We have enjoyed a really Christmassy week here and the children have been making lots of decorations for home and for pre-school. We are trying to send home more of what they do make so that you can keep it but we do save quite a bit for their special books which you get to have at the end of their time with us, this year is racing past and we can’t believe that we are only two weeks away from breaking up!

The children have loved the Polar Express role play outside, pushing the train along and selling tickets ion the ticket office. We have missed being out and about this term, we usually go to watch the St Andrews children do their Nativity and have visitors into preschool so we are planning a sing-a-long session with Willowbank in our last week and hope to do the same with At Andrews as well, we do love to see our friends from last year who are now in the reception classes!

Planning wise we are working on strength, writing, learning our sounds (phonics) and developing our understanding skills too. The children are playing well together, learning Christmas songs and actions for the show next week and have loved dancing to Christmas songs too.

To support learning at home we would love it if you could look at the blog photos with your child and chat about who the other children are and what the activities were. Can you child spot number plates and road signs and numbers on front doors – do they know their own house number or name and the name of their street? Can they make patterned Christmas paper using plain paper, a potato cut into a star shape and paint?

Next week we will be exploring colour during free flow in the Star room, making more Christmas items on the Sun table and nurture work in the Moon room where we play with very small groups to develop speech and confidence. We will carry on the Polar Express outside and also play in our home corner and make a big car/marble run outside too.

Circles have been great this week with the Stars working on dancing and following instructions, emotional vocabulary, being kind and numbers and drawing. The Sun and Moon groups have played letter Bingo, drawn maps for Father Christmas to find our houses, worked on estimating and counting, written to Father Christmas, drawn pictures of what we would like and made number button snowmen too!

We hope you have a lovely weekend and look forward to sharing “Our Christmas Story” with you all via link stream and then with a recording which we hope to publish to our website.

The Pre-School has been a blaze of colour and song this week as we have had the theatre out undercover and we have been enjoying Frozen, Jungle Book, Greatest Showman and Moana songs! It has been wonderful to see the children feeling confident to belt out the songs and stand on the stage and there was a bit of jostling amongst them for pride of place at the front! We can certainly see a lot of talent there for our Christmas show and next year’s graduation ceremony.

This will carry on next week as well so please let us know their favourite movies – comment on our facebook page and we will also be acting out stories and doing puppet shows together as well.

Home learning – we are still working on numbers and being imaginative, lots of next steps have been handed out and we are hoping for feedback from you on those as well. We will be having soft play out next week and cleaning in between groups so taking your children to the park would be a great help to build strength. Look at different themes and make sheets or drawings for us – seasons, animal patterns and print pictures off and glue them onto paper and bring them in. Let your child have a good at using tools such as scissors and small knives for chopping up or a hammer at home to help with DIY projects.

Our circle times have been very busy this week with so many fantastic activities!

Star group – have done lots of sorting and organising, they have been mark making and learning prepositions.

Sun and Moon group – have been learning about change and decay by looking at mouldy fruit! They have also done lots of brilliant number work and matching animal patters and throwing games where they have to be accurate and  listen really carefully to complicated instructions and take turns and wait! They have made patterns with natural items and learnt about prepositions as well and sorted items by colour and made birds to bring home with bright feathers.

Next week we will be using tools in the sun room – the forest school main sessions have finished now and those children developed fantastic skills and so we are keen to promote safety and using hammers and screwdrivers etc over the week and we will be making sculptures from clay.

We are also working on our nurture groups which are very small groups of children who might need a little extra confidence with friends or with developing language and taking turns and listening and attention skills so that they get the very best out of their time here. The children love to have special time with the ladies here and lots of fun games to help them is a perfect way to build relationships. We are still so happy with how well they have all settled in and how much progress they have all made so far!

We hope you have a lovely weekend and see you all next week.

Our week has been full of wonderful Autumn sensory play, exploring the pumpkins and the conkers and Autumn leaves that have been donated. The children have worked really hard to chop up the pumpkins to make soup which we have for snack today and we used tomatoes and leeks from our own garden to add flavour as well. Carrying the heavy pumpkins around has been brilliant for building strength and this is one of our focuses over the coming weeks. We are building a new display based on being strong and will be trying lots of different kinds of exercise to improve our balance, co-ordination and arm and hand strength and we will be sharing lots of activities for you to do at home with your children to help them be strong for school.

Our fire station was a hit this week, fantastic role play and imaginative play and cat rescuing, and rolling away from fires and dialling 999 and making sirens for the fire engine! We have always wanted a pallet and chairs to be connected so that we can turn it into anything we want and this week Alison made Andrea’s dream come true! Finally we have a brilliant base for role play – it was so popular that we have to make another one to ensure everyone can have a turn! The children were fantastic at taking turns and coming up with ideas – we need sirens, we need flashing lights – we have loved playing with them!

 The circle times have been exceptional this week, we have two ladies who are working towards being group leaders and they are planning well and really thinking about how to move the children forward with their learning. Our experienced group leaders have planned a wide variety of circle times and the children have been absolutely engaged in their learning, really well developed listening skills mean that they are learning so quickly and making brilliant progress already! My favourite observation of the week – during a chat at lunchtime about jobs – “My Mummy helps people, she helps their eyelashes!” said one little chap!

Star room – have explored sensory trays and learnt new vocabulary to describe them, played lots of matching and listening games, talked about textures and learnt size language and made their own musical instruments too. They have enjoyed snack outside a couple of times which has been fun and we have been able to open up the pre-school to full free flow from 9am as our youngest children have settled so well they are ready to be out and about with the older ones.

Moon and Sun room – both school starter groups are working hard on their listening skills too, they are able to follow instructions and directions really well now and take part in many activities to learn about being healthy from talking about going to the dentist and learning about our teeth to practising yoga and knowing about how to be strong. They have played rhyming games to develop literacy skills and used music to tap out their names and learnt about may different kinds of instruments from around the world

To support our learning at preschool here are some ideas for you to do at home –

Look up children’s yoga moves online and send us some photos of your poses, encourage your child to put their coat on and their own shoes on, build arm strength by letting your child carry a heavy pumpkin or help you cut up the vegetables for tea, look for shapes around your home – TV is a rectangle, the plate is a circle etc, look at train videos online and talk about the colours, sounds, movement and shapes and scenery.

We all hope you have a lovely weekend and week ahead before we finish for the half term.