots of the children know that seatbelts are very important! Lots of chat about family too and the Stars loved their nature hunt in the back garden.

Sun and Moon – both groups have been exploring the back garden, collecting flowers and bugs, taking great care with our scissors and jam jars, we have been learning about beat and rhythm and have used Alexa as a metronome and enjoyed dancing to some fast dance music! We took a huge pile of items from our junk modelling area and made our own creations, we have practised our initial sounds work as well. The groups have made lots of different mini beasts and worked on blending 3 letter words with a robot and told stories with props from a bag. Lots of great skills on show!

Forest School has been fantastic, smelling the fire and listening to the chatter too. They have been bug hunting, exploring forest school and see who is hiding in it, they have been making spiders by sawing off a piece of wood, then using pipe cleaners, attach legs to make a spider. The children also enjoyed cooking bannock bread, mix the bannock bread – the children measuring in the flour, and the raisins – adults mixing in the milk. Each child forms their piece, and watches as it cooks on the fire.

Next week we are working on exercise and being healthy, enjoying a science week on the sun table and hairdresser role play inside (any donations of hairdresser bits would be great, old hairdryers etc) and we will be working on looking for shapes all around us.