This week we have had a focus on Springtime, with lots of learning about what our senses can see, hear, taste, smell and touch at this time of year. 

The children were able to tell us that the weather feels warmer, there are spring flowers in the garden, that they know Easter is very soon, and they will enjoy hot cross buns and chocolate eggs delivered by a special bunny! Also, that they could smell the cut grass and touch cute baby lambs. 

We took a walk around forest school looking out for some changes and spotted hundreds of baby tadpoles in the pond.  We then talked about how these tadpoles will turn into frogs.  

The children always enjoy a run and roll around on the school field, and this has been enjoyed this week too.  It’s lovely that some of the older school children always come and say hello and want to talk to the pre-school children.  

Some special cards have been made this week, and we hope that they have made it home to give to their special person on Sunday.  We wish all our pre-school mums a very happy Mother’s Day – we hope you all have a lovely day.  

We can’t quite believe that next week is our final week before Easter break, it really has snuck up so fast! The week will see us enjoy some Easter themed activities, and each child will take part in an easter picture hunt around pre-school to then receive a chocolate easter egg kindly donated by FOPS.  

Next Friday there will be a short easter service at the church at 1pm followed by an early finish for pre-school and school.  All children to be collected by 1.15pm - Thank you. 

We hope everyone enjoys their weekend. 

The Pre-School Team.  

This week our pre-school room has had the delicious aroma of gingerbread baking. 

The children have all shown the joy and excitement that baking seems to bring when we get the opportunity to do it.  They have carefully rolled and cut out their gingerbread. Then once cooled, added their currant eyes and gumdrop buttons to their delicious baked gingerbread people to bring home. 

The story of The Gingerbread Man has not only inspired our baking this week, but also lots of lovely imaginative role play and language opportunities in our Fairy tale Bakery.  

The children have been serving up lots of delicious, sweet treats and taking orders from their friends.  

Outside has seen us enjoying some water play, mark making with sand and plenty of gross motor skill development on the climbing frame.  Some of our younger children are becoming much more confident moving around the equipment.  

September session request letters have gone out to parents of children who will be at pre-school for the 2025/2026 year.  Please ensure these are handed back in as soon as possible.  

As we have had some absences due to sickness and diarrhoea, a reminder that our policy is for it to be 48hours after the last bout of illness before your child returns to pre-school.  This is to minimise the spread to other children and the staff.  Thank you.  

We regularly support and show the children how to wash their hands thoroughly and why it is so important.  

There are lots of seasonal colds going around, so please encourage the children to learn how to blow/wipe their noses and then wash their hands at home also.   

We hope everyone has a lovely and healthy weekend, 

The Pre-School Team. 

Our traditional fairy tale this week in pre-school has been The Three Little Pigs. 

We have tried to build our own houses using straw, sticks and bricks, with our own wolf (handheld fan) trying to blow them down! There has been lots of huffing and puffing to blow the houses down. The children agreed that the house made of bricks is the strongest and safest house to live in.

The children have also made their own pig or wolf art, cutting and sticking together shapes. There are some very cute looking wolves and scary looking pigs...! 

During phonics we used our body to make sound patterns, with stamping, clapping, patting and clicking.  We took turns to follow each other's patterns. We also continued this with our musical instruments, listening and repeating patterns we had heard. The addition of the walking piano mat was hugely popular.

Outside the children have enjoyed some of the resources we are gathering for them to continue their understanding of numbers to 10. We want to encourage and inspire the children to look for opportunities during their outside imaginative and creative play to discover numbers, patterns and shapes. This is an area we will continue to develop to enhance their exploration and understanding of numbers.  

Next Friday is Red Nose Day, we are asking the children to wear something red if they are able to. This is a fund-raising day where there is a voluntary contribution of £1 to raise money for the charity.  We understand that not every child is in on Friday, so if your child wants to wear red on another day and bring £1 in that that would be wonderful too.  We will pass all money raised to Mrs Thompson to join with the whole school fund raising pot. 

Next week sees us read the story of The Gingerbread Man, which means we will obviously be enjoying some baking - always very exciting for the children to show you their creations.

 We hope everyone has a lovely weekend and enjoys the spring sunshine. 

The Pre-School Team. 

The busiest of weeks there ever was! 

