Spring Term Week 3

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.