Our week has been a lovely return to normal! We have been full most days and the children have coped brilliantly with the increasing numbers of friends and the need to take turns and share equipment. We are really pleased to see everyone back and hope that a return to normal for you all school wise has gone well and that your children are not too exhausted!

This has been a busy week full of play and learning, we are learning about transport and our garden club has started for the year and these are our two main themes. Thank you for the wonderful donations that we have had this week, it was a joy to see parents carrying a bag of compost or gro bags up the path for me! We were also luck to have a lovely lady called Tiffany and her helper deliver some top soil for our raised beds.

The Sun table has been a work station this week for developing skills in using tools safely and we have been getting stronger using hammers and screwdrivers, hand whisks and tweezers too. The Moon room has been open during free flow as a play cafe and it has been a delight to over hear the chattering and menu ideas. Outside we have focused on transport and played with the cars and made a car wash, used planks and guttering to make ramps for the small cars, we have played “airports” – not that anyone has been near one for a while!

The Sun group had a day learning about bees, they learnt about the life cycle and then made craft in the afternoon, they have explored seeds and bulbs and look at the garden catalogues as well producing some lovely drawings and chat about what grows in our gardens. The children LOVED looking at their baby pics and were able to recognise some of their friends so please keep sending them in as the children without a pic yet are a bit sad! The group also learnt about vehicles and transport.

The Moon group also loved the baby photos and learning about growth and change and were super pleased with their cress heads which look fantastic! The Moons also learnt how to use knives to chop up their own snack, worked on their counting skills and drew pictures of themselves doing something they are really good at. One little girl drew a bunny “I am really good at drawing bunnies” and she is! Another said “I am good at writing” and then wrote her name, spelling it out – fantastic!

The Stars have been kept busy too with lots of work on transport, listening to the different sounds vehicles make, looking at transport on the ipad and enjoying an explore in the back natural garden too. The stars have also drawn some lovely pictures of things that grow in the garden.

Next week we will be making mini worlds in the Moon room and we would love it if you could make your house out of a cardboard box – maybe you could draw the house on plain paper and stick it to a box or perhaps you can print a picture of your house and stick it to a box. We will be making Cullompton on the floor with lots of photos the children took during lockdown and any additions would be great!

We hope you will all enter of Easter Egg competition and it would be great to raise some much needed funds for the pre-school.

We will also be dressing up as superheroes to celebrate Comic Relief next Friday for one day only – if you would like to donate £1 please pop it into the box in reception but you can dress up anyway and we will have lots of spare dressing up clothes.

We are pleased to reach the half term holiday with all of our families safe and well and COVID free! Let’s hope that we can all enjoy a good half term and that when we come back on the 22nd we have a good idea of what might happen with the primary and secondary schools. We will be welcoming back most children after half term, with more coming back when their siblings are able to go back to school. This half term has been quiet with around 20 children in a day, rather than our usual 36!

We have had a brilliant week, albeit a very cold one when your turn comes to be outside but we have wrapped up warm and played in our new construction area which has warmed us up nicely! We have some good equipment and have come up with some brilliant castles and buildings and this will continue after half term too. We have also set up a fantastic safari area where we are learning about lots of animals and enjoying role play and craft too.

Circles times have been supporting that learning as well using the animal theme to practise our drawing skills, learning about rainforests and different habitats, we have also talked about different birds and weather in different habitats too. The Star group have talked about Tigers and read The Tiger who came for tea, sung 5 little ducks and made their own little ducks and learnt about animal habitats, sorting the animals into where they live.

The animal display will go up outside after half term and we have some wonderful quotes from the children for it!

Enjoy half term and we are open again on the 22nd February.

We are glad to have re-opened and very thankful that there were no further COVID cases and we can get back to normal! We understand that for some families keeping your children at home during this full lockdown is right for you and we will look forward to welcoming you all back soon! I hope that the home learning sheets we have sent will give you some ideas for activities at home and please send us photos and videos as we love to see them and print them off for your child’s special books. We also hope that the progress updates have been nice for you to read – we have certainly had some really wonderful feedback and the staff worked really hard on those during our week of isolation!

We have had a busy week at pre-school – learning about Space and enjoying the new space station outside undercover which is looking fantastic. Inside we have been making salt dough cookies for our shop and enjoying lots of role play. We have been singing and dancing and exercising and taking part in lots of fine motor activities through the free flow time too. There is a new car to play in outside too!

We have re-started the mini Forest School sessions which involve a small group going out to the back garden on a Thursday and Friday afternoon, all kitted up in their wet weather gear and warm hats and enjoying the experience of outdoor learning and practising all the safety skills they will need for the full sessions with a fire in the Summer Term.

We have kept our 3 circle groups going and the children are learning very well indeed – lots of fantastic concentration and talking and lots of children are really growing in confidence to share what they know with us and to ask lots of questions and tell us all about their home lives.

The Star group is quite small at the moment with some children staying at home but the children who are here are loving their time – they have enjoyed story sacks, matching patterns, animal patterns, animal boogie singing and dancing and learning about feelings.

The Sun and Moon group have learnt a lot about technology this week with some brilliant comments about who is in charge of the remote control, how phones need “chargering” (not a typo!) and how one Mummy spends lots of time looking online for things to buy for her son!

The Moon group took selfies and then used a very smart mini printer to print them off immediately which they loved! They also enjoyed a story sack, laughing away when the Hungry Caterpillar was eating up all the food, Yoga was great fun and the children were brilliant at the poses. The Sun group also learnt about time and clocks and played some games on the ipad – taking turns beautifully to trace out letters and numbers. They also enjoyed colour mixing magic and some rhyming as well.

We will be continuing with Space next week and looking at the planets so for home learning you could have a look at the planets online, learn the names of some and we will be making some planets next week. We will also be working on shapes so have a look while you are walking to preschool for shapes on road signs, in your home and the shape of the signs around pre-school and for numbers on doors, on registration plates and in the shops. We are also learning about being healthy so will be talking about exercise, hygiene, sleep and what foods are healthy and what foods are a treat.