Week ending 2nd July 2021

We have been using lots of different musical instruments in the garden areas, listening to the different sounds they make, making our own tunes and tapping beats.

The children have been number detectives, finding and identifying numerals in the classroom and outside.

We also have been giving the children lots of different ways to make marks and the children really enjoyed using clip boards and pencils to write cafe orders, make maps and making 'school registers'.

Our words of the week were 'summer' and 'numbers'.

Week ending 18th June 2021

We have been talking about patterns and shapes this week, the shape properties, sides, corners, flat and curved edges. We have also made pictures with shapes and tried creating patterns with them. Outside in the garden we also used sticks, stones, leaves and shells to create patterns and inside we used different objects, i.e, toys, crayons, to make patterns.

Our letters and sounds activity was making up fun sentences with the initial sound of our names e.g. 'Harry helped a happy hedgehog'.

Our numbers and patterns activity was threading beads. This is also good for hand-eye co-ordination and for talking about the size of beads, if you need a few beads or lots.

We also have finished our 'loose parts' picture display. The children enjoyed creating their own pictures which they could easily change or adapt as they wanted.

We have used lots of shade in the garden and lots of water play in the garden to help with the very hot weather.

Week ending 27th May 2021

The Lifebus came to school and we were able to visit and meet Harold the giraffe and Louise who showed us about 'looking after ourselves'. It was really interesting and the children enjoyed helping Harold to 'clean his teeth', 'brush his hair' and 'wash his face'. We learnt about our bones, our heart and being healthy.

The children have been busy creating pictures using 'loose parts'. This included using buttons, sticks, corks, cotton reels and paper cases.

We have been using story sacks of popular stories and the children have been retelling the story using props, adding new vocabulary and talking about feelings.

Our words of the weeks have been 'feelings' and 'day'.

In our P.E sessions we have been playing circle/ring games and moving in different ways.

Weeks ending 14th May 2021

Our words of the week have been 'animal' and 'different'. We have been using mirrors to look at ourselves and talking about hair colour, length, eye colour etc. We have also been looking at and reading books with diverse characters in them and looking books showing children from different parts of the world.

We are continuing to encourage lots of mark making, with paint brushes, chalks and pens and encouraging them to hold them correctly.

In Mathematics we have been practising matching objects to numerals and counting objects from a larger group.

Our letters and sounds activity was using our voices to make lots of different sounds, such as, buzzzz, sss, weee, oooo.

We are still having listening moments and listening walks and this week we enjoyed listening to and watching the Hurricane aeroplane that was flying over Manea.

In our P.E sessions we have been moving in different ways, such as 'shuffling', 'prancing' and 'twirling'. Outside in the garden the children tried moving around the climbing frame in different ways too. 

Week ending 16th April 2021

We would like to say welcome back to you all returning after the Easter break and a big welcome to our new children joining us.

Before the break the children were busy making Easter crafts to take home, trying different things such as marble rolling to decorate Easter egg shapes.

We have been using 'Lumi sticks' to tap and count the syllables in our names and other words, i.e 'Miss-es Tuck' (3 taps/counts)

We went on a listening walk, giving the children the chance to stand quietly and listen to things going on around them. They heard birds, footsteps, cars going by and a dog barking. We have also started to make a special headband of ears to wear to encourage listening when on a listening walk or having a listening moment.

We used the parachute in P.E to play 'under' games and 'wiggle items off the parachute' games.

Our Maths activity was 'counting groups of 5 items' and our letters and sounds activity was 'feely socks', a describe what's in the sock game. 

The children going to school brought back their 'homework' about jobs and we have enjoyed listening to what the children would like to do when they get older and what some of our parents/carers do for their job.

Our words of the week were Easter and Job

Week ending 19th March 2021

This week we have been using one-handed tools such as scissors and they practised cutting snips in paper and we also used hammers to tap in nails and made pictures.

The children have also been using their listening skills to see if they can find an object that is being described, we used everyday objects, animals and natural items for this.

In our P.E sessions we played the bean game, moved in different ways and played a game with the parachute.

We have been listening to lots of rhyming books this week as an introduction to rhyming.

Our words of the weeks have been 'Spring' and 'Help'. 

Week ending 5th March 2021

We have been talking about colour and change, these have been our words of the weeks, and as part of this we have been reading stories about 'Elmer the patchwork elephant'. The children have created their own 'Elmers', using coloured pens to make their pattern.

We also used compare bears, octogons and other resources to make patterns with colour and sizes.

The children played skittles and estimated how many skittles they might knock down and then counted to see how many they did knock down.

In the playground the children used 'that's not my.......' boards to talk about different textures.

Week ending 29h January 2021

We have been talking in groups about our emotions and how we feel. We used face cards and different resources to encourage language and expressive words.

In our P.E session we practiced our 'Super Hero Training' and we hopped, skipped, balanced on one leg and even did star jumps.

Our letter and sounds activity was singing action songs in which included actions such as clapping, stamping our feet and patting our knees.

