Spring Term Week 6

What an exciting week! BBC Spotlight came to film and interview us this week as part of a news feature about underfunding in Early Years – we really hope that you all enjoyed the moments that were captured by the cameraman and we all thought pre-school looked bright and fun and full of happy faces. A moment of stardom for us and I had lots of children saying “I saw you on my TV!” It was a really fun moment and I was really glad that I said “Yes” when we got the call. The children have absolutely loved our wonderful Lunar New Year celebrations this week. The whole pre-school has been full of beautiful colour and craft and food and we have two families that celebrate Chinese New Year with their wider family and it has been really lovely to hear how they celebrate and to try some of the delicious food from the Golden Lion which was donated to us for lunch on Friday! It was a really special moment to see the children eating their noodles and spring rolls and talking about the food and the celebration. We felt very luck indeed to have the Golden Lion share their food with us today – thank you very much indeed.

Our free flow activities have been busy this week too – lots of role play with looking after the babies, there are two new babies in families at pre-school – Congratulations so some role play has been a nice way to help talk about a new sister. Outside we have decorated our Chinese Restaurant and had pretend takeaways and banquets and lots of playground games – egg and spoon races, skittles, parachute games and shape hunts.

Forest School have made valentines hearts using little pebbles and filled their tummies with porridge cooked on the fire.

All circle times have been using our Chinese New Year theme to teach lots of skills and give opportunities for craft and creativity, language and vocabulary, maths and patterns and letters and words, different ways of writing and food that they may not have tried before too. We have been watching dragon dancing displays, made lanterns, firework painting, learning about the different animals through the calendar and made dumplings with playdoh!

After half term we are going to set up an explorer’s area with fossil hunting and binoculars and bird spotting amongst other ideas. If you go out and about over half term and there are particular things that interest your child on a day out please let us know!

We hope you have a wonderful half term break and see you all from the 19th February onwards