Our theme this week has been exploring Autumn and learning about where our food comes from and cooking and baking and creating and tasting! Outside we have been working on our physical development with good balance needed for the obstacle courses we have been building …
Our pre-school has been full of awe and wonder this week – we love to inspire the children and create really exciting experiences for them during their time with us. The group leaders plan their circle times to support learning and discovery and build skills …
All of the children are settling in so well, moving through the third week has been getting easier for those who feel a little upset at drop off as the routines are becoming familiar, names are being learnt and friendships made with peers and relationships growing with key ladies. We had a key person meeting on Monday to talk about how everyone has settled and to make a start on checking where children are developmentally and will be sharing that info with you. We are really good at supporting all children here to make fantastic progress whatever their starting point and we pride ourselves on working with each child as an individual and with their family. We will be sharing ideas for home learning in a couple of weeks via our Tapestry app and will share if we think your child will benefit from a little nurture time in their emotional development and feeling happy and safe here or in any of the areas of learning.
We follow the Early Years Framework and design our own planning and curriculum based on that and Birth 2 Five and Development Matters – all links are below.
A parents guide to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) | Family Corner
Early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
foundationyears.org.uk/files/2021/09/What-to-expect-in-the-EYFS-complete-FINAL-16.09-compressed.pdf
Development Matters – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Please do not hesitate to ask any questions either by email or chatting to any of our team. We will be adding lots of useful info to the documents section of the Tapestry app.
We plan activities to really grab the children’s interests and to teach them, we use fascinating ideas, awe inspiring activities and games, resources and adult led group times to ensure there is learning throughout the pre-school to stumble across and enjoy.
Our focus for the week has been to develop listening and attention skills and to explore what the children can do within the area of Maths with fun activities. We have enjoyed large scale construction on the carpet in the sun room during free flow with some incredible creations! Outside we have played with a lot of mud to make potions and cakes and spiced them up with cinnamon, ginger and herbs. The ladies outside have played skittles and hook a duck and parachute games as well.
Life is never dull for a moment here!
Circle time this week – Sun and Moon have been working hard on listening, taking turns to talk and building attention and focus skills. We have matched lots of different sounds, listened to instructions to learn how to draw a flower, counted and sorted, played a listening game to match cards to environmental sounds, enjoyed a listening walk outside, an animal guessing game and a matching instrument sound games.
Stars have been listening to stories using story sacks which really help with props, matching instrument sounds, we’ve been rolling balls to each other and using instruments to match sounds. Lovely building up of communication and attention and our little circle times are going really well.
Next week we are creating a garage outside and the circle theme will be “Fascinations!” – the group leaders will be creating awe and wonder in their circle times with exciting objects and sensory trays and in our free flow garage and office will inspire role play.
We have had a wonderful week creating our own Disney land! Lots of dressing up, chatter, singing and dancing, games and crafts and our own Disney castle outside in our garden. The children have really enjoyed talking to us about their favourite films and characters. …
What a wonderful week we have had! There have been some fantastic moments with happy children, busy in the garden – lots of water play and themed colour mud kitchens, making new friends, creating collage work, learning about colour and our routines. Some harder moments …
We have started our Autumn Term! The doors opened on Thursday and we welcomed back lots of friends and enjoyed seeing our new friends again – it has seemed a long time since the session visits but we had lots of smiles and a lovely couple of days. Any tears were quickly dried and with lots of cuddles and reassurance children settled in and took part in our songs and group times, snack times and lovely activities that we had set up for them.
Next week we will be enjoying more baby and home corner role play, we will be talking about “All About Me”, our community and our families – we would love selfie photos of each family for our “All About Me” display as the children really enjoy looking at pictures of themselves and their families.
Tapestry has launched and we have added all of our children and families, we will be working with it over the course of the term and will let you know when any new sections launch. For now we would love everyone to sign up to the activation email and please enable notifications. We may add photos and comment and accident forms over the coming weeks. There is also a section called “All About Me” that is open for you to complete at any time. Consent forms will follow next week with more info as well.
Our last week has arrived and we have our two celebrations of the children’s time with us with our graduations on Thursday and Friday afternoons. It is a special time and an emotional time saying goodbye to the children, some of whom have been here …
Another exciting week at pre-school as we head towards the end of term, visits from primary school teachers and the lovely Marie from Animals 2 U came on Thursday and Friday mornings for the Sun and Moon groups. She brought some wonderful animals with her …
First of all a HUGE thank you to all those families who supported our summer fete – it is one of our favourite days of the year and the final total raised will be shared next week once all the bills have been calculated and paid!
The sun finally arrived for a day this week which was exciting and hot!! We are not complaining of course but our pre-school does get very warm in sunny weather so we make sure all of the children wear hats outside and drink lots of water. Please do make sure your child has the all day sun screen on when they arrive please, we have plenty of spare hats if needed.
We had a brilliant visit from Alfie from the Football Fun Factory and he led two sessions in our garden for the Sun and Moon children and they loved it and loved Alfie! He was great with the children, coached them at just the right level and it was a really fun hour so we are looking forward to booking him for more sessions in the Autumn Term as a lovely experience for the children.
We have been learning about lots of topics this week – more holiday fun and camping adventures, learning about sequences – how to make things, number sequences and colour sequences. The circle time groups have been working on writing their names, talking about feelings and the sequence of a day and of a story.
Next week we will be playing with our small world sets, making animal craft, enjoying exotic pet vet role play (please bring in any unusual cuddly toys please!!) and we will be playing with water and construction outside.
We are coming to the end of Forest School for this year and we will be welcoming visits from St Andrews and Willowbank teachers next week as well as finishing off our practice for the graduation celebrations at the end of term.
Have a lovely weekend and see you next week
Our Costa coffee shop has been open for another week and we have seen lots of wonderful role play there, supported by the ladies extending and helping the children learn and play with real imagination. Our Costa has now been attached to an airport and …