Wow! We have covered a lot this week, with us enjoying pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, St Piran’s Day celebrations and a service at Church on Wednesday, then World Book Day and dressing up on Thursday.  Also throwing in some traditional tales with our story of the week ‘The Princess and the Pea’. I really don’t think we could have fit any more in! 

It has been an exciting week of learning and activities for all the children to enjoy whatever day/s they have been in pre-school. 

A favourite activity this week has been creating their own Prince and Princess portraits, adorned with jewel encrusted gold crowns! We will be sure to share a picture when they are all on display.  We think they look fabulous! 

One display that has been finished is our Elmer the Elephant – Beautifully showing off all the painted patchwork squares the children painted.  It has been a great topic of conversation sat around the snack/lunch table to talk colours and what we can mix to make other colours.  

Outside we have been able to enjoy some garden time, and we spotted our first daffodil has sprung!.  A lovely pop of yellow that led us to thinking about what seeds we may plant this year to enjoy nurturing and growing.  

Since returning after half term, we have been focusing on number sequencing and recognition. Identifying numbers by the way they look, their names, and matching them to their representative quantities.  The children are all accessing this learning through play, adult led activities and number related books and songs.  

We hope everyone enjoys the weekend and we look forward to seeing everyone next week. 

The Pre-School Team. 

We have had a lovely first week back in pre-school for the beginning of Spring Term 2. 

The start of our fairy tale topic has been met with lots of enthusiasm from the children and has inspired lots of magical and mythical play. 

Our focus story this week has been ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, the children have enjoyed the story and used the character puppets during their own play to re tell the story. We have also created our own beanstalk and castle artwork. 

We have practised our counting and number recognition with magic beans and used playdoh to make golden eggs and golden coins.  

Inside our role play castle, the children have enjoyed sharing lots of different fairy tale books and talking about some of the traditional tales that they know.  

This week has seen some early sunny spring weather, which has enabled lots of learning and play outside.  We even worked on our gross motor skills by taking a visit to the school tyre park.  The children all enjoyed practicing their balancing and climbing in a different area and we will be sure to visit regularly.  

Next week sees us enjoy some important dates for our diary - 

Tuesday 4th March – Shrove Tuesday.  We will enjoy tasting some pancakes during our snack time and talk about why we have pancake day. 

Wednesday 5th March – St Piran’s Day. Optional to dress in black and white clothes.  We will attend St Piran’s Day Service at the church at 2.30pm. 

Thursday 6th March – World Book Day. Optional to dress as a favourite character or in pyjamas. Please be mindful that your child will still be playing and enjoying normal pre-school activities in these costumes, so nothing too precious please!  Children can also bring in a favourite book if they wish –please add their name to it.  We will try and share as many as possible during the day.  

Next week looks to be busy but lots of fun, we hope everyone enjoys the weekend. 

The Pre-School Team.  

A short but sweet week to end spring term 1 at pre-school. 

We enjoyed a firefighter focus this week to complete our learning around people who help us. Lots of imaginative roleplay of being firefighters and other emergency workers to help people in an emergency! We even had a look at how you train to become a firefighter and what skills you would need.  The children all think they would be brave enough to climb the very tall ladders!  

Our enquiry question for this half term ‘What is a city?’ has enabled us to cover some interesting learning opportunities for the children, exploring what sights, sounds, buildings and people we may come across when visiting a city. We also enjoyed Chinese New Year celebrations and discovering how and why the Chinese enjoy this vibrant celebration. 

Lots of lovely explore and learn time has been enjoyed this half term, and we have been lucky with the weather to also enjoy our learning and development outside too. The children were challenged to practice their accuracy skills of manoeuvring the bikes and trikes around a track of cones, showing perseverance and determination not to knock any over. 

When we return after half term, we have a new and fun enquiry question ‘What is a fairy-tale?’ We will read some traditional tales and other fun stories on the lead up to Easter, and we'll also be on the look out for Spring! A favourite time of year as we see and experience so many beautiful changes around us. We are sure both the children and adults are going to enjoy this topic and the change of seasons.  

We return to preschool on Monday 24th February for the start of Spring Term 2. 

We hope everyone enjoys the half term break and we look forward to seeing the children in a week’s time. 

The Pre-School Team. 

Dates for your diary. 

Monday 24th February – Spring Term 2 starts. 

Wednesday 5th March – St Piran's Day (Optional to wear black and white). 

