Summer Term 2

Summer Term 2 - Week 4

The Pre-School children have had another busy and exciting week. We have enjoyed exploring our indoor and outdoor provision. 

Indoors we have been; reading books in our reading corner; using the numicon to explore number; and engaging in imaginative play in the construction/small world area.  Outside we have been using the available outdoor resources such as crates, cushions and blocks to construct dens and houses; we have been searching for mini-beasts in our garden; and have supported our physical development with the hoops, balance beams and riding on the trikes.

On Thursday, as and exciting treat before our Gymnastics session we were asked to go into the hall to watch the Reception children showcase their gymnastics routine. We all did good sitting, enjoying watching reception class and our future learning. 🤸‍♀️😊

We have enjoyed joining in our gymnastics session with Mrs Winward and our French session with Madame Wardle. 

Summer 2 - week 3

What a fabulous week we have had in Pre-school. 
We have been enjoying the sunny weather, making sure that we are protected by wearing suncream and our sun hats. We have been learning about water this week, exploring water outside, talking about water and discussing why we need to drink water (especially in the very hot weather). When talking about why we need water we said ‘To keep us healthy’ and ‘To stop us from getting dehydrated’. 
To help us with our understanding of water and ways to keep us healthy we had a visit from the dentist, we learnt lots and had so much fun. We learnt why we need to brush our teeth, how many times we need to brush our teeth a day and how long for. To finish of our talk we all got a goody bag to take home. 
 

We have been enjoying the outside area this week, we have been making perfume using flowers and water, exploring the mud kitchen and making our own puddles and been using our personal, social and emotional skills to build with the large construction materials together. 
 

This week we have been enjoying joining in with different phonics games, some of us listening to segmenting and blending of words and some of us using our listening ears to listen to the different sounds outside. 
 

We are looking forward to next week where we are going to be continuing to explore water, looking at mixing different coloured water to see which colours we can make. 

Summer 2 week 1 - Our Jubilee celebration

To celebrate the Jubilee we have been looking at the 2010 decade, mostly looking at the Royal Wedding of William and Kate and concentrating on the year 2021/2022. We have enjoyed pretending to have our own weddings, we dressed up a Royal bride and one of said ‘I am marrying Prince William’. Some of use dressed up to be the bridesmaids and some of us were pretending to be the Prince. 

We loved our Jubilee picnic with our mummies, daddies and friends. We had a yummy picnic together and then enjoyed watching the Major open up our wonderful Jubilee garden. We was all so good, used our fabulous listening skills and enjoyed listening to the great poems and prayers from the values committee. 

To finish this wonderful week off we have enjoyed coming to school dressed in red, white and blue and what wonderful outfits we have had. It has been amazing to see all the children embracing the Platinum Jubilee and how engaged they have been when looking and learning about the Royal family and talking about their own Jubilee parties. 

Summer 1

Summer 1 Week 6

End of another half term. 

We have had a super busy week this week, we have enjoyed sports day where the children did amazingly well and we were super proud of them. In our sports day we did some balancing, climbing, climbing in and out of tyres, a super running race, sack race and much more. We all had so much fun and talked about it lots the next day. 

We have also enjoyed our outdoor adventure session this week where we read the story ‘There’s an Alien in your book’, we then found out that the Alien had crashed landed in the forest and had lost all his teddies so he asked us to try and find them for him. We had 10 teddies to find in total and showed our fabulous personal, social and emotional skills by working in teams to find the teddies and rescue them (like people who help us) from the trees. After we had found all the teddies we then found the Aliens crashed spaceship! We used our amazing gross motor skills to negotiate a steep hill using a rope and then went back to base camp to have some yummy hot chocolate. After our hot chocolate we decided to build the Alien a house in the forest where he could sleep with his teddies and then roasted some marshmallows on the fire.

In Pre-school this week we have been really kind to our friends by using our kind hands and sharing skills, we have been enjoying our mark making area and been really interested in drawing monsters and dragons and have been practising writing our names. Some of us have also been listening to sounds and have been able to read simple words which is very impressive. We have loved dancing to some new songs and have joined in well with gymnastics and french. 

We hope all you have a lovely half term break and we are looking forward to celebrating the Queens Jubilee when we return after half term. 

Summer 1 week 5 

We have had a busy week this week. 

We have been engaged in lots of different activities to develop our physical skills, both fine motor and gross motor. We have been completing our daily mile route then using our muscles in our arms and legs to negotiate the climbing frame along with developing our gross motor skills in our gymnastics session. To develop our fine motor skills we have been completing a 1-1 correspondence activity where we have been threading cereal hoops onto spaghetti, which is quite tricky. We have been exploring gloop using our fingers to hold a small spoon to scoop up the gloop and have been mark making with our fingers in flour and glitter. 

To further help us to develop our fine motor skills we have been enjoying dough disco every morning. We love to copy the actions to different dough disco songs, our favourite being ‘We like to roll it roll it’, by engaging in the dough disco activity it is helping to develop our muscles in our fingers which will then help us when holding a pencil when mark making. 

