Summer Term Week 8

The children have made the most of the sunshine again this week with lots of water play outside to keep cool and we have popped our event shelter up for some extra shade. We take our drinks trolley outside and ensure the children refill their bottles during the day but please check with us if you are worried at all about how much your child is drinking.

We have welcomed Mrs Kyte from Willowbank School in this week to meet the children who will go into foundation class there and we will welcome St Andrew’s next week as well. The transition to school is very important and we share info with the new teachers to help them prepare for the arrival of our school starters. We know the children really well so can really help that process.

We are also starting to fill our spaces for September but we do still have space which people may not be aware of so we would be very grateful if you could share the facebook post so that we can get the message out to our community.

In our sun room, we have enjoyed hairdresser role play – an experience most of the children have knowledge of and with adults supporting the play there are so many learning opportunities. Mark making and talking about appointments and time and good vocabulary and learning all about different colour and types of hair and styles and nationalities.

We have been painting after circles times as well and exploring a different theme each morning on the carpet – we have covered health and our body, jobs and vehicles and life cycles and birds.

Our circle times have had a focus on minibeasts and maths. The Star group have used ladybirds and practising counting their spots, they have explored and learnt about the butterfly life cycles and acted out the Hungry Caterpillar story sack, drawn minibeast and produced some wonderful butterfly symmetry painting pictures.

The Sun group are enjoying their Forest School sessions on Thursday and Friday, they have one more week and then it will be the turn of the Moon group.

The Moon and Sun circles time have focused on recognising numbers and matching them, and there has been some really great progress in the last few weeks. They have practised making patterns which is part of the maths curriculum and have made caterpillars and butterflies with clay, and then painted those. Our caterpillars are already in cocoons so we are expecting to see butterflies emerge in a week or so and then we will have our wonderful Hungry Caterpillar Picnic Party!

Next week we have a busy week with two grandparents afternoon tea which are going to be well attended and we will look forward to welcoming you for some activities and a cup of tea and a piece of cake! The sessions are from 1-2pm on Monday and Wednesday afternoon.

Our planning for next week includes lots of mark making and drawing, shape games and rhyming games, castle role play and train tracks and water play.