We are glad to have re-opened and very thankful that there were no further COVID cases and we can get back to normal! We understand that for some families keeping your children at home during this full lockdown is right for you and we will look forward to welcoming you all back soon! I hope that the home learning sheets we have sent will give you some ideas for activities at home and please send us photos and videos as we love to see them and print them off for your child’s special books. We also hope that the progress updates have been nice for you to read – we have certainly had some really wonderful feedback and the staff worked really hard on those during our week of isolation!

We have had a busy week at pre-school – learning about Space and enjoying the new space station outside undercover which is looking fantastic. Inside we have been making salt dough cookies for our shop and enjoying lots of role play. We have been singing and dancing and exercising and taking part in lots of fine motor activities through the free flow time too. There is a new car to play in outside too!

We have re-started the mini Forest School sessions which involve a small group going out to the back garden on a Thursday and Friday afternoon, all kitted up in their wet weather gear and warm hats and enjoying the experience of outdoor learning and practising all the safety skills they will need for the full sessions with a fire in the Summer Term.

We have kept our 3 circle groups going and the children are learning very well indeed – lots of fantastic concentration and talking and lots of children are really growing in confidence to share what they know with us and to ask lots of questions and tell us all about their home lives.

The Star group is quite small at the moment with some children staying at home but the children who are here are loving their time – they have enjoyed story sacks, matching patterns, animal patterns, animal boogie singing and dancing and learning about feelings.

The Sun and Moon group have learnt a lot about technology this week with some brilliant comments about who is in charge of the remote control, how phones need “chargering” (not a typo!) and how one Mummy spends lots of time looking online for things to buy for her son!

The Moon group took selfies and then used a very smart mini printer to print them off immediately which they loved! They also enjoyed a story sack, laughing away when the Hungry Caterpillar was eating up all the food, Yoga was great fun and the children were brilliant at the poses. The Sun group also learnt about time and clocks and played some games on the ipad – taking turns beautifully to trace out letters and numbers. They also enjoyed colour mixing magic and some rhyming as well.

We will be continuing with Space next week and looking at the planets so for home learning you could have a look at the planets online, learn the names of some and we will be making some planets next week. We will also be working on shapes so have a look while you are walking to preschool for shapes on road signs, in your home and the shape of the signs around pre-school and for numbers on doors, on registration plates and in the shops. We are also learning about being healthy so will be talking about exercise, hygiene, sleep and what foods are healthy and what foods are a treat.

This week has been so much fun, dominated by practising and then performing our Christmas Nativity on Thursday – twice! We absolutely loved being in the Church and huge thanks to St Andrews for making it work for us and setting up the live stream so that parents could watch from home. It went very well indeed, the children were amazing, they sang and danced their heart out and what a treat for us all to celebrate together and share that with you. We hope you enjoyed watching it – the recording of each performance will be on our website shortly and you will have an email with a password.

The children all walked back so well holding our hands all the way back from the Church and then enjoyed a party with a snack and games before going home with their handmade gifts and present from Father Christmas.

It takes a lot of commitment from all of the team here to make it all happen so as always a big thank you to them.

We have still been learning and playing as well, making lots of Christmas craft and learning what our elf names would be and making badges! We have played more bingo with letters and numbers, learnt about feelings and how to deal with conflict over toys and how to be kind. The children have danced and sung and ridden the bikes and pushed each other in the Polar Express train, they have played musical bumps, Santa Says, enjoyed having the train track out, the aeroplanes out and learning all about colour too.

Home learning – to support our learning here you could make pictures of the different seasons and have a look online for photos to print out and stick in, or chose photo memories from your phone for each season and email them in.

Next week is our last week and will be filled with fun and songs and music and dancing and Christmas craft so carry on wearing Christmas clothes if you would like to and thank you for the kind gifts we have received this week – we are very lucky and those choccies and mince pies certainly helped us re-fuel after the two performances on Thursday!

Enjoy your weekend and see you all next week!

This week has been a little disrupted following a couple of COVID cases at local school, this meant a number of staff had to leave work to go and collect children and we would like to thank you all for coming early on Tuesday to collect your children in response to our text. This may become part of life over the winter months and we thank you in advance for your patience. We will do all we can to operate as normal but you will be aware that sometimes this will be beyond our control and the safety of the children, the staff and their families will always take priority.

It is a reminder to ensure you use the hand gel, that the children wash their hands often here and that we follow social distancing at all times.

We have had a really enjoyable week here with more puppet shows and acting, more music and dancing, the children have loved the soft play and waited perfectly for their own turn, building patience and strength!

We have started planning for our Christmas performance which we hope will be streamed live and a recording to be available but we have changed the date so we encourage you to check the newsletter.

Circle times have been lovely with lots of emphasis on friendships and fun and numbers and the world around us.

The Star group have worked on numbers quite a lot, singing songs, playing matching games and counting. The children have also enjoyed listening and joining in with Sticky Kids which is a great exercise CD, they have joined in games with friends, explored size concepts and learnt new vocabulary too.

The Sun and Moon groups have been busy learning about growth and decay with lots of items Alison left out to go mouldy! They have talked about and learnt about and recreated animal skin patterns and practised scissor skills, made patterns themselves. The have made clay sculptures, looked at their faces in a mirror and made self portraits and spotted words on packaging and talked about logos too.

Lots of clay out this week which is great for hand strength and imagination, lots of tools – hammers and screwdrivers on the table with us teaching the children how to use them safely!

Our planning for next week involves lots more learning about the world, practising who, what and where questions while reading stories and while out and about on a walk to encourage conversation, do some simple drawings together – send them in with your child and we will start to learn Christmas songs and made decorations so have a look on your phone from last Christmas and show your child your tree from last year!