Along with drawing lots of wonderful picture, including a post van and drawing pictures of our favourite books we have been practising writing our name, some of us have been making marks for our name in the outside area using the big chalks, some of us have been using the whiteboard and pens to make marks for our name or write our initial letter and some of us have been writing our full name with very little adult help. In addition to this we have continued to develop our phonic awareness by looking at the ‘t’ sound, segmenting and blending simple words, listening to rhyming books talking about the different words that rhymes and have enjoyed engaging in listening games. 

We have continued to develop our maths skills by matching objects to numbers confidently, looking at and identifying different shapes and we love to sing and join in with different number songs, using our fingers to represent numbers. 

We have also developing our personal, social and emotional skills by playing together both inside and outside, thinking of different games or creations we could make together and making sure that we took turns with our friends. 

We are looking forward to our last week before the half term where we will be having our wild one adventure session in the forest.

Summer 1 week 4 

We have had a lovely week this week. 

We have been talking about people who help us, looking at what a post officer does. We then wrote our own letters, put them in the post bag and pretended to be a post officer. We used our good mark making skills to make our letters and said we were writing to invite the Queen to a party. One of our friends said “the Queen will be delighted”.

We have enjoyed being hairdressers in the role play area, taking turns to do each others hair and used lots of good communication skills. 

In our outside areas this week we have continued to complete our daily mile route and used our gross motor skills to negotiate the climbing frame. In our outside play area we have been using our gross motor skills to use the paint brush and roller to clean the screen and used our fine motor skills to use the sand and spoons to make a nice cup of tea for our teachers. We have also enjoyed using the tyres and crates to build with, we made a excellent house together, using our good communication skills to negotiate how to make our building together. 

We have been developing our fine motor skills throughout the week by exploring the gloop and drawing pictures of what we would like to do be when we grow up. We have also loved dough disco to help develop our muscles in our hands to help us when we are holding a pencil. 

In gymnastics this week we have been practising our forward rolls and using our big muscles in our arms to climb the rope, we used our really good listening skills to listen to the instructions from our gymnastics coach. We have also been learning some new songs in French, this included learning musical statues in French and practised staying really still. 

This week we have enjoyed using the interactive whiteboard to make different pictures, we waited really well for our turn and showed lots of enjoyment. 

Next week we are going to look at the Queen and talk about the Jubilee.

Summer 1 week 2

We have had a lovely week in Pre-school, we are really happy to welcome some new children into Pre-school this week and last week and are pleased with how well they have settled in. 
 

We have enjoyed using our creative skills by making our own fire engine and painting on the clear screen. We have been talking about the different colours we have mixed together and used good turn taking and working in a team. We have continued to look at people who help us and have been drawing pictures of what we would like to be when we grow up. 
 
We have continued to complete our daily walk on the daily mile route and then enjoyed exploring the climbing frame, this is helping us to develop our gross motor skills which is important to help us refine our fine motor skills. To further develop our physical skills we have enjoyed gymnastics, where we have been using our muscles in our arms and legs to climb under and over different obstacles, we are really confident in our gymnastics sessions and used good listening skills. 
 

We have have been enjoying our outside areas this week, exploring the water tray outside where we have been using our counting skills to count our many ducks we found and also working together to pour some water down the tube for our friend to catch. We have also enjoyed exploring the paddock this week, we enjoyed rolling down the hill, playing football, finding bugs and singing some songs together. 
 

In Pre-school this week we have introduced a new maths area and maths wall. We have shown excitement in this area, we have been confidently recognising some shapes, exploring numbers in different ways and using our mathematical language when using the weighing scales to talk about heavy and light. 

Summer 1 - week 1

A big welcome to the new children that have started in with us this week in Pre-school.

We have had a lovely few days back after the Easter holidays, we all were very excited to talk about what we have been doing over the holiday and all the yummy Easter eggs we got. 
This week we have been enjoying the sunny weather and enjoyed exploring our outside area where we have been looking for bugs, digging in the sand and washing our bikes. 
We have enjoyed our outdoor adventure session this week, where we read ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ story, went on an amazing bug hunt and then made our very own fruit kebabs using some of the fruits the caterpillar ate in the story. 
 

This week we have been looking at different books on ‘People who help us’, we have been looking at different occupations and how they can help us. 
 

Next week we are going to carry on looking at people who help us and what we would like be when we grow up. 

Spring 2

Spring 2 week 5

What a wonderful cold week we have had this week. 

We have been busy this week learning about Easter, we have enjoyed listening to the Easter story and have asked lots of good questions. We have talked about the meaning behind Easter and why we celebrate it. 

In our outside area this week we have been planting our own sunflowers, we discussed what our sunflowers needed to help them grow: we said soil, water and sunshine. We are all going to take our sunflowers home to look after and after the Easter holidays we can tell our friends about our sunflowers and if they have grown. We have continued to explore the different areas outside and particularly enjoyed playing in our gravel pit, where we have been making houses with the loose parts for the dinosaurs to live in. We have also really enjoyed using the big loose parts to make different creations outside, one of our friends made a wonderful car. Alongside being extra busy we have loved looking for different bugs, we have been asking our teachers to lift up the logs outside and found some worms, a slug and beetles. 