Thursday 6th March – World Book Day (Optional to dress as favourite book character or Pyjamas) Children can bring in a favourite book.  We may not get time to read them all, but children can enjoy looking at them with friends, and they will have opportunity to talk about their favourite book in a group.  

Our book this week ‘All through the night’ explored the jobs that keep a city running and ready for the next day.  We discovered nurses, doctors, police officers, delivery workers and cleaners through this beautifully illustrated picture book to help us understand that many people still go out to work when we are asleep in our homes.  

The children enjoyed some doctors and nurse role play with our tuff tray becoming a medical table for the poorly babies.  Lots of bandages and plasters were applied and medicine given and we are pleased all babies are now very healthy!  

We had some grand conversations around the types of jobs there are, and who could recognise what they were from the uniforms or what vehicle they were in.  We were very impressed with how many job roles were known.  

We enjoyed discovering what an X-ray was and even had a go at our own X-ray art that the children found very entertaining as we had to spray their arms with paint! 

There has been lots of outside play in this sunny but rather chilly weather, please ensure your child comes to pre-school with a warm coat to ensure they enjoy their outside play as much as possible.

We can’t quite believe how fast this half term has gone, with next week being our final week before half term break.  

A reminder that Thursday is our last day with Friday being an Inset day for both pre-school and school. 

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend, 

The Pre-school Team.  

We are ending this week and waving goodbye to January on a brilliantly sunny Friday! 

What a difference the sunshine makes, and it has been lovely for the children to be enjoying their outdoor play with some winter sun.  

This week has seen us celebrate Chinese New Year, with lots of learning how and why the Chinese celebrate their new year at a different time to us. What preparation they do, the foods they cook, and what a Chinese parade looks like.  The children always love to watch the clips of the dragon dances. We have also enjoyed some tasting of prawn crackers, sweet and sour noodles and some egg fried rice. As always, the prawn crackers were a firm favourite!  

We talked about how each year is represented by an animal, and that this year is the year of the snake. The children have all, made their own Chinese snake to bring home. 

We looked at Chinese numbers and then mark maked their own numbers on to some lucky colour red paper before folding it and placing inside a Chinese patterned envelope.  

Next week we return to our city learning with our book ‘All through the night’ as we take a look at the people who work through the night while we are asleep.   

We hope everyone enjoys the sunshine whilst it is here and has a lovely weekend. 

The Pre-School Team. 

This week the children have enjoyed the focus of vehicles in the city, talking about all the different types of vehicles we may see and what they are used for.   

We had our own construction site with lorries and excavators to explore what a building site would look like, the children enjoyed moving around and filling containers with rice crispies as their building material. 

We were lucky to have Mrs Butlin come and join us on Tuesday for a little music session, the children really enjoyed themselves and listened well to Mrs Butlin's instructions.

Our focus on shapes and colour has continued with the children experiencing various activities. Playdoh and the shape cutters have been popular, we have also practiced our scissor cutting skills to complete a shape bus.  During carpet time we have played interactive colour recognition games, with the younger children becoming more confident to have a go.   

Next week sees the celebration of Chinese New Year, we will discover what this celebration means and how they celebrate. We will also have a taste of some Chinese foods, such as prawn crackers and noodles.  If there are any concerns with your child trying these foods, then please see a member of the team at drop off. 

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend, 

The Pre-School Team.

This week we have explored what a city looks like, from the tall buildings to the noisy sounds, and the places we can visit.  We have focussed on lots of new vocabulary to describe the city and names of buildings, such as the museum, the cathedral, the mall, but also other important buildings that we recognise such as the hospital, the police station and the fire station.  

Using inspiration from the bright artwork in this week’s book we have created our own city landscape pictures that will make a lovely display. 

Next week we will focus on what types of vehicles we may see around the city, from construction to public transport, and emergency vehicles.   

It has been lovely to have a dry spell of weather this week, with even some glimpses of that winter sunshine to make our outside play even more enjoyable.  Lots of climbing, building, and bike riding has been enjoyed.  

This half term we will also be focussing on our shapes and colours.  We have been working on a new display with the help of the children to support this and we will put a picture up when we have completed it.  

Lastly, this week has seen a few new starters join our pre-school, we have enjoyed helping them to settle in and the children have all been so lovely and welcoming to their new friends. 

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend, 

The Pre-School Team.