Welcome back to all our families after the Easter holidays, we hope everyone had a lovely break and the children were happy to be back. The sunshine has been wonderful and the outside has been transformed into a busy pirate ship and cave of wonder! The pirate these has been a real treat as the children really love it – we have dressed up, made telescopes and treasure and maps and weaved all the areas of learning into the theme. Each part of pre-school has also had other activities available for anyone not wishing to be a pirate such as interesting water play with solar powered fountains, science experiments inside and playdoh with herbs and flowers.

Sun and Moon circle times have been focused on some maths work using pirate themes such as matching and counting pirate treasure coins, some pirate skills needed to be learnt – scrubbing the decks, walking the plank and staying safe in a storm! They have also practised scissor skills – cutting our pirate pictures, worked on letter sounds and

The Star group have searched for treasure in giant trays, matched number and counting coins, singing pirate songs and balancing coins on pirate ships and counting how many they carried before they sank!

Our star children have started their mini forest school sessions this week on a Thursday and Friday mornings and they get all togged up in their waterproofs with help from Sophie and Jackie so that they are getting used to the sessions and build independence ahead of the Autumn Term.

Our Tree of Kindness is up in the Moon cloakroom and we have a number of leaves to hand out for lovely moments of kindness, hard work, determination and being caring – Betsy has one for kindness, Jed for hard work, Ralph, Bella and Halle for determination – well done all.

Robot Reg is back! He has come to visit with his helper Rebecca and the children shrieked with excitement at her return! She can see a brilliant amount of progress in the sun and moon groups. We will be working on more phonics over the term as well.

We will be celebrating the Coronation and will start to learn about the King next week – some of our children will remember our Jubilee celebrations for the Queen when they were Stars last year and some will hopefully remember the change from our Queen to our new King as we walked up to the proclamation as a pre-school group at the Bull Ring. It will be a happy occasion and an important one to mark for the children.

Next week we will continue along our pirate theme, we will also add in some more science by learning about our senses and using our senses and will develop our water area too.

We would love donations of balloons, water balloons, cornflour, flour, pirate items and any coronation celebration items from the supermarkets please

We hope all of our families have a wonderful Mother’s Day on Sunday and that you like to card and gift that the children have made for you. We have had a lovely time talking about family at circle times and making little flowers or hearts as well.

We have also had a focus on rules this week, there are some rules at pre-school that are non-negotiable for safety reasons so a little reminder was needed! The main rules are that children are not allowed into a room that has a “Not available – no entry sign”, children must sit while they eat snack and lunch and they are not allowed to open the gate into the kitchen. These are all so important for staying safe and that is how we teach them to the children. Sometimes conflict over toys is also hard to deal with so we support all of the children to work on being kind and asking for help when needed.

Our week has been filled with colour exploration as well and there are some brilliant photos of slime making and colour matching and creating all sorts of craft this week.

The Star children have also been mixing colours, adding colour to cornflour and made rainbow foam. The stars also loved some sensory play with pinecones and flour and cocoa and made Mother’s Day flowers.

The carpet has been busy with fidget toys! Story sacks have been a wonderful adult led activity with clay and playdoh on offer too – the wet weather has been a shame but we get out into the garden as often as we can, despite the wet rain!

The outside has been a busy garage, loads of great role play and fun filling up with petrol and taking turns on the bikes – good practice for our Sponsored bike ride next week! Thank you so much for the sponsorship so far – we think this may be the best year ever fingers crossed!

Next week we will carry on with the garage and workshop outside, we will be completing puzzles inside and working on our understanding at circle times of why and how questions. We will have some shape trays out and will use trains as the base of our role play in the sun room.

We are starting our register now for September 2023 and we have some spaces so please let friends and family know that we are booking people in now for our induction process and can’t wait to meet everyone who is interested in joining us this September – you can call the office on 01884 35018 for more info or to book a tour.

Welcome back after a lovely half term break, all the children were happy to be back and have been full of chat and pleased to see their friends and ladies!

This week we have been playing in our role play circus and fairground in the garden and we will carry this on for a few weeks. We have played lots of different games such as hook a duck, hoopla, skittles and a coconut shy – we would LOVE real coconuts if anyone some across some over the weekend! We have some lovely photos from our play in the garden.

Next week we will carry on with those games and also some circus skills too.

We will be reading lots of books as it is World Book Day at the end of the week and we are off to the library for a lovely trip as well. Thanks to everyone who helps us with our walking trips – we are so grateful as the children really love to get out and about with us and look forward to trips.

Our sun table has been animal heaven, we have been creating and making and learning all about exotic animals and using the ipad to watch video’s and see the animals in their real habitat and we love using our non-fiction books for exploration too. It is a lovely topic and we all enjoy watching the children be inspired and excited in their learning. We will be concentrating on animals in our circle times as well so please feel free to email in and let us know of any exciting animals you have seen at the Zoo or on any exciting travels.

We always love Pancake Day at preschool and it never fails to make the children laugh when tossing the pancakes! Michelle brought in her camping stove and cooked the pancakes in front of the children while I made them in the sun room with the other group, they were all delicious! The blog photo was taken by Betsy! What a brilliant action shot of Michelle!

Circle times were all about pancake day on Monday and Tuesday, exploring ingredient together and making the batter. This group really love to bake. The Sun and Moons designed their ideal pancake toppings and had pancake races and competitions and made a tally chart for their favourite toppings too. We also looked at their learning journeys and talked about being special to people and who they loved and that their key person is their special lady here at preschool. All of the children were engrossed in looking at their photos and spotting their family in their books.

The Star group experimented with the ingredients for the pancake batter and chose their favourite fruits to put onto a pancake. They have explored making their own paints as well, full of interesting textures and smells and created an aquarium for our animal zone in the sun room.

The Forest School sessions have been learning about woodlice and searching for them in the garden, under logs and leaves and we will be on the look out for some frogspawn as well soon for learning about life cycles.

Parent Consultation appointments are available now for you to book in and catch up on progress and see your child’s special book too, please get in touch with Mandy in the office to make an appointment.

We hope you have a lovely weekend!