We have continued to develop our personal, social and emotional skills this week and loved pretending to have a tea party together in the role play area. We used good turn taking and excellent communication skills during our pretend tea party. This week we have also enjoyed developing our mark making skills, we used a clear screen to mark make on and showed enjoyment when drawing our friends faces. We used excellent description words for talk about what we was drawing and enjoyed that our friends got a turn to draw each other. 

We have been observing our caterpillars this week, they are still cocoons, we having been keeping our fingers crossed that we would be able to see some butterflies this week but we think they are still growing, so our teacher is going to look after them during the holidays and send us some pictures when the butterflies are out. 

We hope all the children and their families have a lovely Easter holiday and we look forward to the exciting activities we are going to do in the new term for our ‘People who help us’ theme. 

Spring 2 week 4 

We have had a busy week this week. 

We have been enjoying the sunshine and spending lots of time in our outdoor area. We have made a new growing area outside where we have been observing the different flowers that have been growing along with planting some new plants for us to watch grow, we have also sowed some wild flower seeds so hopefully we will see them growing really soon and we are hoping that they will attract some mini beasts for us to observe and talk about. 

We have also enjoyed water play outside this week, where we have been making nature soup using different flowers, herbs and citrus fruits and have been making yummy cups of coffee for our teachers. In our outside area we have also been enjoying making our own creations with the tyres and different construction materials, we have used our excellent imagination skills to role play together and thought hard about how we can make the tyres balance.

This week we continued to watch our caterpillars grow and wow they have grown really quickly, we think they will turn into cocoons soon which we are really excited about seeing. We also got a really good treat and got to look at and hold some real life chicks. Before we could hold the chicks we talked about being really careful around them and that we had to use our gentle hands when holding the chicks, we were all super excited and were very careful around them. 

This week we have spent lots of time in our role play area where we have been pretending to be doctors. We have been taking good turns with our friends and using lots of language to talk about what we were doing. 

We have continued to enjoy gymnastics this week, we enjoyed doing our warm up exercises and continued to develop our gymnastics moves. We all then did a really good forward roll and because we were so good at our forward rolls our gymnastics teacher said we were ready to practice our backward rolls and wow we were amazing at doing a backwards roll for the first time. 

In French this week we have continued to learn the French words for red, blue and white and learnt the French word for green and yellow. 
 

At the end of the week we enjoyed Red Nose Day, we engaged in different activities for Red Nose Day, enjoyed coming to school wearing something red and enjoyed watching the school talent show. 

We are hoping for a another sunny week next week for us to enjoy and continue with our planting. Also we are excited to see if our caterpillars have turned into cocoons. 

Spring 2 week 3

We have had a lovely week this week. 

We have been extra excited with our special delivery of real life caterpillars, we have talked about how the caterpillars will eat the food at the bottom of the tub to make them grow big, we then said that once the caterpillars are bigger they will make their house called a cocoon (some of us said chrysalis) then they will turn into a beautiful butterfly. We have been painting our own butterflies this week, where we have been painting our paper and then folding it in half to make it a butterfly. 

This week we have started to plant some flower seeds including wild flowers and we are going to be watching them grow and once the weather gets warmer we can then plant them in our garden. To make sure our garden is ready for our flowers that we are growing we have been doing some weeding. 

We have also been looking out for the first signs of Spring by looking at the daffodils and snow drops that are growing around our school. 

We have continued to complete a route of the daily mile and have been enhancing our physical skills whilst using the climbing frame outside, we have been taking turns, using our big muscles in our arms to use the climbing frame and been developing our confidence to use different parts. We have been looking for bugs in our outside area and on the paddock and have really enjoyed exploring our new bug hunt outside where we have different resources to look for bugs. 

This week in gymnastics our gymnastics teacher was super proud of us for how we used the different gymnastics equipment, this week we had to go over, go under, use our balancing skills and our jumping skills. We are also getting really good at our forward rolls. 

In French this week we have been learning about different colours in particular the colours of the French flag and we are getting really good at counting to ten in French. 

We are looking forward to next week to continue to watch our caterpillars grow and see if they are ready to turn into a cocoon. 

World Book Day 2022

We have had a lovely world book day. 
We all came dressed up as a character from our favourite book. We had lots of different books to explore in Pre-school and enjoyed sharing these with our friends, some of our favourite books include ‘Dear Zoo’, ‘Supertato’ and any of Julia Donaldson books. 
 

What a lovely day we have had. 

Spring Term 2 - week 2

We have enjoyed exploring ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ story this week. 
 

We have been using our creative skills to make the very hungry caterpillar out of playdough and have been using the different collage materials and paints to create our own caterpillars. We have also been using our fine motor skills really well to draw caterpillars and butterflies, in addition to this we have also been mark making and exploring our very hungry caterpillar rice. We have been reading the ‘ The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ and we are getting really good at talking about a author and illustrator and we are becoming really confident to re-tell the story back to our friends and teachers. 

We have continued to enjoy developing our physical skills both inside and outside and really enjoyed our gymnastics session this week where we have continued to learn how to do a forward roll and then practiced our stretching and balancing skills. We have continued to do our daily mile route and have enjoyed taking part in different games out on the yard that have helped to develop our listening and physical skills. We have enjoyed using our balancing skills outside and have been using our big muscles in our arms to push the tyres around the yard. 

