First of all a HUGE thank you to all those families who supported our summer fete – it is one of our favourite days of the year and the final total raised will be shared next week once all the bills have been calculated and paid!

The sun finally arrived for a day this week which was exciting and hot!! We are not complaining of course but our pre-school does get very warm in sunny weather so we make sure all of the children wear hats outside and drink lots of water. Please do make sure your child has the all day sun screen on when they arrive please, we have plenty of spare hats if needed.

We had a brilliant visit from Alfie from the Football Fun Factory and he led two sessions in our garden for the Sun and Moon children and they loved it and loved Alfie! He was great with the children, coached them at just the right level and it was a really fun hour so we are looking forward to booking him for more sessions in the Autumn Term as a lovely experience for the children.

We have been learning about lots of topics this week – more holiday fun and camping adventures, learning about sequences – how to make things, number sequences and colour sequences. The circle time groups have been working on writing their names, talking about feelings and the sequence of a day and of a story.

Next week we will be playing with our small world sets, making animal craft, enjoying exotic pet vet role play (please bring in any unusual cuddly toys please!!) and we will be playing with water and construction outside.

We are coming to the end of Forest School for this year and we will be welcoming visits from St Andrews and Willowbank teachers next week as well as finishing off our practice for the graduation celebrations at the end of term.

Have a lovely weekend and see you next week

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.