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 created a new generation of artists!!

Star – this group have mixed colours and made handprints, mixed coloured water, made coloured mashed potato, matched objects by colour, mixed shaving foam and colours to make pictures and used the pipettes to drop colour onto cotton wool

Sun and Moon – these groups have mixed paint on a big scale on bubble wrap over tables, used shaving foam to make marble pictures, used the curly pipettes to add water to paint to make green and purple and orange and mixed colours in jars, learnt a colour magic trick and sorted colours and made their own mini rainbow book marks!

Our welcome tray has been full of beautiful transient art, we have loved dough disco on the sun table first thing and spring playdoh on the round table.

The sun table has been a hub for Science Week – lots of amazing experiments, learning together to follow the instructions on Pinterest, comparing our outcomes with the photos and videos and talking about the ingredients we have used, the vocabulary for the reactions and it has been a really popular activity.

Outside has also been very busy with the nice warm sunshine! We have set up a group of chairs and left the children to lead the play based on journeys – some lovely child led ideas with an adult there to support and extend – including a plane flight to the seaside, a bus to the beach, a bus to each other’s homes, a bus trip to Bear Town, a trip to Disneyland on a plane and a flight to Australia and even a rollercoaster! We will continue this next week inside with the whole sun room being used as a train – please send in photos of any trains you may have and books and trips and leaflets please!

The activity lead outside has also been having fun with the children playing playground games together – teaching them What’s the Time Mr Wolf and Duck, Duck, Goose – playing football and parachute games and hide and seek too.

Next week we will be enjoying Easter craft, learning about trains and journeys, 3D shapes and numbers, and unpacking our new big blocks that we have paid for with our fund raising efforts – thank you to our committee of parents!! We have our Bingo on Saturday night and our wonderful summer fete on the 28th June and a shopping list in draft form on my laptop ready to go!

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 downloaded after the blog has been written so will feature in the following week’s gallery)

The week has been so much fun and the children have loved asking us all about our characters and looking at books together. The children behaved beautifully on both Library trips and the library were really welcoming and helpful and we enjoyed the trail and their storytime.

Promoting a love of reading is so important, and can be a significant part of life long learning skills and academic progress and we have been making observations across the week of how the children have engaged with stories, using story sacks and props, acting stories out in the garden and using our lovely story stage as a base and it has been so popular!

Inside we have been making some fire fighter craft to support role play, and we have had the dressing up out as well to promotor independence in putting outfits on, ahead of school in a few months where children need to be able to change for PE!

Each circle time has had a literacy focus with lots of stories and one day of making pancakes on Tuesday!
We have learnt about Ramadan and ended the week with a wonderful facetime call to a teacher in Kuwait who teaches Arabic and was able to talk to us about why Ramadan is important and to show us some of the food she will eat later after dusk and her lanterns and other decorations – it was quite emotional in fact to really learn properly and to bring it all to life for the children, she asked their names and they were really confident to chat and loved looking at her items. Please have a look on Facebook and tapestry for some photos from this special moment as we took them on the ipad.

Robot Reg has returned this Thurs and Fri afternoons and next week we will welcome Alfie from the Football Fun Factory.

We will be learning about routes and patterns next week and would love you to email photos in from your weekend – a photo of your house and front door please for circle times and any photos of shops and places in our town as well.

Outside next week we are learning about dinosaurs and fossils so will become explorers!

Thank you to everyone who has handed in their sponsor form for the bike ride next week, we are looking forward to helping the children to complete their laps over the course of next week.

Our highlights of the week were our two Grandparent Mornings! We welcomed 11 grandparents each day and the children really enjoyed themselves and we were able to show the families our circle times and then had a nice cuppa and off for a little explore!

We have been working hard on our physical strength all week and our circle times have been full of laughter and competition and new skills have been acquired.

Star circle – the children have enjoyed lots of music and movement games this week, along with Peppa Pig movement ideas, animal movements and ball skills. Moving over and under hoops, dancing with ribbons and jumping, kicking, rolling and banana banana dancing and dough disco! What a busy week!

Sun and Moon circle – more work on building strength through games such as bean bag challenges, ball passing games, action moves and a brick transporting game carrying heavy buckets! They have learnt how to use the stilts and enjoyed a Forest School session as well in the winter sunshine.

Outside we have been tidying up our bikes, adding new numbers and giving them a clean. We have collected up all our trucks and cars and had a sort out together and built a bike obstacle course and made a train station as well. Lots of lovely vocabulary and play and team work.

Our role play shop has continued this week and the children have really been able to help to tidy it so that it is ready for the next session!

Vet role play has been very popular in the sun room with lots of fantastic language and extending the learning taking place and we have started to look at mini beasts and life cycles very simply ahead of next week when we will be concentrating on it.

Our nurture groups are lovely and we have some great observations from them which really helps the key person with their learning journeys.

Next week is our last week before February Half Term and we will have a garden club outside, more exercise and games and some flower craft inside and life cycle and minibeast topics too. We would love donations of bulbs to plant and some compost please!