We had a fabulous day on Tuesday for pancake day, where we made our own pancakes out of the playdough, had a turn at flipping a pancake, then we looked at the different ingredients we needed to make pancakes and got to taste some…and they were yummy. Lots of us also talked about how we had pancakes for our tea at home that night.

We have been extra busy in our indoor environment this week. We have been engaging in lots of role play, from playing being the three bears to mummy’s and daddy’s to playing in our new flower shop role play area. We have been busy in the construction area and have been using lolly sticks to make different shapes, we are really good at recognising some shapes and then making our shapes into houses. 

This week we have also started to look at the first signs of spring, we have been exploring some soil and flowers outside and looking at the different flowers that have started to grow in our outside area. 

We are looking forward to exploring Spring more in the weeks to come.

Spring term 2 - week 1
 

What a lovely first week back we have had after half term. 

We have started to read the very hungry caterpillar and have been talking about the days of the week. We have used our listening skills really well when listening to the story and have started to join in with the parts we know. We have also enjoyed looking at the some traditional stories including ‘The Three Little pigs’ and ‘Goldilocks and the three bears’. We have really enjoyed acting out Goldilocks and the three bears and have been building houses out of straw, sticks and bricks. 
 

We have continued to complete our daily mile route, enjoyed making a obstacle course outside and enjoyed painting with mud and have enjoyed gymnastics this week where we have been learning how to do a forward roll. 
 

In the construction area we have enjoyed exploring the bricks and loose parts and have been using our imagination skills really well to make castles, houses and bridges, we worked together with our friends and showed good team work. In the writing area we have been drawing some lovely pictures, including caterpillars and princesses. 
 

We have loved our outdoor adventure session this week. We went for a walk to the woods where we found the Three Bears which was exciting, we then went on an adventure in the woods to find the three bears friends, we had to climb you the hill and then find a way to come back down. We then went back to the Three Bears camp where we built some dens for the bears and then had pop corn on the fire. We have also enjoyed a visit from the poet is week which we enjoyed and joined in some of his poems. 

Spring Term 1

Spring term 1 - week 6 

What a fun packed week we have had in preschool this week. 
 

We have continued to complete a route of our daily mile this week then enjoyed using the climbing frame, by doing this activity it has helped us to develop our physical skills along with helping us get ready for the day ahead. In addition to this we have continued to explore our door area we have been engaging in role play with our friends and doing a show on the wooden plank and tyres. We have really enjoyed engaging in water play especially the orange and scented teabag water where we have enjoyed filling and emptying and making a cup of tea for our friends and teachers. 
 

This week we have had our outdoor adventure session where we went on a bear and bird hunt, over the last few weeks we have been interested in the different birds we see so going on a bird hunt was very exciting and we used our excellent listening skills to listen out for the different birds. We then went on a bear hunt and found some bears, a really big bear and we were so excited to find some real life chickens which we got on have a hold off. To finish off our outdoor adventure session we lit a fire and had yummy roasted marshmallows. 
 

Inside this week we have been exploring gloop with the jungle animals, we have shown good personal, social and emotional skills by playing with our friends and the gloop has helped to strengthen up our muscles in our fingers. We have continued to enjoy making marks and are getting really good at holding our pencils and pens and talking about what we have drawn and enjoyed drawing different animals from the ‘Monkey Puzzle’ story. We have enjoyed doing some phase one activities where we listened out for the first sound of our name and enjoyed clapping out our names. 

One of our favourite things to do in Pre-school is to dance and we have done lots of dancing this week. We have been dancing to some new songs and follow the instructions really well and wow our singing voices are amazing. 
 

We are looking forward to returning after half term where we will be looking at the life cycle of a caterpillar and reading ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’ story. 

Spring 1 - week 5

What a fabulous week we have had.

This week we have been making a few tweaks to our outside area and the children have been exploring the area really well. They have been using their communication skills in the new bird watching hut where they have been using their listening ears to listen out for birds around the outside area then using the binoculars to see if they could see the birds. Some of the children have even been making birds nests out of sticks and using our bird watching sheets to see if they can see different birds. 

We have also enjoyed using our gross motor physical skills by making bridges using the tyres and wooden planks then walking across these with confidence. We even turned one of our bridges into the ‘Cheeky Monkeys’ bed and have really enjoyed singing the ‘5 Cheeky Monkeys’ song where we have used really good personal and social skills by taking it in turns to be a monkey or the doctor who says “no more monkeys jumping on the bed”. 

The children have continued to walk the daily mile route during the week and have been getting extra muddy in the paddock where they have been looking for worms under the logs, talking about where the worms might live and how we can look after them. The children have continued to enjoy their gymnastics session where they are developing lots of different physical skills weekly, by doing this it will help them to build up their gross motor muscles in turn helping them to develop their fine motor muscles. 

