Autumn Term Week 8
Welcome back after the half term break – we hope you all had a happy and healthy week off. We are back into preschool life – full of Bonfire Night chat, stories from home and learning about space. We use the themes or subject as …
Our Blog
Autumn Term Week 7
This is our last week before we all have a week off for Half Term and we have had a lovely time surrounded by pumpkins and dressing up and face paint and autumnal trays with all of the items that you have been collecting for …
Autumn Term Week 6
We have had a focus on healthy habits this week and this will continue into next week as well and the children have really loved our farm shop outside. We managed to buy some of the wonderful wooden grocery sets from Aldi and these have been brilliant along with some wooden eggs and a few packets with different languages and different grocery items. It has been a really popular role play area and we have also had a lovely cafe and pizza restaurant going on in the sun room too. The wooden sets from Aldi are really lovely and the doughnuts and cup cakes were very popular along with the mini coffee barista machine!
Forest School sessions have been bathed in sun this week after the rain earlier in the week and we have put some photos of the Thursday Sun group on Tapestry for you. No trips out this week but we will be welcoming Alfie back for another football session next Monday 21st October.
Next week is our last week before we have a week off for half term, and we will be exploring Halloween dressing up, craft and sensory pumpkin trays, along with a literacy focus and more movement. We started Disco Thursday which is a dance session instead of story time just before lunch – any song requests would be great! We have had a few requests from “Sing” movies! Please pop us a message on Tapestry if your child loves a particular song from a movie or the radio!
Our circle times have been focused on being healthy and have covered a wide range of topics such as sleep, healthy food and treats, lots of exercise – fitness and yoga, dancing and aerobics! Lots of sorting food and working on independence too – finding our own shoes from a big pile and putting them on without help, learning about keeping our teeth clean, and healthy lunchboxes.
Have a lovely weekend and please do take a pumpkin to colour or decorate to win a prize!
Autumn Term Week 5
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 …
Autumn Term Week 4
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 …
Autumn Term Week 3
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.
Autumn Term Week 2
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. …
Autumn Term Week 1
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 …
5th and 6th September
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.
Summer Term Week 12
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 …