Another fantastic week here at pre-school, the sun has shone and the children have loved exploring the gardens and being outside. The new construction area has been a fantastic addition to the front garden and I have seen lots of the children working together, creating some lovely friendships and lots of chatter and great ideas about how to fix the slide or build a new bridge! They have also played games outside, Peppa Pig copying movement games, parachute games and hide and seek.

We certainly have some budding salon owners as well with lots of the children enjoying the hairdresser role play, setting appointments, chatting about colouring hair, using the straighteners and sitting and waiting very patiently while reading a magazine! Lots of nail painting going on and chatter about who has the most nail varnish at home! We so love to see the children playing – this group are really good at it! We can play alongside, adding new vocabulary, encouraging them to persevere with the heavy blocks to the pulley and supporting them to come up with new ideas themselves.

We look forward to welcome all the new starters next week and have really enjoyed meeting you all during the session visits that we have held here.

Stars are our younger group and they will now be coming from 8.45 to 9am for their drop off – please ensure you socially distance in the queue and Suns and Moons please do not queue up before 9am.

Circle times have been fantastic this week – wonderful concentration and engagement from the children.

Moon and Sun group – have enjoyed Story Sacks which really bring the stories to life and the children have been enthralled and I have read some brilliant observations. We have played a sound matching game which is quite tricky and requires really good listening skills. The children explored “Transient art” which means making pictures out of natural objects which are then cleared from their boards and then we make another one. Lots of imagination shown here by the groups – have a look on the gallery to see their pictures. There has been a lot of exercise and learning about how activity affects our bodies, parachute games, exploring textures, learning about 2D and 3 D shapes and using tools such as knives and scissors carefully. A very busy week!

Our Star circle times will start next week, they will be really short to start with and focus on settling in, nurture and learning names and routines of the day.

I hope you have all had a chance to read the newsletter – we are desperate for someone to help us with a tip run please!

We all hope you all have a lovely weekend!

We have welcomed a few more children back this week and it has been wonderful to see their faces and enjoy their company as we head towards the end of the term! Only two weeks left now and we are filling those with lots of activities and planning lots of fun. We will sadly miss our annual butterfly picnic but we are enjoying the back garden during our sessions, finding frogs and doing some gardening jobs too. We will be making willow crowns for our graduation and we will be videoing the children singing and sharing that on facebook we hope and then will video each child individually getting their certificate and gift from us to email you. I have really enjoyed taking the graduation photos and we have had lots of orders which is brilliant – we have obviously not been able to do any fundraising so we hope you are pleased with the photos and place orders for them!

The children this week have played weddings and dressing up, they have built castles and bridges. They have welcomed back old friends and loved playing together. We have worked hard in the garden this week and have been doing some clearing up jobs too – encouraging the children to help us litter pick and tidy up the garden. Lots of potion making and bike riding too! The group times have been well planned as always and we have been focusing on numbers and letters, co-ordination, getting dressed into outfits. We have been learning how to take care of watercolour paints too, choosing particular colours to make cup cakes for our wedding party. We have learnt about different kinds of Bears in the Violet group and played Mrs Bears Honey followed by honey on toast for snack! The children generate a huge amount of art work! We have saved lots of it for you in your special books – please do book in for an appointment if you are not currently attending. Children who are attending will be given their special books during their last week to take home and treasure.

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