This week we have been looking at tigers linking this into Chinese New Year and the year of the tiger, the children have enjoyed watching Chinese Lion and dragon dances and they even did their own Chinese dance after watching some wonderful dancing, one the children even said “ when I grow up I don’t want to be Rapunzel I want to be a Chinese dancer”. The children have also been drawing and painting tigers and wow we are so impressed with their observational skills, first they looked at pictures of tigers talking about how they had stripes then used the different colours to make their own tiger. Along with this the children have been really interested in tigers and lions so we looked at some big cats from Chester zoo, the children talked about how they were different and we discussed what a baby lion and tiger was called and how the male lion has a mane and is the head of the pride. 

In the construction this week the children were set a challenge to build with cups, they are really good at building with the different bricks in the construction area so we thought we would challenge them to see if they could build we plastic cups. Well we were super impressed with how the children used the cups confidently, worked as a team and balanced them so they didn’t fall down, the children also used their brilliant imagination skills to think of different things they could make including a castle and sonic house.

We are looking forward to the last week of the half term and all the exciting learning the children are going to do.

Spring term 1 - week 4
 

What a fun week we have had. 

This week we have been developing our physical skills both gross and fine motor skills. We have been out on the big yard and completed a route of our new daily mile as well as using our balancing skills across the trim trail, after we did the daily mile route we used our big muscles in our arms to use the climbing frame, we used our strength to climb up the ropes and to climb up the wall so we could slide down the slide. We also used good personal and social skills ensuring that we took turns with our friends to use the different parts of the climbing frame. Along with developing our physical skills outside we have continued to enjoy our gymnastics session where we have been learning different skills including how to do a handstand and jumping on the trampoline. 

Out in our outdoor area this week we have been observing the different plants that are starting to grow through, talking about what the flowers need to help them grow and making sure if we saw some seeds in the soil we pushed them back down. We have also been making lots of sandcastles this week in our sandpit, to do this we had to use our strong digging muscles and once we made our sandcastles we counted how many we had made. We have had lots of fun making muds pies this week, we have used soil, sand, stones, flowers and water to make our mud pies and put them in the microwave to ‘cook’. We have also enjoyed making dens, some of us pretended it was the ‘Three little Pigs’ house and some of us made it into a dinosaur cage using the bricks to keep the dinosaurs inside. 

We have continued to enjoy looking at different books both inside and outside and have especially enjoyed retelling the ‘Shark in the Park’ story using the tubes for telescopes. We have also been developing our mark making skills by drawing our self portrait, we thought and talked about how we looked and then drew our picture and these have been displayed in our room for us to see our beautiful work. 

At group time this week we have been exploring different musical instruments, we looked and listened to different musical instruments then all picked one. We played our musical instruments loudly and quietly using our good listening skills to stop playing when the teacher held her hand up then we played our musical instruments and sang some of our favourite nursery rhymes. Along with this we have enjoyed dancing, we love to dance and our favourite song at the moment is Penguin Dance, we are extra good at following the instructions and our singing is amazing. 

Wow what a busy week we have had.

Spring term - Week 3 

What a busy icy week we have had this week. 

We have been using our good concentration skills whilst completing lots of different activities including using the scissors and threading with the beads. We have enjoyed threading with the beads so much that we then made pasta necklaces using our fine motor skills so we could take them home. 
 

We have been doing some learning this week on the importance of brushing our teeth, talking about what we can eat and drink that is good for our teeth along with making some big teeth dirty with pens and then cleaning them with the toothbrush we made. Along with talking about caring for our teeth lots of us have been sending in pictures and videos of us brushing our teeth at home which we have really enjoyed looking at and talking about. 

In addition to sending in picture of us brushing our teeth we have also enjoyed looking at and exploring our baby pictures that have been sent in, we have loved to see our what we looked like when we was babies and talked about how we are now different. 

This week we have continued to look at different jungle animals and have enjoyed completing some observational painting of the different animals in the ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ book and what wonderful paintings we have made. Along with doing some painting inside we have also been using our gross motor skills to paint with the rollers and large paint brushes outside. 

Outside this week we have been observing the ice and talking about why the water is frozen, one of our friends said ‘it is colder than our fridge at home’. We have also been busy making dens, we have all been working together outside to make a den with the materials we have and building bricks, lots of us worked extremely well as a team using our communication skills and gross motor skills to build. We also had lots of fun exploring the paddock, we found some worms under the logs, some robins came to visit us and we found some ice that we enjoyed exploring. 

This week we have continued to build on our physical skills in our gymnastics sessions, we have been practicing our balancing skills where we have been doing different moves over some benches, some of these were tricky but we all tried extra hard. 

Spring Term 1 - week 2

We have had another busy week this week. 
 

We have been doing lots of different activities in our environment including mark making where we have been using our name cards to make marks for our names along with using our fine motor skills to draw some pictures. We have also really enjoyed using the scissors to snip our picture up. We have continued to explore lots of different sensory activities within our environment, including gloop and have enjoyed filling and emptying with the rice talking about when our containers were full or empty. We have particularly enjoyed exploring the play dough this week, we have been helping to make the play dough, talking about how many cups of flour, salt and water we need to make it and deciding what colour we would like. 
 

We have also been extra busy in the construction area, we have been making lots of different buildings including towers and garages for our cars and have been building Noah’s Ark after reading the story together.

