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.

We have welcomed all of the new starters now and our youngest children in the Star group have all settled in brilliantly. A few tears as always on separating form the lovely Mum’s and Dad’s but the team here are wonderful and so caring and nurturing and we have calmed and cuddled and helped the children to explore what is on offer here. Some amazing photos of the week on the blog and we were so fortunate to be able to start our Forest School sessions. The smell of the fire took me back to the last sessions in Autumn 2019 and then we missed the Spring sessions due to the restrictions sadly so a real treat to have Melinda and her colleague Rachel here with Alison and Michelle from our team. The children benefit so much from the experience and we will see them making new friends and enjoying the fire and the activities over the coming 6 weeks. The other children will also take turns to join the Forest School through the year during our mini sessions before the school starters in group 2 have their main sessions in the Summer.

The ladies have been busy planning circle times and the groups have gone really well this week – some fantastic listening and attention skills on show! The children are learning the routines and rules really well which makes our teaching come to life!

The young stars have been playing settling in games at circle time to learn each others names – such as ball rolling to a friend, playing instruments, choosing favourite songs and learning the welcome song that we sing each morning.

The Sun and Moon group have been learning about height and weight and length and comparing animal sizes and ordering straws by length and working hard on the language of size too. They have worked on learning letters and sounds, making pictures from shapes, making self portraits, opening up conkers and learning about acorns and working together to create a large Earth for a new display.

Outside we have been setting up our mud kitchen and the children have loved getting stuck in to making mud cakes and potions and delicious looking mud puddings!

Next week we are also continuing with our mud kitchen, we will introduce some hers, flowers and citrus fruits as well for a more sensory experience. We will make worlds on the floor in the sun room after circle time using photos of Cullompton and will have some quiet gentle play on offer as well in the Moon room for anyone who prefers a more quiet area.

We would love donations of flowers and citrus fruits please for our outside play and bags of gravel and play bark too please! Thank you.