We have enjoyed our farm shop role play outside – we set up a shop and a little areas for our pretend animals! Using pink balloons for the pigs in our pen and white for the sheep pen! We loved meeting Claire’s chicken on Monday to bring the role play to life. The chicken visited the 3 afternoon circles and the children loved feeding her and watching her peck away at the grains, also learning the vocab to describe her – wattle and comb.

Our circle times have had a focus on Autumn chat and games and craft, including conker painting, leaf printing, finger painting, Autumn songs and dances, making autumn sun catchers and rolling conkers, making clay hedgehogs and leaf kebabs, sorting leaves in colour and size and marble painting pumpkins and decorating an autumn tree.

We made our own snack again this week – jam muffins, the children love to cook on a Tuesday morning.

On the sun table during free flow we have been exploring autumn and harvest and foods, with some lovely donations – thank you! We have enjoyed a lot of different smoothies which we made together with frozen fruit and water, some pretend pancake making, an exploration of citrus fruits in a tray and making pretend cakes too.

Our observations on the children have been really helpful and we are now able to share an on entry point with you – you will see from these that some areas will be on track developmentally and some will need a bit of nurture – this is usually because we haven’t had enough time to observe all the areas of learning yet but this does give us good info on what we need to plan to help with this and where children may really need a bit of extra support. Any questions please feel free to ask your key person! These forms will be handed out over the coming week and we really value your

We have had another settled week and have started our Forest School Sessions for the Sun and Moon groups! We are very lucky to have Sophie as our Forest School Level 3 Leader and she is supported by Eva and Louise C. We will pop some photos onto Tapestry for you to see of the two sessions.

The children have been really getting used to the new routines and are becoming independent and exploring all we have to offer.

Outside this week we have set up a fire station role play area which has been really fun, lots of conversations and dressing up and role play, making a pretend fire engine and using the hoses to put fires out! Our numbers have been a bit low this week due to a bit of a bug going around – we hope everyone gets better soon. We will have more new children starting next week so it will being to feel a bit busier around the pre-school which is really exciting.

Our AGM is coming up, we are a charity so we must run with a committee including a chair person so we really need all families to attend the AGM meeting, it is short only 30 mins or so and you will hear from the current chairperson and from me, giving a report on our last year at preschool with plans for the year ahead and then we form a committee. It is vital that parents volunteer for the committee otherwise there is a risk that if we cannot form one the pre-school could close so have a look at the lovely posters in the reception area or on our facebook page and chat to Mandy in the office if you have questions, it is great fun and a brilliant way to learn more about pre-school life.

Our circle times this week have continued with a focus on listening and attention skills, we are observing the children all the time, working out what they can do and what they know and what we can teach them over their time with us. Next week our circles will become really active and have a focus on physical development and health as well.

We will also be exploring maths games on the sun table, construction and fine motor skills and outside we will be playing with our mud kitchen and making a garage and a car wash! We would love donations of salt and plain flour and food colouring for our playdoh please!

We have had another wonderful week, practising for our graduation next week – we are hoping to perform two songs for you – one which has been a real favourite from our Disco Thursday and a good bye song – I am just hoping that the children join in as much as usual and it won’t just be me at the front dancing!!

We have all been learning all about the world and have covered that in so many brilliant ways this week during circle times.

Sun and Moon groups have been exploring henna tattoos, learning about different languages and songs and stories and how to say hello around the world. We have used google earth to choose someone to go on holiday and have made volcanoes, passports and flags!

The Star group have played instruments from around the world, listened to aboriginal music and aboriginal art, talked about animals from around the world and learnt about different flags and their colours and shapes.

Outside we have been promoting a sonic challenge week! Ending with face paints as a reward for taking part in and completing all of the challenges each day, incentives with stickers and a chart and the children have been amazing. We have little certificates for them and have been really proud of how they have taken part, persevered and completed each physical challenge – well done all!

Next week is our last week at pre-school apart from Monday 21st July and then Holiday Club opens on Tuesday 5th August and is open every Tuesday and Wednesday from 8am – 4.30pm for children aged 2-7 for 4 weeks. There a couple of spaces left at the end of the month so if you are interested please contact the office.

We look forward to having a really fun week to end our term and can’t believe how quickly the year has gone!