Our theme for circle times this week in all groups has been “Fascinating objects”! – the group leaders bring in items from home or exciting special sets that we have here to create awe and wonder for the children and it has been a brilliant week as you will see from the gallery photos.

Items have included a huge keyboard, a light plasma ball, early years mobile phones, remote controlled cars, a flashing ball and fidget spinner, a soda stream, metal detectors and creating lava lamps and volcanoes! What a wide range of really fun and exciting toys and experiences for the children to learn from and they have been wonderful listeners and turn takers.

Our outside theme has been a focus on potion making and sensory trays with lots of adult supported role play in the farm shop. Next week our playhouse will turn into an office for a construction site and we will be building all week with large scale bricks and other sets outside, adding in mark making and designing and drawing and counting and planning and lots and lots of talking!

The Forest School groups have enjoyed mild weather and are loving the atmosphere in the back garden, looking for frogs and found 3. Sophie prepared an activity called Hapa Zome – creating art work on material using plants and flowers found in the garden, it is an ancient Japanese art form. Following our overall theme of creating awe and wonder the two groups opened up the spiky outers to discover the beautiful conkers inside – a lovely fire and hot chocolate and been able to spend quality time with each of the children creates a wonderful session.

We have been learning lots about our families and their different cultures and celebrations and with one family we have learnt about the Chinese Moon Festival Celebration and the children made lanterns after one of our Mum’s showed us how to do it and gave us some wonderful information about the special day for them, sometimes called the Mooncake festival.

Inside during free flow we have also set animals free (see facebook for photos!) – excellent for problem solving and fine and gross motor skills, made soup and bread and fruit kebabs, mini pizza’s, frozen veg and chatting about healthy food and writing our own recipes.

Next week we are moving to construction outside following lots of interest inside in that area, we will also be doing more cooking and creating on the sun table during free flow, exploring Autumn as a season and changes that happen towards winter.

Please remember to send in your family selfies, we have started the display and the children LOVE seeing themselves on the wall – send all family photos to me amelia@cullomptonpreschool.org

What a wonderful week we have had! There have been some fantastic moments with happy children, busy in the garden, making new friends, creating collage work, learning about colour and our routines. Some harder moments for some parents with children being upset but that is all part of the settling in process and we are always happy for you to ring the office to ask how your little one is doing. We can give you lots of individual news when you ring as Mandy and Mandy always come and ask for feedback for you. We will always tell the truth about how your child is doing and we are really pleased to be able to say that they have settled down and have stopped crying and are relaxed enough to be taking part in a circle time or eating snack or moving and exploring and playing during free flow. Those tough moments for you are so hard but it is very short lived once you have gone we promise. Hopefully looking through the photos on the blog will reassure those of you who are worried and provide joy for all parents to see their child happy and engaged and busy in all we have to offer. The teachers here are extremely experienced, caring and nurturing and all children will make fantastic progress with us emotionally and developmentally and we are thrilled with our new cohort and how well our old Stars have settled into their new sun and moon groups. The children listen well, they are kind and enjoy playing and exploring so we can see a lovely year ahead.

We have been teaching the children our names and learning each others names, talking about the groups and which sound belongs to each group (Stars have a shaker to call them for circle time, Moons have a tambourine and the Sun’s have a triangle), we have talked about the routine of the day, how to be kind, how to unpack your lunch and tidy up afterwards and we are so impressed with how quickly the children have learnt the flow of our day!

We are getting to know all of the new children and will start work on their learning journey’s over the next couple of weeks, some info will come to you on email and we all write observations on all of the children so the team here get to know every child really well and the children usually end up having at least two favourite ladies so if their key person isn’t in they are still secure and happy!

Our Breakfast and After School clubs are available on a Wednesday 8-9am and 3-5pm and Thursday 8-9am and 3-5pm – you can book in by emailing the office on admin@cullomptonpreschool.org and you can use it as a drop in session or book for a half term at a time. The cost is £6.50 per hour, you can book full hours or half hours and if the need increases we can review opening on more days.

We look forward to welcoming the children back next week, there may be more tears and this is totally normal. We will be playing hairdressers, exercising outside, painting in the Sun room, mark making on a large scale outside and playing with our lovely small world toys and loose parts collection too. Have a lovely weekend!

We have been welcoming our new children into our setting this week for their session visits, it doesn’t seem long ago that we were welcoming the children who are now off to school! We have taken the St. Andrew’s children for a stay and play session this week which went really well and we have shared lots of information with the team at all of the schools to support all of the children.

There are a couple of stay and play sessions at Willowbank w/c 10th July which are for parents to take the children along to.

This week we have been focusing on numbers and shapes, we have had all our junk modelling out and have made some brilliant creations using lots of different ways to join and combine and fix and build our ideas. We would love donations of the following items to replenish our cupboards :- sellotape, string, treasury tags, split pins, and bull dog clips too please!

Our circle times have had a shape and rhyming focus in the sun and moon group – we have lots of different and engaging activities to make sure circles are fun and interaction and promote a love of learning. The groups have made great progress in number recognition and have made shape pictures and described shapes using the language of points and edges and sides.

The Star group have had a music and movement focus and have been singing and dancing all week! Taking part in exercise action songs, singing, reading stories with rhymes and playing instruments and following instructions.

We have been practising our songs for the graduation celebration and we may sing a song together at the fete if there are a few children present that are feeling confident to join me on the steps!

We love Disco Thursday! Before lunch on the other days we have a lovely story together but on a Thursday we dance! Do mention it to your child if they attend and it is always a great laugh and a really fun part of our week and if you and your family have a favourite pop song please let us know so we can include it. We had a request for “Paradise City” this week!!

We are setting up a real home corner next week with lots of heavy plates and cups and will be working on how important it is to take care of items here at pre-school. The whole of the sun room will be set up as a home corner during free flow with a kitchen and sitting room and a table to eat at and a TV and we would love donations to help us please – old kettles and pans and plates and mugs and table mats and table cloths and fake flowers and anything else you can think of that you may have in a shed that we could use! Thank you and have a lovely weekend