We would like to take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy Christmas!

We have had a very quiet week with so much illness around us, we really hope that those children and staff who have been unwell are on the mend and it really does sound like a terrible and very contagious sickness/flu bug. By Friday we only had two staff available to work so we are very sorry for closing the Star group on the Friday but had no other available option to us.

The children were absolutely wonderful at our two Christmas performances and we were thrilled to have such lovely emails and comments from you, it means the world to us and we are also very grateful for all the cards and gifts and boxes of chocolates (all stored ready for the January term!!).

The am and pm parties were great fun and the photos from each party are on the parent gallery now.

Have a lovely break and we return on TUESDAY 2nd January 2024!

Christmas has arrived at pre-school! We love this time of year and making the pre-school feel festive and exciting and full of wonder and joy. We have a beautiful Arctic book nook outside, filled with blankets and cushions and winter themed books and stories and it has been a lovely addition, time to sit and talk and read and people watch! We have a list there to see which children use the book nook a lot and which children we need to encourage into it to enjoy a book so that we have time to chat about the story, test understanding and knowledge and work out next steps for literacy. It is working really well and it is a lovely place to talk and watch what is going on in the garden and is really giving children who like a quiet space time to be relaxed and learn.

Our Santa Sleigh is in progress and can seat 27 children! The term will race past now and we are really looking forward to our Christmas Performance on the 12th December. There is some more info on the noticeboard in reception but we will be at the Cullompton Community Centre all day so the pre-school gates and building will be closed all day. Drop off to the Centre and please call the mobile on the day for any absences.

We have enjoyed our focus on literacy this week and the children have made huge progress and really are able to recognise the initial letter and sounds at the beginning of their name and start to write the letter too! We have been thrilled with how well they have engaged and learnt this week and with the brilliant attention and listening skills we are going to work on some Maths next week to see where they all are and where we can start with planning their next areas of learning. The curriculum we have is so fun and exciting with so much to cover over our year in a sequence so observations of the children are really important and we are lucky to be a free flow setting and all staff can observe all children.

Circle times

Star – we have all had a focus on early literacy so lots of stories and the beginnings of talking about letter sounds and seeing the difference between words and pictures, letters and numbers and rhythm and rhyme.

Sun and Moon – Name hunts, recognising letters, reading stories with story sacks, opening a letter from Pudsey and reading what was inside, finding and saying letter sounds and another brilliant visit from Robot Reg.

We are practising our Christmas Songs now so here are two for you to practice at home!

Twinkle Twinkle Christmas lights

Lighting up December nights

Red and Yellow, orange and blue

Making such a lovely view

Twinkly twinkle Christmas lights

Lighting up December nights

Donkey Donkey don’t you stop

Just let your feet go clippety clop

Your tail goes swish and you say eyore

We are nearly at the stable door

We look forward to our last half of this half term – finishing on the 15th December and back on the 2nd January.

Welcome back after a half term holiday to all our families, we have had a lovely if slightly shorter week that we would like. We are so sorry that we were not able to open on Thursday – the advice from Devon County Council was to close but when we awoke on Thursday morning the storm seemed to much less of a concern so we are glad everyone was safe and we will be offering replacement sessions to the children over the coming weeks.

The highlight of our first week back has been the two Grandparents mornings. On Monday and Wednesday we welcomed lots of Grandparents in to spend time with their grandchildren, making Halloween craft on Monday and Bonfire night craft on Wednesday. We have 26 Grandparents in total and it was a lovely morning, with a coffee and a cake and a play in the sunshine – we have had lovely feedback and we really hope they all had a wonderful time with us. We will arrange another afternoon tea in the summer term and if any Grandparents would like to help us on trips we would be very grateful.

Our circle times have been full of craft and exercise this week! Our learning this half term focuses on being healthy and we will be sharing lots of ideas via this blog and facebook and email around diet and sleep and physical activity and oral hygiene.

The Star group have been enjoying lots of dancing and Halloween Yoga moves, making glitter fireworks, blow painting fireworks and some lovely ribbon dancing and circle songs such as hokey cokey and head shoulders, knees and toes!

The Sun and Moon group have also made lots of Halloween and Bonfire night craft too – fireworks pictures, salt dough pumpkins and rockets alongside learning how to be safe around fireworks, some Halloween dance moves and building independence with dressing up.

Next week we will be moving towards building on our space theme with activities and learning inside and role play outside – we would love donations of plastic bottles – the big coke bottle size please so that we can make rocket packs! We will continue our literacy focus for the half term as well, working on story times and talking about books.

We hope you all have a dry, safe and happy Fireworks Night!