Autumn Term Week 6

We have had a wonderful week full of the amazing autumn colours and experiences that come in October – lots of pumpkins and different squashes and we used the amazing autumn bags that you collected to create an autumn sensory tray. We have carved our own pumpkin and will make pumpkin soup next week and we have created giant pumpkins to decorate outside using brushes on long sticks to develop our gross motor strength. The children have loved the face paint and Halloween party so we will continue that next week and we invite the children to dress up in any outfits they would like, nothing to scary – we are easily frightened by those scary Scream masks! A donation of £1 for the week would be much appreciated as we are a charity so any money we make can be used to buy new face paints to use for the rest of the year.

We have been working hard in our garden this week, we now have lots of bulbs planted for the Spring and potatoes are also in ready to harvest in the late Spring – I have lots of willing helpers in my garden club and they were able to spot lots of cooking apples high in the trees for me to try and reach! I did need a long stick to give them a nudge and we had great fun as they fell down. We are still picking raspberries for snack and we would love any donations of bulbs and compost for the garden please.

Forest School has been a real treat in the Autumn sunshine and as I type I can hear the children having fun and can smell the woodsmoke. We are also off to the church next week for a harvest visit which we really enjoy – a text has gone out for helpers for that trip to make sure we are safe with walking the children up to the church.

Circle times have been busy as always with lots of learning happening during the fun activities that the group leaders plan. Stars are working very well together and really getting into the routines and joining in brilliantly with painting, exploring natural items such as feathers, looking at different colours, making a handprint autumn tree to display, exploring the back garden on a warm afternoon and learning about different objects and extending their vocabulary.

The Moon and Sun groups have been fantastic as well, we have had a refresher on hand hygiene with cases of COVID rising and the children had some brilliant comments about how you feel when you are unwell and what types of illness you have “if I get germs into my mouth and they go in my tummy, I will be ill and you will have to call my Mummy and I will go home and go to the doctor”! Lots of the children really understood how germs can be passed around and knew not to worry about them as long as we were good at washing hands and covering our mouths when we cough. They have also counted conkers to practice maths, made natural crowns with items from the collection bags that Andrea handed out and made pumpkins wrapping wool around balloons – very tricky and excellent for perseverance and fine motor skills.

Next week we will be cooking and having another Halloween party, we will be building outside, moving things around a bit and planning more circles based on comparing sizes and learning about the concept of size, a focus on literacy as well, developing independance and more work on families so please send in a selfie of your family if you haven’t done so already. The display is going up next week.