We are so lucky to have such a fun group of children this year, they just love to have a go at whatever we plan and organise and make the very most of it all – learning and playing at the same time which is just how it should be. There are some lovely photos of them this week – concentrating, laughing, engrossed in their play, exploring different textures and learning new skills in our circus activities and in our shape work over the week.

We have had a focus on 2D and 3D shapes, learning new vocabulary and how to use shapes and shape is such an important part of maths that we use going forward in our lives.

Circle times – the Sun and Moon groups have enjoyed lots of shape work, making shapes, sorting them and other games. We have also been learning about journeys and talking and planning and using photos of Cullompton to talk about how we get to pre-school and where we walk and what we see around us. The Moons had a lovely walk up to the town to take photos of the shops that are familiar to us.

The Star group did some shape tracing, painted with shapes, made pictures with shapes and matched shapes! They also talked about journeys and drew maps.

We are looking forward to our two Easter craft mornings next week and Lisa from Tesco is coming on Monday for an Easter Egg hunt as well. There will be lots of fun and craft and colour around next week as we head towards the Easter holidays.

Fossils, saltdough lollipops, flowers and photos, jars and hand made labels, making bones from sponges, finding dinosaurs, mud, more mud, mud kitchen, cleaning the mud kitchen, water, rain, more rain, puddles and bubbles, a zoo, a farm, a jungle, zoo leaflets from Tesco, a trip to Home Bargains, making homes for animals, painting, balloon painting, animal facts, watercolour painting, drawing on huge pieces of paper, singing, story time, more singing, music and finger action songs – just a snapshot of the activities and fun we have during free flow!

We really believe in a mixture of child led, adult led and free play and we plan lots of activities that are available to the children and in addition we have our teaching times during our circles too!

This week we have  – talked about “special ladies” at preschool, each child had a key person who supports them, chats to their family, creates their learning journey and shares info with the team about that child and how they are getting along and if there are any worries. The children adore the ladies at pre-school, they are a really kind and loving bunch of children and they really enjoyed talking about which ladies were special to them. We have had a literacy theme as well and the children have read and written stories, enjoyed story sacks and learnt animal facts to support the role play in our zoo and had a trip to Home Bargains to buy some flowers and look at the Mother’s Day displays. We have been rhyming, learning letter sounds, playing letter games and listened to stories in different languages – Polish, Latvian and Mandarin so far to support children in our setting who are bi or tri lingual.

Forest School sessions have now swapped over so Moons enjoy that session on a Thursday and Sun’s on a Friday now and the Star group will access Forest School for the first half of the summer term. The Forest School sessions continued despite the rain and there are some wonderful photos with lots of team work with the water play, making rivers and boats!

Our weeks are so busy and we try hard to share info but we have started to write a few of our activities each day on a whiteboard for you to spot when you come to collect your child – we know that they key people for each family can be spread around our setting at pick up but please do always go and find them or ask where they are for an update. We have parent consultations starting next week and we look forward to sharing progress with you and listening to any worries you may have too.

New ladies have arrived!! We are thrilled to announce that we have 3 new ladies joining our team here to support the children. We have Zoe who is very experienced and qualified and will take on key children and work in all areas of our provision and Beth and Misbah – both have children at our preschool and join us as lunchtime assistants and will also support children curing free flow and activities and story time. We are really pleased to welcome them and know that they will all be really popular with the children here and will support team in a professional way.

Our new children who joined in January have settled in and are learning the routines really well and taking part in circle times too.

Sun and Moon – have had a focus on life cycles and growth and change this week with some fantastic activities to support learning and turn taking and they have also been working on fine motor strength, playing games and working hard as teams and individually to complete challenges.

Star group – have also learnt about life cycles and created some amazing art work and completed activities to support strength. Being physically strong and co-ordinated is absolutely linked to learning and writing and concentration and the Star group enjoyed using the tweezers to pick up small items and work with a partner to complete the challenges, they used claves and playdoh as well to build co-ordination and strength. Lots of singing and a focus on the caterpillar/butterfly life cycle worked really well for them.

In our free flow we are working on understanding questions, talking about why and how and using science to inspire the children to ask questions. The process is the important part bot the end result as we all tend to discover when our lava lamps don’t work or we run out of vinegar half way through making raisins dance! It all teaches the children that resilience, carrying on after a mistake and even making mistakes are all fine and can be overcome.

Potions, mini beasts, bikes, construction outside, shaving foam concrete, cards and roads and gutters and balls and litter picking, moving tyres, making a table and finger gym all complete a lovely week.

Next week we are learning about and celebrating Chinese New Year and Valentines Day before we finish for a half term break and we will be half way through our academic year! Our committee have set up a Valentines Colouring Competition with a lovely prize of a teddy and chocolates and nice pens so please enter with a sheet available from the office for £1! Thank you