Our gymnastics session this week was great, we continued to learn some gymnastics moves for example tuck, straddle and pike and our gymnastics teacher was super happy with our listening skills during our session. We have also been extra good listeners in our French session where we have been practising our counting in French up to ten and learning how we day boy and girl in French. 
 

This week we have enjoyed engaging in outdoor play. We have been using our gross motor physical skills when making marks with the paint and large paint brushes and paint roller. We have been practising our balancing skills when walking over the bridge we made and have been trying extra hard to pedal our tricycle. 
 

We have also had a fun time on our outdoor adventures session in the forest. First we listened to the story ‘monkey puzzle’ then went on an adventure to find the Lion, whilst we was trying to find the Lion we saw lots of other animals. We were really brave and went through the cave and when we found the Lion we used our extra strong muscles in our arms to climb up the bank and then slid down a muddy slide to get back down, after our adventure we went back to camp where we made a fire and roasted marshmallows.

Spring 1 - week 1

Welcome back. 

It has been wonderful to see all the children back and welcome new children into pre-school. 

We have had a lovely few days back and have been extra busy. We have been exploring the new layout of the pre-school room and have particularly enjoyed engaging in role play with our friends, including making food for each other and pretending to be butterflies and fairies. 

We have enjoyed building its the different bricks, including building Noah’s ark and houses. 

We got very excited when it started to snow this week, we put on our warm clothes, wellies and waterproof and went to have fun in the snow. Wow we had so much fun including catching snowflakes on our tongue, making snow angels and we rolled the snow to make a snow man (but there wasn’t a lot of snow to make a full snowman). 

This week we have started to have our key worker group times, this is where we have been having time with our key worker, we have snack together and have been enjoying different rhyming stories together. 
 

This week we have also enjoyed marking marks and some of us have started to to write letters for our name. We have also enjoyed being creative, we have been painting different animals and even painted snow with nice winter colours. 

Autumn Term 2

Autumn 2 - week 7 

What a wonderful last week before Christmas we have had in Pre-school. 

We have been extra busy making our Christmas cards and decorations. We have been doing lots of mark making for our names in our Christmas cards and some of us were able to write letters for our name with confidence. We have enjoyed our Christmas party this week where we had fun dancing, playing party games and party food, we really enjoyed playing with the balloons. 

This week we have also enjoyed using our physical skills both inside and outside, we have enjoyed developing out pedalling skills in the tricycles, our balancing skills on the balance beams and out hand eye coordination when filling and emptying in the rice and cornflakes. We have also really enjoyed using our imagination skills this week where we have pretended to make cups of tea for our teachers, cakes for our friends and got dressed up and pretended to go to work in a shop. 

We had lots of fun on our Christmas party, we did some dancing, playing musical statues and pass the parcel and Santa dropped us off all a Christmas present because we have all been good boys and girls.

We even got a Christmas message from Santa to wish us all a Merry Christmas. 

All the teachers in Pre-school would like to wish all the Children and their families a very Merry Christmas. 

Autumn 2 - week 6

Wow what a wonderful and busy week we have had in Pre-school this week. We have continued to enjoy different Christmas activities including filming our Christmas Nativity, Christmas jumper day and we enjoyed having a Christmas dinner together. 
 

We have started to make our Christmas cards for our family and a special gift and continued to enjoy using our mark making skills in the writing area to write our letters to Santa. We really enjoyed decorating our Christmas bags with different stickers, we worked really hard to unpick the stickers using our fine motor skills and stick them onto our bags. We have been enjoying reading different Christmas stories in particular ‘There’s an Elf in your book’ where we had to be careful that the cheeky elf didn’t trick us and have been exploring our Nativity scene. 
 

We have had lots of fun exploring dough made out of different ingredients including cornflour and flour and have developed our gross motor skills and hand eye coordination by filling and emptying in the water and rice.

We have continued to enjoy different games to develop our skills especially bug bingo and have loved learning new Christmas songs. 
 

Autumn 2 - week 5

It’s Christmas in Pre-school.

What a wonderful first week of Christmas we have had in Pre-school this week. 

First we enjoyed a snowy Monday where we explored the snow, we enjoyed trying to make a snowman, making snow angels and painting the snow with the prime colours. We have also been intrigued by the cold weather and how the water has become ice and have been talking about why the ice has melted. 

Then the Christmas elves came and decorated our room and it looks great, we have enjoyed writing letters to Santa and posting them in our homemade post box, exploring our nativity dolls and got creative decorating our our tree outside. 

We have had fun using our balancing skills with the babbles and enjoyed using our thinking skills by thinking of different ways we could roll the babbles down the tubes and planks. We have enjoyed pretending to have hot chocolate around our inside pretend fire, where we role played with our friends and make lovely hot chocolate to our teachers. 

We then got to roast marshmallows on a real fire during our outdoor adventure session. During our session we went on a Christmas walk to find the candy canes, this included using our gross motor physical skills to walk down the slippy hill and we had to think of the best way to negotiate a fallen down tree and it’s branches. We loved going through the squelchy mud and having a paddle in the stream, we have had a lovely week getting in the Christmas spirit. 

Autumn Term 2 - week 4

What a nice frosty week we have had in Pre-school. 

