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

What a wonderful week we have had! There have been some fantastic moments with happy children, busy in the garden, making new friends, creating collage work, learning about colour and our routines. Some harder moments for some parents with children being upset but that is all part of the settling in process and we are always happy for you to ring the office to ask how your little one is doing. We can give you lots of individual news when you ring as Mandy and Mandy always come and ask for feedback for you. We will always tell the truth about how your child is doing and we are really pleased to be able to say that they have settled down and have stopped crying and are relaxed enough to be taking part in a circle time or eating snack or moving and exploring and playing during free flow. Those tough moments for you are so hard but it is very short lived once you have gone we promise. Hopefully looking through the photos on the blog will reassure those of you who are worried and provide joy for all parents to see their child happy and engaged and busy in all we have to offer. The teachers here are extremely experienced, caring and nurturing and all children will make fantastic progress with us emotionally and developmentally and we are thrilled with our new cohort and how well our old Stars have settled into their new sun and moon groups. The children listen well, they are kind and enjoy playing and exploring so we can see a lovely year ahead.

We have been teaching the children our names and learning each others names, talking about the groups and which sound belongs to each group (Stars have a shaker to call them for circle time, Moons have a tambourine and the Sun’s have a triangle), we have talked about the routine of the day, how to be kind, how to unpack your lunch and tidy up afterwards and we are so impressed with how quickly the children have learnt the flow of our day!

We are getting to know all of the new children and will start work on their learning journey’s over the next couple of weeks, some info will come to you on email and we all write observations on all of the children so the team here get to know every child really well and the children usually end up having at least two favourite ladies so if their key person isn’t in they are still secure and happy!

Our Breakfast and After School clubs are available on a Wednesday 8-9am and 3-5pm and Thursday 8-9am and 3-5pm – you can book in by emailing the office on admin@cullomptonpreschool.org and you can use it as a drop in session or book for a half term at a time. The cost is £6.50 per hour, you can book full hours or half hours and if the need increases we can review opening on more days.

We look forward to welcoming the children back next week, there may be more tears and this is totally normal. We will be playing hairdressers, exercising outside, painting in the Sun room, mark making on a large scale outside and playing with our lovely small world toys and loose parts collection too. Have a lovely weekend!