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. 

A big welcome back to all our pre-school families, and a warm welcome to our new children and families who are joining us this term. 

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and New Year, we are excited for the start of 2025 and the new term.  

The children have all retuned and settled back into pre-school, full of enthusiasm to share news of special gifts or moments they have had.  It has been lovely to have ‘grand conversations’ as a group to really listen and ask questions to all our friends about their Christmas celebrations.  

This week has been settling back into pre-school and an introduction of our new enquiry question for Spring Term 1, ‘What is a city?’  

We have enjoyed the story of ‘The Noisy Foxes’ which has started the topic off well as the foxes look to move from a noisy city to somewhere quiet in the countryside.  This opened lots of question from the children, such as, ‘Why is a city noisy? What is the countryside? What is in the city? - Lots of questions we will have fun finding the answers to over the next few weeks.  

As we always ask each term –  

If any emergency contact details have been changed for your child, please ensure we are made aware.  This includes email, and phone numbers. 

Also, if you receive funded hours, you may have received a reminder to renew your funding code for the new term.  Please ensure any changes to codes are given to a member of staff by the end of next week.  

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend, 

The Pre-School Team. 

A final festive week of fun. 

All our practice learning the songs and actions for ‘The Twinkly Nativity’ really showed, the children were absolutely amazing at singing along with the whole school.  We were pleased to have so many of the children join us in the church for the performance, and all the team were so proud of the children for their confidence and enthusiasm while performing in front of a very packed audience!  

 We also enjoyed a visit from Santa this week, the children were wonderfully polite while he talked to them and kindly gave them all a chocolate lolly.  We also enjoyed some party games and made some magic reindeer food.  

On behalf of all the pre-school team, we would like to say a big thank you for all the lovely cards, gifts and Christmas well wishes we have received.  

We have all had such a lovely half term with the children. 

We hope all our pre-school families have a wonderful Christmas break and enjoy some fun family time. We return to pre-school on Tuesday 7th January 2025.

A VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR  

FROM ALL OF THE PRE-SCHOOL TEAM. 

We have had lots of very excited children in pre-school this week, with many of them sharing stories of putting up their Christmas decorations at home, visiting Santa with their families and even some of them have been ice-skating! 

We can’t quite believe we only have one more week to go, it is always lovely to share the excitement of this time of year with the children in pre-school.  

This week we have enjoyed some festive baking of gingerbread people, with the children showing some very impressive rolling, cutting and decorating skills.  

Alongside this we have listened to some festive sound stories, used musical instruments to describe sounds we hear at Christmas time, painted baubles and practiced our wrapping skills at our present wrapping station.  

Reminders for our final week - 

Monday – FOPS Christmas fair at 2pm in school hall. 

Wednesday – Pre-School Christmas party and Santa visit, 1.15pm start.  

Thursday - ‘The Twinkly Nativity’ 2pm in church. 

Friday – Last day of term, pre-school and school close at 1.30pm.  

Lastly, a polite reminder that we discourage children from bringing their own toys/teddies into pre-school. It causes much upset when they are lost/damaged or played with by someone else.  We have lots of wonderful toys for the children to enjoy while they are with us. If toys do come in, then we put them in the child’s bag or sit them on the shelf until home time. Thank you for your understanding on this.  

We look forward to a final festive week with the children, 

The Pre-School Team. 

Christmas has arrived in pre-school!  

The children were all delighted to arrive last week to see pre-school decorated for Christmas. With the addition of Santa’s Post Office and Grotto for our role play areas.  

We have posted many letters to Santa already! The children have also enjoyed being elves and issuing tickets to visit Santa's Grotto.

The next couple of weeks will see us enjoy many festive stories and also a look at our traditional Nativity story. 

We have been busy practicing our Nativity songs, and it is lovely to see that the children have been practicing at home too.  We could definitely be heard in our whole school singing assembly this week.   

All the children finished their Xmas tree decorations and some of them have been over to school to hang them on the hall tree.  Those that haven’t will get the opportunity to hang theirs next week.  

We hope that everyone has had a safe and lovely weekend. 

The pre-School Team. 

This week was our last week with our focused learning around farms, we ended this fun topic discovering and discussing all things tractors. An absolutely vital vehicle for farmers! 

We have looked at how tractors have changed over the years, what different parts they have, what other equipment they can attach to a tractor, and all the many jobs that a tractor can do around the farm!  

We used some of our toy tractors for mark making tractor tracks with paint, we have also cut and stuck together tractor parts and used our Duplo bricks to build our own tractors during play.  

Next week will see a transition into the festive period of term, we are all very excited to start bringing out the tinsel and glitter! We have already been busy practicing our songs for ‘The Twinkly Nativity’ - more information on our newsletter.  

The children used green paint and pompoms for another mark making activity, we then added colorful fingerprint dots - when put together this will make a Christmas tree decoration in our window.  

Newsletters did go out this week, but if you have not yet received one then it will be attached below.   

For our Nativity performance, it only needs to be their top that is preferably white or yellow. If you have any questions regarding the Nativity performance in church, then please come and speak to us.    

Finally, to combine our week of tractors and the start of Christmas celebrations, if you can support Pelynt Young Farmers Club, their annual Christmas Tinsel Tractor run will be on Sunday 15th December. Always an amazing display of decorated tractors.

We hope every one has a lovely weekend,
The Pre-School Team