Welcome back after half term to all our families, we hope you all had a happy and lovely half term break.

The children are pleased to be back and have had a really good week – a few tears are common after a break from the routine but everyone has settled back in and busy in their pre-school day! We have spent the week talking about being special and about people that we love and that are special to us and we have a really wonderful group of children who are really happy to talk about people being special to them and were delighted to know that they were also special to all of us, the ladies who are their teachers here at pre-school. They have drawn pictures of their family and of us, talked about what makes them special and it has been really heart warming to see who they choose to draw from the team at pre-school! To top it all off they are also brilliant at mark making!! There are some photos on our facebook page of a few of the pictures that they made.

The weather was lovely for the first few days and we enjoyed making music outside and then even though it has been rainy we have still managed some fun outside all kitted out in our waterproof clothes. We are sorry for the very muddy clothes and children but we try to make the most of all the weather – filling puddles with washing up liquid and paint!

Our Forest School groups have swapped so the Moons take part on a Thursday and the Sun’s on the Friday for this half term and then the Stars have a turn for a few weeks in the Summer Term.

Circle times have been based around literacy and “Being Special” and we have talked about our names being special, who chose those names and the children always find it funny to think that we are all Mummies too with children and a home outside of preschool!

Our explorers zone has been created outside and there are fossils and tools and an amazing cabin to play in!

We hope you all have a lovely weekend and next week we will be looking at animals and their habitats, those who live in a zoo or protected environment and we will carry on with our explorers theme outside too.

We had a really enjoyable week keeping warm outside with brilliant obstacle courses which supported good balance and some risk as well. The children planted some bulbs which we will look forward to seeing those flower in the Spring and we are working on our growing garden and our sensory garden over the coming weeks as well.

Our focus has been maths – but in so many fun ways, we have learnt about size and shapes and numbers and counting and Maths is part of so many areas in our lives and the children are doing brilliantly and making really good progress. We will be handing out home learning ideas over the coming week based on the areas of learning that you can support your child with, this will really help with progress so please let us know how you get on and then we can plan for the next step in their learning here at pre-school and at home.

Forest School was half inside and half outside this week given the below freezing temperatures and the children learnt to use the saw safely and enjoyed their hot chocolate around the fire, keeping warm. Lots of ice to find and explore and smash!

Our circles were based on planning for maths development, shape work, shape recognition, number games and learning about routines and a little reminder of some of our rules!

Our Sun room was a lovely dressing up zone, we are working on developing independence with getting dressed which is another area that you can support at home, encouraging children to put their own coats on and zipping them up would be brilliant and a very important skill needed for school. We also had lots of technology out this week, the children loved the old phones and cameras and the old computer bits and pieces.

We also used our sun table to learn about different animals that the children chose from looking at non-fiction books. We learnt lots of facts about stick insects, pandas, penguins, skunks and wombats among others! This type of activity is a lovely way to support learning, lots of chat and using books and the ipad, watching a video, drawing a picture, watch us writing and having a go themselves, colour and pattern and environment and food and so many other areas of vocabulary.

Next week we will be tidying the garden and moving some things around to refresh it with the children and asking them what they would like to add into the mud kitchen. Inside we are going to learn about dinosaurs next week, and create some dinosaur craft. Pretend baking in a tray and some dinosaur safari role play in the Sun room.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas!

We have had a very quiet week with so much illness around us, we really hope that those children and staff who have been unwell are on the mend and it really does sound like a terrible and very contagious sickness/flu bug. By Friday we only had two staff available to work so we are very sorry for closing the Star group on the Friday but had no other available option to us.

The children were absolutely wonderful at our two Christmas performances and we were thrilled to have such lovely emails and comments from you, it means the world to us and we are also very grateful for all the cards and gifts and boxes of chocolates (all stored ready for the January term!!).

The am and pm parties were great fun and the photos from each party are on the parent gallery now.

Have a lovely break and we return on TUESDAY 2nd January 2024!