We had lots of fun playing 'Skittles' and the children took turns and took a guess at how many skittles they could knock down. Then they checked by counting the skittles.

Our words of the weeks were 'Food' and 'Clothes'.

Week ending 15th January 2021

As we take this opportunity to say Happy New Year and welcome back.

Our words of the weeks have been 'winter' and 'healthy' and we have been talking about the seasons, cold and we have used our 'Mr Chef' character to discuss foods that are good for you, healthy and unhealthy.

In our Letters and sounds activity we played our 'Feely sock' game, in which the children had to choose a sock and try to describe what they felt inside it. This encouraged lots of language and laughter.

Our maths activity was 'Mrs Tuck has a box' and the children had to listen for the sound of the hidden object that was being played/shaken, again this encouraged language and some imaginative guesses.

We have been encouraging imaginative play with our small world play sets and role play area and started to explore our emotions, looking at different pictures of faces and talking about how they might feel.

Week ending 18th December 2020

As we come to the end of a very busy and at times an unusual year, we would like to take this opportunity to say how fantastically the children have adapted to a new way of doing things and to thank you for all your continued support during these times.

We would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy, safe New year.

Week ending 11th December 2020

We have been exploring different materials and tools and used playdough with lots of different tools, including rolling pins, sticks and buttons. The children also made 'snow people' in our snow factory'.  

The children also used story sacks to talk about the story, seeing if they can remember what might happen in it.

Our words of the weeks have been 'traffic' and 'family' and we have had lots of discussions about road safety and who is in our family.

Our letters and sounds activity was 'follow the sound', one person makes a sound and the rest of the circle has to copy the sound.

Our numbers and patterns activity was 'one bear alone', looking for the lonely bear under cups of different amounts of bears.

'Cookie the elf' is also visiting preschool at the moment and has watching over us and also getting up to some mischief, including making snow angels and making spells with the characters from 'room on the broom'.

Week ending 27th November 2020

We have been learning about the letter sounds 'p', 'b', 'm' and 'w' and used 'sound bags' with lots of items which start with those sounds.

We also have gave movement instructions to different musical instruments so that when an instrument was played we had to do the correct movement, such as, when you heard the drum you had to march, if you heard the bells you had to go on tiptoe.

Our words of the weeks 'size' and 'friend'. In groups we talked about being nice and what a friend means and we also discussed size using different sized animals, vehicles etc.

Our letter and sounds activity was action songs and the children really enjoyed getting involved, especially with 'If you're happy and you know it' and 'the wheels on the bus'.

Week ending 13th November 2020

We have been looking at flowers this week and we are beginning to understand the different parts of the flower, petal, stem, bud etc. We looked at pictures of famous flower paintings and pictures of garden flowers. The children used different media materials to create their own flower pictures. 

We also talked about poppies and remembrance day and on Wednesday we observed a one minutes silence in remembrance.

Our letters and sounds activity this week was 'describe and find it'. The children were given clues to describe an animal or vehicle.

Our maths challenge was a 'lucky dip'. The children put their hand into a box and had to guess what the item was that they could feel and describe it, i.e, 'bumpy', 'hard', 'soft', 'long'.

Our words of the weeks were 'Fireworks' and 'flowers'.

Week ending 22nd October 2020

We have been talking about Halloween and so the children have been busy creating pumpkin pictures using black and orange craft items. We have displayed them on the wall in the 'Pumpkin Patch'.

The children who will be going to school have also been making their 'faces' on paper plates. We talked about our reflections, our hair/eye colour and practiced using scissors to cut wool for our hair.

Our words of the weeks were 'challenge' and 'halloween'. The children enjoyed having 'challenges' in the playground such as 'can you find a circle?', 'can you find something yellow?' and 'can you find something bumpy?'.

We have also been on 'listening moments', played skittles, the children had to guess how many skittles they might knock down and they took part in super hero training!

Week ending 9th October 2020

The children have worked really hard getting to know their new friends at preschool and getting used to the routines. 

We have been looking at 2 special books, 'The Gruffalo' and 'Room on the broom' and we looked at lots of the words in them and talked about what they mean. The children liked lots of the words, including 'whoosh', 'purple prickles', 'knobbly knees' and 'tumbling'.

Our words of the weeks were 'Autumn' and 'Weather'. We talked about the weather each day, the clothes that we would have to wear and the changes that happen in Autumn.

The children have made models with various construction materials and played lots of imaginative games, including 'going on a bus to the beach'. 

In our group circle time we looked inside our 'Pirate box' and played the game 'one or lots'.

Week ending 25th September 2020

Hello and welcome to you all, our returning children and our new starters. We have had a wonderful start to the new school year, the children have settled in quickly and have enjoyed exploring and investigating all of the preschools areas. 

The painting easel has been extremely busy with the children creating fabulous pictures with lots of colours.

We have spent a lot of time outside playing in the water tray with jugs and water wheels or sea creatures, where we talked about sizes. 

Our words of the week have been 'kind' and 'rules'.