This week we have enjoyed exploring the cold weather, we have talked about why it is frosty outside talking about how the temperature has gone low and what we need to wear to keep us warm when playing out. We have enjoyed looking at the frozen water and leaves and have been mark making in the frost in the mud kitchen. 

We have really enjoyed doing lots of drawing this week and have been really thinking about what we wanted to draw and how it might look. We have also been really interested in the world map in our construction area. We have been looking at the different countries and talking about where we live, we have also been looking at some pictures of where our friends live and how our houses are all different. 

This week we have been learning a new song and game for our phase one phonics, we have been learning silly soup and showing our rhyming skills and have really enjoyed this game and have been playing it with our friends in Pre-school. We have also been looking at different rhyming books in our book area and singing our nativity songs which are really good at. 

Along with developing our listening and attention songs through the phase one phonics games we have also been playing mini bug bingo has helped us with our concentration skills and this has helped us to develop our personal, social and emotional skills. 

We have also been enjoying using the musical instruments outside to go on a bear hunt, this has allowed us to develop our understanding of beats and how we can use instruments to extend our play. 

Autumn 2 Week 2

What a lovely and busy week we have had in Pre-School.

Our number of the week has been number 1! We have been superstars are beginning to recognise this number. Can you show someone at home one finger?

We have been exploring all of our areas using our imagination to gather and roast marshmallows around the campfire in our home corner! We have continued exploring fireworks as many of us enjoyed watching some over the weekend. We even made some in our Creative Area. 
 

Towards the end of the week we began to explore Remembrance Day in our group time. We watched a beautiful animation about the poppy fields then some of us created poppies using loose parts, some decided to make some in the craft area and others made some red poppy play dough. 
 

Outdoors we have been to see our pumpkin patch and explore what has happened to it over the last couple of weeks, we decided that the animals had started to eat our pumpkins! Then we played in some muddy puddles…some of us looked a little bit like mud monsters by the end of the day! 
 

Next week we will be celebrating World Nursery Rhyme Week, Odd Socks Day (Monday) and Spotty day from Children in Need on Friday…we should sleep well next weekend grown ups! 

Autumn 2 Week 1 

What a lovely first week back after half term we have had. 

We have been very busy and have enjoyed being engaged in lots of different activities to help us to develop our skills and learning. 

We have been getting creative this week making Diwali lamps and CD collages and have enjoyed using our fine motor skills to paint the pasta outside. We have been enjoying making mud soup in our mud kitchen with soil and the Autumn leaves that had fallen off the trees. 

We have been using our good imagination skills this week in the role play area by pretending to be hairdressers, doctors and have enjoyed taking care of the dolls. Some of even had the great idea of making a car wash for the different cars we made in the construction area.

This week we have continued to be interested in looking at different books both in the continuous provision and in key worker group time. In our group time we have been reading ‘The Gruffalo’ story, talking about the front cover and author then we listened out for different rhyming words in the story. Some of us have also been doing some phonics in the writing area.

One of the most exciting times of this week was going to the forest for our outdoor adventure session. We enjoyed exploring the forest looking for the ‘The Highway Rat’ in his cave. We then found some marshmallows and roasted them on the camp fire, before roasting them we learnt how to be safe around the campfire, we had such a fabulous time. 

Autumn Term 1

Autumn 1 week 7 
 

Wow what a busy last week of Autumn 1 term we have had in Pre-school. 

We have enjoyed lots of different activities especially in our outdoor areas. We have loved exploring our pumpkin patch this week again, some of the pumpkins were broken up and we discuss that maybe some birds have come and eaten them. In our playground we have been making witch potions after reading ‘Room on the Broom’ and have really enjoyed painting with mud. Some of us this week have been able to achieve peddling a tricycle after trying really hard for many weeks and we have been using our big muscles in our arms to paint the wall outside. We also became curious when finding different bugs outside, we found a worm and a spider in our bug house. 

This week we have been exploring colour mixing, we talked about and experimented with mixing different coloured paints together then painted the colours we had made over ice. We have also been practising our cutting skills, some of us were interested in cutting different pieces of paper up then we practised cutting up different materials and flowers. We used our really good concentration when developing our cutting skills and tried really hard. 

We have continued to have our French lessons on a Friday where we have been learning how to say our different emotions in French and one of the best parts of this week was getting our ‘behaviour treat’ which was been able to have fun on a bouncy castle. 

We said “ I enjoyed the bouncy castle.”

” I have enjoyed playing in the home corner, I have used the gold material and pretending it was my long hair.”

”I made a pirate ship house with my friend”. 
 

We have had a really good first half term and are looking forward to having lots of fun and more learning next half term. 

Autumn 1 - week 6 

What another wonderful week we have had in Pre-school this week. 
We have had lots of fun exploring pumpkins this week, following on from last weeks activities we decided to cut open a pumpkin to see what was inside, before opening it up we had a guess at what we thought might be inside some of us guessed a dinosaur, we said a bird and some of us said some seeds. When we opened up a pumpkin we found that there was seeds inside, we all took it in turns to scoop out the pumpkin using some spoons, doing this helped us to develop our fine motor skills. 
Along with exploring what was inside pumpkins we was very excited to go to our very own pumpkin patch on the paddock where we explored lots of different pumpkins, we talked about the size of them, their colour, we worked with a team to put some in the wheelbarrow and then tried to move the wheelbarrow and we sang some number songs with the pumpkins. One of the most exciting activities to do on our pumpkin patch was to roll the pumpkins down the hill, oh what fun we had!.

