Snow at pre-school! We have had a lovely week, despite the very cold conditions and we have had to block off some of our top patio area as it is so slippy and all of our rock salt had frozen solid! The children have loved exploring the ice and playing out in the snow on Wednesday. We have also been learning all about Chinese New year – the week ahs been action packed, full of activities and craft and dancing and dragons and the beautiful red and gold of the Chinese New Year colours. The China Orchid donated some absolutely beautiful decorations for us which the children have taken great care of and we will store those away safely for next year too. Lots tried prawn crackers and noodles in circle time, learnt which animal represents the year they were born and about traditions too. We have loved learning all about the difference concepts and ideas and celebrations.

Lunchtimes have been full of spotting dairy items this week, looking for butter in our sandwiches and talking about different yoghurts and cheeses. There are still a few lunchboxes that have too many sweet items in them, just one is ideal.

The Star group have milked a pretend cow, made butter and enjoyed milk experiments, they painted a Chinese dragon and had some lovely story times. They also welcomed a visit from the Sun and Moon’s dancing Chinese Dragon which they loved!

The Sun and Moon groups have really had a focus on Chinese New Year, so many ways to learn and practice so many other skills within such a vibrant theme. Colour, language, celebrations, names of the year, numbers, patterns, mark making, imagination, food, texture, taste and so much more.

Our Forest School children wrapped up warm in the frost and have had an amazing time in the garden with the fire, enjoying porridge and hot chocolate and learning all about spiders this week – the largest is the Goliath tarantula, their webs are so big that they catch birds! Female spiders can lay 3,000 eggs at a time. Spiders can jump 50 x their own length.

Next week we will be moving into learning about where our food comes from and lots of lovely home corner role play in the Sun room – a favourite moment from this week was one little boy sat on the mini sofa in front of the pretend TV, wrapped up warm in a blanket watching the pretend TV while holding an empty tub of celebrations! Very cosy and relaxed!

Next week we are going to explore construction outside as well and any building magazines or home improvement magazines would be very welcome please!

We have had a wonderful end to the Autumn Term here at Pre School, we have really missed those friends that have been unwell and were very sorry to have to close the Star group on Thursday – it is very hard for us to make that decision but with so many staff off sick we had no choice with ratio requirements needing to be met. We very much hope that all of those children and staff who are unwell will be tip top and back to full strength for a lovely Christmas!

The highlight of the week was our party and performance in the beautiful St Andrews Church, thanks to all of the families that supported us there and we were very proud indeed of the children and our team.

We wish you a very Happy Christmas and we will look forward to seeing you all in January 2023!

This week we had a Christmas send off for Andrea, she loves Christmas and is a superb help to me during the festive period, writing the play and organising the scenery and costumes and creating Christmas magic wherever she goes! We had a surprise Christmas party day for her and she was really touched, especially to see the children were also involved by wearing Christmas jumpers too!

Forest School sessions this week were brilliant, lots of sawing and hard work! Lighting the fire and playing with the gutters and cause and effect and the mini beast of the week was the centipede! The Sun group take part on a Thursday and the Moon group on a Friday and this swaps around each half term. The groups learnt that the centipede can have from 14 – 177 pairs of legs and each pair in one a single segment. They eat cockroaches and flies and worms and spiders and can regrow their legs! They never have exactly 100 legs! Some lovely comments too – one little girl knew that “they eat words”, one chap knew where to find them “there might be a centipede under that rock as it is dark” and a good question too “do centipedes eat leaves?” and one chap was inspired “I want to go and find a centipede in a dark place” and off he went!

Circle times have had a shape focus this week:-

Stars – have looked at shapes and played shape matching games, drawn shapes and drawn around shapes and matched brick shapes onto templates.

Sun and Moons – have learnt about 3 D shapes, drawn around shapes, played shape bingo, helped me sort out a big shape mess I created and enjoyed a shape hunt too.

We have also learnt about our Planet, made mini earth art and explored the concepts of recycling, growing, change and where our food comes from.

We have had a very wet week here at pre-school which is a shame, but we have lots of good activities planning inside for wet days and the children keep playing and learning and we get out into the garden as much as we can in wet weather gear! We have a new set of water wall equipment which we are hoping to put up next week in the dryer weather and will use balls and boats on that instead of water if it is colder.

We have been running obstacle courses and different physical activities designed to promote strength and co-ordination. Next week we will set up some role play outside too with a mini library and cafe and I would love you to take photos of your food! Please send in pictures from your phone of your plates with the food on and I will laminate them for the cafe – you breakfast lunch or tea, slices of cake or a fruit snack please!

We will also be encouraging the children to borrow books for real at the end of the day and our boards will have your child’s name on it and the book they have chosen, we will keep a list and then please do bring them back after a few days and we can lend out another one.

There will be a library style trail to follow as well (Christmas themed!) and lots of books to enjoy.

We also have some Christmassy games and things inside and will be exploring ice inside in the warm!

We have some hairdresser role play on offer too in the sun room in free flow so we are hoping for a lovely busy week!