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 …
Another lovely week at pre-school full of train station role play – in order to help children who may not have seen a train or been to the station we had some lovely books and video’s and some pictures from Tiverton Parkway and London too, …
We have been learning about our world this week with lots of wonderful circle times! The children have developed their skills and are now able to focus on some good ideas and vocabulary and as I type this I have just heard a child say “I am doing aboriginal art”! How fantastic!
We had a visit from Tiny Travels this week with some beautiful treasures from around the world, Nadia was born in Jamaica and led three lovely sessions for the groups, exploring and talking about differences between us such as how we look, speak and sound and our languages.
In the sun room we have been using junk modelling to test our skills at coming up with ideas, using the tools and tape and glue to join things and talking over what we have made. There have been some lovely individual moments and some collaborative work to make some great creations and this has also fed into some other construction work as well.
Next steps are due out on Friday 23rd Jan which will be covered and planned for in sessions here for the children and these also have some ideas for you at home so do log onto your Tapestry over the weekend for the home learning ideas.
Circle times for sun and moon and stars have had the theme of “our world” – we have used our EAD skills to make a big map of the world and draw our families on it and animals on land and the sea, create aboriginal art, learnt about Australia, and we have used our communication skills to talk about what we know and our social skills to take turns to listen to our friends and take turns. We have also made flags, played with musical instruments from around the world, listened to music from around the world and build landmarks using our maths knowledge of space and shape.
Mindful Thursday was very special again this week – all of the sun and moon children take part just before lunch, creating a quiet time with mindful breathing, and using bubbles and lavender for a sensory experience.
Forest School sessions have been amazing fun, lots of very muddy children with huge smiles!
We have had a focus on gross and fine motor skills as well to assess where children are and what they need to learn next – finger gym activities have been available and we have had a shop as role play outside, buying heavy tins and filling bags up to support growing strength.
Next week we will be hoping the rain eases a bit to allow us to continue to build strength up on obstacle courses, with balancing on beams and carrying heavy items. We will also play with small worlds outside with an adult to support and inside we will be building on an idea of train role play. The children made a brilliant train using the junk modelling items and loved adding the tyres onto it!
We will also start to learn more about maths and numbers, building confidence so that all of the children enjoy maths and know they are good at it.
We have had a really enjoyable week, making the most of the breaks in the weather to play outside – we are sorry about the amount of mud!! We do put the children in waterproof trousers and wellies to minimise the mud but they just …
Welcome back to all our families – we have started the Spring term well and the children have settled back in over the course of the week and the week has gone so quickly!! We have used our circle time to have a little reminder …
What a wonderful end to our very Christmassy week with the lovely Christmas parties and performances! The children were amazing and we loved every moment – we hope you enjoyed coming to watch as well!
Our week was rather wet at first but we persevered and managed to get outside in the showers in our waterproof kit to have a run around and play on the bikes. The sun returned and the garden became our North Pole role play again with some sleigh rides!
Inside we have been creating lots of Xmas craft and chatting about our plans and what we would like for Christmas! Lots of song practice and dressing up as well and Christmas story books and a lovely new quiet area for children to enjoy.
Our slide show and party photos are on Tapestry so please log on and have a look, there are some lovely ones with Father Christmas, not all children wanted to have their photo taken with him but quite a few did.
Thank you for all the lovely cards and gifts we have received and don’t forget that next week is our last week – we are open Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and then closed until Monday 5th January when we open for our Spring Term 2026! From January 2026 the Gallery will only be available on Tapestry and will be deleted from our website. The Blog will continue on both platforms.
Our week started with a wonderful visit to the Culm Valley Care home on Monday morning with the sun group – the children really enjoyed the time they spent there with the residents and we also took the opportunity to sing some of our Christmas …