We have enjoyed a fantastic week, despite the heavy rain and showers we have been able to get outside most days and enjoy the fresh air and a good run around! We have played in the Space are undercover, really enjoying the lights in the dark tent! Inside we set up a Vets surgery with lots of time that were donated by one of our parents, we added lots of cuddly toys that needed taking care of and needed bandages and plasters and medicine and lots of cuddles and sleep in nice cosy beds! We have some very talented vets here! The children have really taken part in the role play and it covers so many areas of learning, lots of writing and listening skills and turn taking and chatting and imagination too. We are going to carry on with role play each week in the sun room and dedicate that area to imaginative play with an adult there to help and lead and support and facilitate the children’s ideas – next week will be castles and knights and fairies and dragons!

The circle times have been wonderful again this week, lots of great observations for the children which all get read by me, then given to the key workers to assess and add into their special books ready for evidence of their progress and then you get to keep them all once the children finish with us. We hope you have enjoyed the progress reports and a big thank you to all for your comments and feedback. If there are any books at home still could you please bring them in as your lovely key person is waiting to glue in lots more pics and obs from the last couple of weeks.

Stars have been playing turn taking games, learning how to put their own coat and shoes on, shape matching and making houses using shapes and enjoying story sacks too.

Sun and Moon groups have been learning about time this week, making clocks, learning about being healthy and clean and taking care of ourselves, eating healthy food and what are treat foods. They have also worked on colour mixing and created some wonderful pictures and some rhyming work too which was great fun.

We will be working on shape recognition and using shapes to make pictures next week so home learning ideas can include cutting shapes out of paper and sorting them into matching piles, looking for shapes out and about, making pictures using just shapes – circles for wheels on a big tractor using squares and rectangles – please send us a pic of your creations! You can also use recycling to make robots teaching your child the 3D names of the shapes too.

What a fantastic last week we have had, full of Christmas fun and joy and music and dancing! Today we finish for the Christmas break for two weeks and we are due back Monday 4th January to start the new year 2021! Do keep an eye on your emails just in case of any COVID changes to the opening dates!

The children are certainly looking forward to Christmas and have really enjoyed seeing our Elf Buddy in his curiosity cube and have told us lots of funny stories about what their elves have been up to in their homes – toilet roll around the tree and making a mess and eating all the chocolates!

We have sparkly Christmas playdoh out which smells of cinnamon and we also did two sing-a-longs with St Andrews on Tuesday and Willowbank on Thursday! It was great fun to sing our songs to them and see their faces and recognise old friends! We heard their songs too which were brilliant and we have really missed going out and about to visit the schools so we hope things can return to normal at some point in 2021.

Thank you again for all the lovely cards and gifts that you have given us, we have saved some of the choccies for January as we know they will be needed in that first week!

The sun and moon circle times have been super busy – making Christmas crowns, Christmas tree cards, decorating Christmas jumpers, playing Christmas bingo, they enjoyed a game of pass the parcel which Alison won as it was her birthday and it contained her present from Michelle! We have played party games, coloured in Elf pictures, learnt some Christmas cosmic yoga moves and made a giant gingerbread man picture!

The Stars have also been fully immersed in Christmas! Christmas craft, reindeer faces and party games and Santa says and snowball throwing!

We had a really good key person meeting on Monday and chatted about all the progress the children have made this term and we are really pleased with how everyone is getting along! We will be sharing the progress with you in January and will be working out the best way of doing that – perhaps a virtual parents evening!

We would like to wish you all a really happy, safe and COVID free Christmas and a Happy start to 2021 and we look forward to welcoming you all back to pre-school for a busy and happy Spring Term! Do keep in touch via the main email cullomptonpreschool@gmail.com (This will be checked on New Year’s Eve to plan for our return on the 4th) or via the pre-school mobile 07927057415.

Christmas has started at pre-school! Our post box is up now and waiting for some cards to be posted – we do have lots of children with the same name this year so please try to use the surname if you know it – we have 4 Olivia’s for example!

Decorations are going up, we have made a home corner undercover for role play and we have been wrapping presents and making a fire and food this week. We will be building a Polar Express train next week with a snowy log cabin to play in as well. The children have worked on their own Christmas cards and a present for you all and we are practising our play! We still don’t quite know how it will all work but please bear with us and we will let you know as soon as we can but the important bit to remember is every child will only do a HALF DAY on Thursday 10th December. We will let you know if it is the AM or PM party session.

The week has been busy with lots of craft and exercise, we have had the soft play out again and have been doing “Sticky Kids” which is an excellent movement CD that we love to use. We have played music and danced and learnt our new songs.

The Sun and Moon groups have been working on lots of gross motor skills which has been great fun and really interesting to see how tired the children get with some of the movements. We have worked hard on making matching patterns and repeating patterns together and have played Bingo, practised our writing by making labels and packaging and have also shared our Christmas wish lists! So far children would like – Dragons and Unicorns, a new tractor, a hot tub, puppy, jet, orange bike, Bumble bee game and toy, a red nerf gun and red car, a toy puppy with a lead, a wand, a dolls house and lots would like a skateboard too!

The Star group have enjoyed pretend tea parties, practising their pouring skills and danced around expressing themselves and learning about feelings. The have learnt the new Christmas songs and worked on their understanding too of “what” and “where” and “why” questions.

Home learning wise we would love it if you could make some Christmas craft or decorations for us and send them in with your child for us to display – we would also love to see photos of you out on a walk or spotting numbers at the shops! We would love to hear what your favourite Christmas movie is and teach your child how to do some wrapping up to support good co-ordination. Also may be start to have a go at writing their name in a Christmas card – copying letters and cutting up old cards to make labels for parcels this year.

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