Hi Everyone, We have had a really busy week all finished by saying goodbye to Amelia. Today we had a party day for her last day, we had sports day this morning and then this afternoon we are having a Hungry Caterpillar party – this …
Hello, I hope you all had a lovely Easter and that you all enjoyed the holidays. We have had a brilliant first week back in the sunshine, we have enjoyed hearing all about the children’s adventures and how many Easter Eggs they had!! They have …
Dear Parents,
As many of you know, I will be stepping into the role of Pre‑School Manager, Amelia’s shoes are big ones to fill, but I wanted to share how excited I am to continue working with you and your children in this new role.
My first day in charge will be Monday 20th April. I have received a very thorough hand over from Amelia which has been extremely useful and we will all definitely miss her! For the majority of us she has always been our Pre School Leader so it will be a big change for everyone!
For those of you who don’t know, I have worked at the Pre School for 11 years so I know what a special Pre School we have. I started as a lunch time assistant and gradually built my way up undertaking lots of training to get me to this point. It is a privilege to be able to lead a team so dedicated to giving children the very best start.
You won’t notice many changes, as they say, “if it’s not broken, don’t fix it!”. I believe that we offer a nurturing and inclusive environment where every child has fun and looks forward to coming in. I think that continuing our strong relationships with you all is crucial so if you ever have a question or a concern, I’m always happy to talk.
The Summer Term is full of trips and experiences for the children, we have football sessions with Alfie when we come back which is always good fun.
The Star group will start Forest School sessions (to get them used to a change in their routine, but with no fire!) and we will be deciding which groups they will be in next year.
Mandy is currently working on the induction process and we will holding our New Parent’s Evening.
Back to this week……. We have had fun building our own fire station and engine in the Sun Room, the children have been busy making a house that needed extinguishing! They having been putting out fires around the sun room, using the fire engine to get to emergencies and dressing up.
There has been lots of Easter craft and games happening at circle times. The Stars have made Easter cards, been on egg hunts and counted out what they found to build on their maths skills. The Suns and Moons have been on pattern matching egg hunts, Easter egg hunts, bingo and have made bunny bonnets! We have had two really lovely Easter Craft Mornings, it was lovely to see how happy the children were showing their grown ups around. We have also been doing to Easter cooking, the children have made bunny biscuits, bread and chocolate nests.
The garden has been very popular this week. We have been using pipes and gutters to roll balls down, using the steps and the bank. The bank has also doubled up as a giant slide which has been great fun. We have also had sand trays with different items in such as cars, numbers and letters.
I hope that you all have a lovely Easter break and I’ll see you all next term!
Louise
This blog is my last!! From next week the Blog will be written by Louise Waring who is taking over from me as Pre School Leader on Monday 20th April – I will still be working for two weeks to support her and my last …
What a beautiful couple of days of Spring sunshine! The children have loved being outside and the sun has warmed up over the week! We started in a little bit of a chilly drizzle on Monday for the annual sponsored bike ride, the children complete …
Our week has been full of letters and their sounds! Since Robot Reg arrived the children have really developed a love of learning the sounds and our circle times have focused on that and the progress is amazing!
The Sun and Moon circles have listened to the initial sounds in their names, recognised their initial letters on envelopes and read each others names, played a game to spot items that are missing from a tray beginning with particular sounds, sorted pictures into matching letter sounds, gone on a letter treasure hunt, learnt about rhyming and played a game where Bear packs items for his holiday and they start with particular letters! So many imaginative ideas from the group leaders and lots of engaged children working hard!
The Star group are also really good at listening to letter sounds, they can recognise their own letter and can match letters through a treasure hunt tray game, clapped out the syllables in their names and used the claves to tap along to the rhythm and beat of a rhyming story.
Out in our free flow sessions we have enjoyed a farm shop as a way to teach maths language, learn about money and turn taking and explore real vegetables and we made some lovely little pretend cookies to sell in the shop with playdough and sprinkles.
To support new vocabulary for the farm shop we also used the sun table to look at farm vehicles, animals, food, growing and planting crops and general farm facts too. Our morning free flow also had playdough skills being taught by one of the ladies and in the afternoon we had board games out with a teacher sitting there to teach the game and help with turn taking.
Outside we have been mark making on a large scale, chalk on the floor, painting the fence, wrapping cling film around the posts to paint on and putting rolls of paper on the floor and threading toilet rolls up to paint as well!
We have had water play which has been really popular and resulted in some wet coats, we are sorry and do make efforts to dry them in the tumble drier where possible before they need to wear them home!
Next week we will be learning about different jobs in our community and exploring construction inside and practising ball skills outside along with making maps and routes and following instructions and directions outside.
We have enjoyed our World Book Day week! Lots of cosy pyjamas on show and lots of reading stories and promoting a love of books with the children. The two library trips were wonderful earlier in the week and the children walked so well and …
Welcome back to the second half of the Spring Term! Another very busy time for us with lots of trips and visits and fun plans ahead. We will be celebrating World Book Day next week by wearing pyjamas for Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday and we will be taking …
We had a lovely Grandparents morning on Tuesday – with over 15 special visitors! They enjoyed circle times with their grandchildren and then a lovely coffee/tea and cake! It was a pleasure to show them how our day runs in our setting and we hope everyone had a really lovely time! We will organise an Easter craft morning for the next half of term on a different day so keep an eye out for the invitation!
We hope all the children who have been unwell with the various bugs are on the mend and feeling better, ready for a nice half term break!
We have had a wonderful week exploring all our activities and this week we are checking fine motor skills, a wonderful range of activities have been planned by our super group leaders – circle time is great for learning opportunities, quieter smaller groups and this week the fine motor plans are based on assessing skills so we can work out where to go next to ensure progress!
The sun and moon circle times – making rainbow sticks, dough disco, clips and bead linking, sponge squeezing and loom band fishing, golf teas and hamma beads, tiddlywinks, sticker pictures and biscuit making too!
The stars have enjoyed painting with tiny brushes, sorting colour pictures, cotton bud painting following the lines, pipe cleaner threading with hoops and stacking bricks.
We have been able to get outside a lot more this week and have explored large construction blocks and water play in a tuff tray – dishwashing and drying, floating and sinking, number counting and sorting, duplo in water and boat play too.
Our Sun table has been a collage station, teaching the skills of cutting and snipping and gluing and designing your own picture with painting in the afternoon as well, revisiting the new skills we learnt last week. Simple role play has also been a great success – a few items and lots of imagination. We will be taking forward the ideas we have explored and will be setting up a new home corner in the Sun room after half term.
We would love donations of buttons, bulbs and compost please!
We will be open again on Monday 23rd February, we hope those who attend holiday club have a lovely time with Zoe, Louise C, Liz and Sophie!
We have had a change in focus this week with our planning and we have re organised ourselves a bit to offer lots of great activities around pre-school with a focus on learning really good play skills in our continuous provision areas. This is a …