We have had a wonderful week, albeit a very wet one – sorry about all the wet clothes coming home but it has been worth it, the children have absolutely loved playing with the water in the exciting set ups that the staff have helped …
We have had a wonderful week outside in the sunshine on our pre-school farm! The pigs have been cared for, the sheep have been sheared and the fields tended to! We have planted vegetables and washed muddy pigs, milked cows and made a scarecrow – …
Our Pre-School has turned into a farm yard this week inside and outside! We have built a wonderful farm yard and a big home corner for the farm house too. Lots of lovely role play and chatter in the garden and we have made resources inside to support the play – a cow and a pig and some chicks for our hen house. We have built a tractor outside too with loose parts which has been a great success.
We have some Farmer’s Weekly magazines and lots of leaflets as well to promote new vocabulary and learning and conversations.
Inside we have been practising our scissor skills and had our green playdoh out with the farm animals and creating items for the farm outside.
Our circle times for the Stars have been farm based too to support the role play and learning.
Stars – have talked about life on the farm, animals and their babies, sorting jungle animals and farm animals and read the Farmer Duck story and chatted about jobs on the farm and played guess the sound of the animal too – lovely for listening and attention skills!
Sun and Moons have had a focus on letters and their sounds – listening to sounds and learning to blend them ahead of learning to read at school!
Matching sounds and items, picking out all the items that begin with an S or T, understanding rhyming words and learning to blend sounds.
We have also had a wonderful trip to the Fire Station for the Moon group on Thursday and these photos will be in a separate gallery on the blog and learnt a little about VE Day at an age appropriate level with a little picnic and face painting celebration in our back garden with bunting.
Mindful Thursday continued to be super relaxing and quiet and we have been showing people around pre-school this week who we hope will join us in the Autumn and the current children are always super nosy with new people!!
We hope you have a lovely weekend and enjoy the sunshine and we will be continuing with our farmyard and we will have some tennis coaching on Monday morning and we have a Bags 2 School collection booked for Friday 16th May so please feel free to drop bags off from Monday morning. All bags will be weighed and pre-school are paid an amount per kilo which goes into fund raising for new resources.
Our pirate play has been great fun this week – we have used the children’s interest in this theme to lead counting and maths work in our group times which has worked brilliantly! Stars have been playing pop up pirate and counting the swords and …
Welcome back to all our families and to a new family who have joined us this term having moved to Cullompton. As we start the summer term we are learning which schools the children have been allocated and starting to think about planning our register …
Another super busy week at pre-school with the last Disco Thursday yesterday – a few sad faces after our Madagascar finale! We had a very funny moment at the Church yesterday when one of the children explained Disco Thursday to Ed the Vicar – “it’s when we move and dance and sing our songs, but it’s the last one today because we have run out of songs”!! I am sure we can find more dance songs but it is time for a change and we will be enjoying “Mindful Thursdays” for the summer term – a more gentle movement activity, more story massage, more yoga, a slowing down of pace! We have loved Disco Thursday but I think we are all ready for a break from the ABT ABT song!!
Our Church visit on Thursday was delightful, the Sun group behaved perfectly and listened really well to Ed and Darren, they explained the Easter story and the children were engrossed – big intakes of breath when Ed explained that sadly Jesus dies on Good Friday but don’t worry, said Ed – he comes back to life. A brilliant Easter Egg hunt through our wonderful Church, party rings for snack and a sunny walk back to pre-school, thank you to our two helpers.
We have said goodbye and thank you to Robot Reg and to Alfie this week after their set of sessions here.
I will set up two Memo’s on Tapestry this week for the amazing photos that have been taken on the Church trip and during Forest School this week – we are so proud of all we do here and the happiness just shines out of the Forest School groups and there were far too many wonderful photos to choose from for the blog!
Circle times this week – learning about 3D shapes and 2D shapes – lots of imaginative games to help the children learn about shapes and their differences and properties – shape bingo, find the shapes, building with 3D shapes, decorating a giant Easter egg with shapes and matching them, using our hands to make shapes, creating a shape meadow, a shape hunt in the back garden and exploring 3D shapes and drawing around them and learning new words such as hexagonal prism, cylinder, pentagon etc.
Our train journeys inside have been popular too with Disney and CBeebies land being the most requested journeys!
We will be back on TUESDAY 22nd APRIL after the Easter break, we will be collecting toilet rolls, foil, shoe boxes, egg boxes and old cameras and jewellery if you are able to collect some for us that would be lovely! We are playing Pirates after the break and will have a focus on our senses too. We wish all our families a happy and safe Easter holiday.
Colour explosions at pre-school this week! We have really enjoyed creating and mixing and choosing and learning new vocabulary for colours and learning about prime colours and which colours mix! The circle times have been really imaginative and exciting for the children and we hope …
We have had a wonderfully busy week, lots going on and so much learning and play and fun and inspiration! The week started with a normal Monday, setting up for the week ahead – laying out our hat and bag and jewellery shop for free …
Dinosaurs and fossils, stories and songs, maps and directions and routes, frozen eggs, treasure hunts, swing and climbing frame, disco Thursday and Robot Reg, dino tails, dino feet – just a few of the happy moments and learning activities this week!
What a busy and fun week!
We welcomed Alfie to lead our football coaching session which was a great start to our week – the children really enjoyed his sessions and he is back again on Wednesday next week for more football fun!
Our circle times in Star – working on size language and understanding concepts – lots of activities to sort big and little items, heavy and light items, which items are long or short and containers that are full or empty, how tall are you and what floats and sinks! Brilliant week – lots of learning through fun activities which are carefully planned by the group leaders for each group.
Our Sun and Moon groups – working on patterns and routes, directions and journeys are a pattern, looking at buildings and shops and houses are all part of a journey. We have drawn maps of our town and of our pre-school garden, looked at our favourite places on Google Earth as well. Making and copying patterns is a good skills within the maths area of learning – the groups have made 2 colour patterns, spotted and matched Easter eggs with different patterns.
Outside we have been hunting for fossils, looking for dinosaurs, playing dinosaurs games with tails and feet and lots more dinosaur craft inside on the Sun table.
Forest School sessions have enjoyed some spring sunshine with some hammering and sawing skills this week and lots of lovely team work and collaborative play in our wonderful back garden.
Next week we will be setting up a shop inside to support more maths and literacy and role pay to enjoy and would love donations of old hats, shoes and jewellery please and any old coins – it would be lovely to play with real coins instead of the plastic ones.
We will also have a visit from Tiny Travels who are a company that specialise in teaching children about the diverse world around us, they provide an interactive cultural experience and we have used fundraising money to pay for this session.
Tiny Travels | Cultural Education Sessions
We also have two Grandparents afternoons on Thursday and Friday which we are looking forward to!
This has been a very busy week at pre-school! We have been out to the library for two trips, Carole came on Tuesday for a story massage session, Robot Reg has visited us and we have dressed up for World Book Day. (Friday photos are …