We have welcomed our Star children over the course of this week and have really enjoyed watching them start to explore and start to learn the routines! Some tears of course and they are to be expected, especially after such a strange for 24 months of their lives, but we can already see that our nurturing and distracting and playing can make a difference to even the most upset little person so we feel really encouraged by that and hope that you are all OK as you get used to dropping them off and please do ring in any time you would like for an update on what they are up to!

We have a firefighter coming in on Monday to see the children as we have really enjoyed our fire fighter role play and we are also having a free Robot Reg Phonics session for the older children next week and it really is wonderful to be welcoming visitors back into the setting.

The Sun group had their first Forest School on Thursday and the Moon enjoyed their session today, we will alternate each Thursday and Friday and now that we have two trained staff we will be running sessions for all children over the course of the year.

We are creating some new areas on our website to share our ethos and planning and curriculum with you so will let you know when those are live.

Next week we will also be learning about farming and harvest time and will be visiting the church at some point for a harvest experience, we have certainly missed getting out and about in our community due to COVID so cannot wait to go out for a wander. We always need volunteers on our trips out as we like to go with a high ratio so keep an eye out for a text request for helpers as we set the date for some trips.

This week our Sun and Moon children have really settled into a good circle routine, please chat to them about their group times – we have learnt about maps this week and drawn our own which are on the wall in the Moon room. We have also looked at the family selfies too and taken pictures of ourselves in group time, we have also talked about how tall we are and looked at very tall building and recreated them out of blocks. We have enjoyed some physical exercise and activity looking at shapes as well and listened carefully to story sacks. The children also explore the concepts of floating and sinking using natural objects they found in the garden….luckily the slowworm that they found on Thursday was discovered after the circle time!

The Star children settle in the Star room, they have a little sing song and then snack and then go on outside to play.

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!