We have also continued to develop our imagination and personal, social and emotional skills in the construction area and role play area. We have particularly enjoyed being doctors this week where we have used lots of our skills to role play including communication, turn taking and building on our friendships. We have also continued to develop our gross motor skills when playing outside and have loved looking at books together in the reading area. 

Autumn 1 - week 5
 

What a busy week we have had in Pre-school.
We have been learning more about Autumn this week including looking at Autumn leaves falling from the trees, making Autumn soup in the mud kitchen and completing exciting activities with pumpkins. This week we have been engaging in lots of different activities to develop our physical skills, concentrating on our gross motor skills. We have been using our gross motor skills to run up and down the paddock hill, been using the paint rollers and soapy water outside to paint the big black board and using our balancing skills to balance outside. We have also been learning how to use our fine motor skills to hammer the golf tees into pumpkins, this was a tricky task for some of us but we showed good resilience and perseverance and was able to complete the task. To further develop our fine motor skills we have been making and exploring playdough, we have been squeezing the playdough onto pumpkins and experimenting with the playdough by adding different textures and smells. We have also continued to explore the construction area where we have been working together as a team to build and construct and in particular have enjoyed making different enclosures for our animals. 
 

This week we have been looking at and reading some different books, we have been reading ‘Handas surprise’ in our key worker groups looking at and talking about where Handa and Akeyo live and comparing it to where we live and we have been reading ‘leaf man’ then we made our own leaf men in the creative area. We have enjoyed using our observational skills to draw some pumpkins and have been getting messy in the creative area by painting some pumpkins and then covering them in gloop. 

Autumn 1- week 4
 

This week we have enjoyed lots of different activities, we have been exploring the very wet weather and have especially enjoyed jumping in muddy puddles in our outside area and in the paddock. Along with jumping in muddy puddles in the paddock have been developing our physical skills by playing football and running up and down the hills as well as looking for different mini beasts in the grass. Following on from finding some mini beasts in the paddock we then made our own mini beasts investigation area in Pre-school, we have really enjoyed exploring this area especially looking at the different books and talking about what we could see. We have continued to develop our imagination skills in the construction area and role play whilst also using our personal, social and emotional skills by sharing our resources and playing with our friends, we have made cars, bridges and a zoo together, along with making each other and the teachers some yummy dinner in the home corner. 

We have especially enjoyed learning new songs and dances this week, we love to dance! 

Autumn 1 - week 3 
 

We have had a busy week in Pre-school, we have had been developing lots of new skills including our fine motor skills when threading pasta onto some string, our creation skills by making cars and a zoo in the construction area and we have enjoyed developing our gross motor skills through joining in with different dances. 
In the outdoor area we have been exploring the paddock where we have gone on a Autumn hunt collecting lots of different Autumn leaves and we have been working well in a team by building a bridge together to walk over a hole in the ground. We have also enjoyed playing on the bikes, making cakes and pies in the mud kitchen and finding different bugs outside. In our indoor environment we have enjoyed getting messy in the gloop and have used our imagination to make faces using the loose parts resources while talking about the colour monster and the different emotions we may feel. 

Autumn Term 1 - Week 2 

What another fantastic week we have had in Pre-school. We have continued to explore our environment both inside and outside and have been enhancing our personal, social and emotional skills by playing with our friends in the different areas of learning. This week we have been interested in volcanoes, we have been continuing to look at different volcanoes on the interactive whiteboard and then did our own experiment where we made our play volcano erupt. 
This week we have also been interested in bugs, we saw a beautiful dragonfly in our outside area and then decided to go for a bug hunt in the paddock where we found a worm, slug and snail. We have also enjoyed getting messy in the gloop, making our own creations using the collage materials and using our imagination in the small world and role play area. 

Autumn Term 1 - Week 1 

We have had an amazing first full week in Pre-school and have been excited to explore our new environment.

We have particularly enjoyed exploring the outside areas. In our outside play ground we have been busy developing our physical skills by practicing our balancing, riding the tricycles and developing our gross motor skills by using our big muscles to pour the water down the tubes. We have also enjoyed exploring the sand pit and made lots of yummy creations in the mud kitchen, we even went on a 'Spider hunt' after some of our friends found a spider. To further developed our physical skills we went to paddock where we did some running up and down the hill and went to look for some dinosaurs. 

When we have not been in the outdoor area we have been busy inside, we have been getting creative making binoculars, painting different pictures and have really enjoyed using the collage materials with the junk modelling. We have shown lots of enjoyment in the construction area and small world area where we have been busy working together to build a house, making a garage with the bricks and playing with the dinosaurs. We have also been using our sharing skills when playing with the dolls house where we pretended to make dinner for our friends and put the colour monster to bed. Throughout the week we have been interested in the different books in the reading area and have enjoyed reading 'The Colour Monster' and 'The Bear Hunt' together.