We have enjoyed a week full of dancing and singing and putting on performances with our theatre role play – we are hoping to build lots of confidence ahead of our Christmas performances. We have played a really great range of songs from favourite movies and we have had a lot of fun, dressing up as characters and learning the words to songs and new dance moves!

This week has been a really interesting week of learning, we started the week with Diwali celebrations, making Rangoli patterns in many different ways and learning about the story of Rama and Sita. We have ended the week by learning about Pudsey Bear and we have talked about how he helps to raise money to keep children safe and happy and healthy. Thank you to everyone who has made a donation into our Pudsey pot.

In the middle of our celebrations we have also had a focus on literacy. This is a key are for the children and our aim is to foster a love of reading and story time. There are many ways in which we do this – this week we have had a different story sack each morning, we repeat stories at lunchtimes to ensure that all children get to know a book really well and can talk about the characters and remember the key words and parts of the story. The children will learn many skills with us over the year in this area. Next week we will be learning about fairy tales – including building our own beanstalk in the Sun room.

We really hope everyone is feeling better soon and that the advice we have shared has been useful over the week.

Outside we have been cosy in our reading corner, enjoying story time in small groups and keeping track of who we have read to there while other children have been working hard on our obstacle courses, keeping warm by moving and challenging themselves.

Forest School has been a great success again, along with Robot Reg coming to visit – the Sun and Moon groups really do have an exciting Thursday/Friday session! Sadly we had to cancel our trip to Willowbank School on Thursday but we will try to rearrange that.

Christmas plans are coming along, the new play has been written by Andrea and I have lots of post its from her on my desk with her Christmas ideas! We would love donations of the following items please to support her vision!

Pool noodle, white, brown and pale blue sheets, paper plates, large pieces of cardboard, tinsel, wrapping paper and wrapping ribbon, shiny paper and long cardboard tubes please!

We will start to practice the songs over the coming weeks so you may hear some Christmassy singing soon!

As we head towards the half term break we have spent our week continuing to explore Autumn and Halloween and being healthy. There have been lots of yoga sessions in circle times and Halloween craft ready to bring home at the end of the week, witches hats, autumn sun catchers, pumpkins and spiders!

We would like to apologise again for having to close for the day on Tuesday due to the power cut. Work was being carried out by pre-school by an electricity company who had let the houses know they would be without power from 9-3PM but had not send us a letter as on their plans, we did not have a name or address! We will be getting in touch after half term to offer you a session back, apart from the children who attend for 30 hours as this is the maximum that we are open so we are sadly not able to offer an additional day back to you.

The team spent the day cleaning and tidying and sorting and completing lots of work on learning journeys ready to share with you at our parent consultation weeks in the next half term.

We also took the Moon group to St Andrew’s Church on Thursday and the Sun group on Friday and had a really enjoyable time there, we wish Carrie well as she leaves her role there and thank her for all her support and kindness to us over the years. Thank you very much to the parents and grandparents that helped us to walk to Church, we would not be able to go on the trips without support to keep the children safe on the road so thank you again.

Our Grandparent’s coffee mornings are now full – we look forward to those on our return from half term.

We wish you all a very happy half term – if you are looking for ideas there are so many great activities on

www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people

See you all w/c Monday 30th October!

Our theme for circle times this week in all groups has been “Fascinating objects”! – the group leaders bring in items from home or exciting special sets that we have here to create awe and wonder for the children and it has been a brilliant week as you will see from the gallery photos.

Items have included a huge keyboard, a light plasma ball, early years mobile phones, remote controlled cars, a flashing ball and fidget spinner, a soda stream, metal detectors and creating lava lamps and volcanoes! What a wide range of really fun and exciting toys and experiences for the children to learn from and they have been wonderful listeners and turn takers.

Our outside theme has been a focus on potion making and sensory trays with lots of adult supported role play in the farm shop. Next week our playhouse will turn into an office for a construction site and we will be building all week with large scale bricks and other sets outside, adding in mark making and designing and drawing and counting and planning and lots and lots of talking!

The Forest School groups have enjoyed mild weather and are loving the atmosphere in the back garden, looking for frogs and found 3. Sophie prepared an activity called Hapa Zome – creating art work on material using plants and flowers found in the garden, it is an ancient Japanese art form. Following our overall theme of creating awe and wonder the two groups opened up the spiky outers to discover the beautiful conkers inside – a lovely fire and hot chocolate and been able to spend quality time with each of the children creates a wonderful session.

We have been learning lots about our families and their different cultures and celebrations and with one family we have learnt about the Chinese Moon Festival Celebration and the children made lanterns after one of our Mum’s showed us how to do it and gave us some wonderful information about the special day for them, sometimes called the Mooncake festival.

Inside during free flow we have also set animals free (see facebook for photos!) – excellent for problem solving and fine and gross motor skills, made soup and bread and fruit kebabs, mini pizza’s, frozen veg and chatting about healthy food and writing our own recipes.

Next week we are moving to construction outside following lots of interest inside in that area, we will also be doing more cooking and creating on the sun table during free flow, exploring Autumn as a season and changes that happen towards winter.

Please remember to send in your family selfies, we have started the display and the children LOVE seeing themselves on the wall – send all family photos to me amelia@cullomptonpreschool.org