Welcome back to the last half term of the year, we can’t believe how quickly the year has gone and before long we will be busy meeting our new children at their session visits and then saying goodbye to all our friends who are off to school!

Lots of fun ahead before then though with trips to the primary schools and visits from the teachers, transition documents to write and visits from Animals 2 U, a Teddy Bears picnic and lots of gardening to be done!

This week we have had a focus on literacy and fairy tales. Our main book has been Jack and the Beanstalk and the circle times have used the book as a theme for learning – adding in lots of brilliant teaching.

Outside we have planted seeds, flowers and vegetables and they are now tucked away in our growing garden. This garden does need some work so we will be setting up a garden nurture club each week for children to come and help weed and dig and sort and tidy!

We would love donations of compost and bark for the garden please, along with shaving foam, paper straws, packets of bread mix, cotton wool and sprinkles for cakes and fresh flowers! Next week we will be baking and cooking and making food and chatting about being healthy and about allergies and trying new fruits as well.

On the Sun table we have been exploring colour and then in free flow we have been learning about weather and how it changes.

Star circle – the group have been reading lots of fairy tales and talking about what happens in the sequence of the story. They have read Little Red Riding Hood, made houses for the 3 little pigs, sorted objects with Goldilocks, made their own Goldilocks pictures, acted out the Billy Goats Gruff and made beanstalks using Maths to count out leaves.

The Sun and Moon groups have enjoyed lots of story sacks, have played I Spy looking for characters from the stories by listening to clues, played a beanstalk counting game, made a giant beanstalk by working together to create the artwork, made their own story books with some brilliant mark making and ideas, used leaves to spell out names, measure feet to match to the Giant’s feet and used leaves with numbers painted on them to count out magic beans!

We will be continuing with Fairy Tales next week, along with setting up our own Costa coffee shop outside for role play!

The sunshine has arrived! Preschool has been really great fun and full of the summer buzz in the air! Lots of lovely forest school sessions for the Star children through the week led by Sophie. They found a hedgehog in our little hedgehog home! We have had a hairdressing and nail salon inside which has been brilliant fun and we have worked hard to restore the hair on our models! Lots of children have had their nails painted in the salon and have had a lovely calm and fun experience, a few of our parents are beauticians and lots of great vocab in the salon. The ladies have enjoyed having a pamper in the salon as well!

Outside we been playing castles and knights and princess role play – with dragons and witches and all sorts of brilliant stories to enjoy. We absolutely love our garden, it can be transformed into any stage for the children’s play and learning and role play. We move equipment around all the time to generate interest and change the lay out to keep the children busy and engaged.

Inside we have been working on our scissor skills and having a go at lots of different kinds of mark making and drawing as we have literacy as a theme for the next two weeks.

Our circle times have been based on literacy and the group leaders have used the role play and other planning to tie the learning together – for example we have drawn pictures on shields for the role play outside, we have written stories about castles and drawn illustrations for go alongside, we have drawn caterpillars after looking at the cocoons that they have now created, we have played letter bingo and loved the Robot Reg sessions this week.

Next week we will be continuing with our literacy theme, playing castles again outside, learning about shapes on the sun table and exploring ideas about countries as well.

Welcome to the summer term at Pre-School! We hope everyone had a lovely Easter break and we were really excited to see you all again after the holidays!

We have lots to look forward to this term, our annual Hungry Caterpillar picnic party in our back garden, our summer fete, trips to the church and the milk shed, a teddy bears picnic at the CCA fields and lots of fun and learning during normal sessions too! Lots of skills to practice before moving to primary school and the Star groups will enjoy mini Forest School, learning the rules and developing their independence ahead of their sessions as Suns and Moons next year.

This has been such a fun week, full of laughter and learning – the photos are lovely – I am sure the sunshine helps!

Our team have come back refreshed and thrown themselves into our pirate theme, using treasure maps outside, generating real excitement in their searches for treasure, we have made our own coins and treasure chests, built a pirate ship with a plank to walk on and a secret cove under a sail to explore. We have also had the water out in the sunshine with our solar fountains which are so pretty and mesmerise the children

Our other theme has been “questions” – talking about “What – Why – How” – lots of learning about technology.

The group leaders have been very inventive and we have had some brilliant circle times this week – we have also been talking about how to be safe online – to always use kids tube and not you tube, not to use a table or phone unsupervised and not to take technology to bed – a story read from a book is better than watching an ipad in bed. There are some scary statistics about young children accessing inappropriate content online when using a table or smart phone so please be careful.

Star – learning about technology – using our toy mobile phones, looking at the ipad and finding funny photos and videos, using our toy metal detectors and searching for metal treasure, remote controlled car races, printing photos from a phone on a tiny printer and using a laptop to send me an email and then I sent a reply! Then the stars made their own play laptops – fantastic vocabulary and language and concentration and turn taking with the fun tech toys!

Sun and Moon – this groups have used the ipad to facetime Mandy in the office and one of the parents in each of the group, they used Michelle’s tiny printer and took photos of themselves and then watched them be printed immediately, the groups used our programmable robots – Beebot and the pretend mobile phones. They learnt about different clocks, analogue and digital and talked about time and made their own watches and also emailed me from Andrea’s circle time and I replied!

Robot Reg came to visit on Thursday and Friday afternoons and the children were so happy to see Rebecca and Robot Reg! Bringing learning phonic sounds to a new fun level!

Our caterpillars have arrived and we will be taking care of them over the coming weeks.

We will also be learning about our senses on the Sun table next week and would love donations of balloons, jam jars with lids, plastic cups and foil, exotic fruits and scented candles please.

We are so grateful for all the fundraising you have been doing! The Bingo total was fantastic and the sponsored bike ride is looking like the very best year ever – total due soon! Thank you – it really means a lot to us and means we can buy equipment and toys and resources this term which will really benefit all of the children.