Preschool
First Bus brought a double-decker bus for the children to explore
We began our week with our trip to Farmer Palmers. It was lovely to see so many of our families enjoying the farm and the fantastic activities it had to offer.
On Tuesday, First Bus brought a double decker bus for the children to explore. They showed great excitement whilst exploring, sitting beautifully in their seats whilst listening to a story. Grant, the bus driver gave them each a ticket when leaving the bus.
We hope you have a wonderful Summer Break and look forward to welcoming our Caterpillars and Butterflies to Preschool when we return in September.
What is a holiday?
Our focus this week is 'holidays'. We have discussed ‘What is a holiday?’ ‘How do you travel there?’ and ‘What might you do when you go on holiday?’ Eating ice creams and building sand castles was a popular answer, so we used paint and sand to create amazing textured sand castles and ice creams with “sprinkles on top”.
Our Butterflies spread their wings and flew into Reception to experience time with their new teachers. They were very excited to explore their new classroom!
Our Caterpillars played listening games using sound bags and listening to environmental sounds, identifying what they heard. Their listening skills were fantastic! We’ve explored musical instruments and the different sounds they make and our Caterpillars chose songs to sing along to whilst playing.
In our construction area, we placed large wooden blocks, guttering, planks of wood and a garage to explore how to increase the speed of the vehicles travelling down ramps. It is lovely to see our children working in collaboration to share their ideas, enhance their play and achieve their desired outcomes! Outside, we’ve used paints and water to explore colour mixing. The children made their water pink.
Four butterflies have hatched out of their chrysalises
Our week began with 4 out of 5 of our Butterflies hatching out of their chrysalises! The children were very excited about seeing their beautifully coloured wings. On Tuesday afternoon, we released them in the Preschool Garden. Both our Caterpillars and Butterflies, explored printing butterfly wings using paints and brushes. They painted one side of a butterfly, before folding their paper over to print a symmetrical pattern on a blank set of wings. They created some amazing patterns!
At the beginning of our week, we created a waterway. The children explored scooping and pouring water through funnels and down the guttering into the water tray below. As the weather has been incredibly hot, we discussed what we like to eat to keep us cool. Many of our children suggested ice lollies and ice cream would keep us cool! They created some fantastic ice creams using paints, cotton buds and fingerprints.
Our success of the week was our Early Years Sports Day. We are incredibly proud of all our children and would like to thank our families for coming to support their children. We can’t wait for next year!
Keeping cool in the shade
Our week began by observing the changes in our caterpillar cup. Over the weekend, the caterpillars created their chrysalises. The children were fascinated with the changes and are very excited for the next stage of the life cycle.
On the craft table, we’ve used egg cartons to create caterpillars, and paper and paint sticks to make beautiful butterflies. This craft is a two-stage process to show the life cycle of a butterfly.
We’ve taken advantage of the outside space, having picnic lunches in the shade, playing parachute games to keep us cool and enjoying lots of water play! We’ve spent a lot of time looking at books and exploring jigsaw puzzles to keep the children calm and cool whilst inside. Our children have coped incredibly well in the heat. Thank you to our families for ensuring their child attended with everything needed to keep them safe whilst playing and exploring. We look forward to our Sports Day next Tuesday, 30th June!
bikes and trikes
This week, in PE we practised our first Sports Day race in the hall. The children listened beautifully and demonstrated amazing balancing skills when using the bean bags! Our Caterpillars have shown great excitement with our new guttering and stands. They’ve played ‘Ready, steady go’ games using cars, balls and aeroplanes down their ramps.
On Monday, we visited the Forest Schools area where the children observed the changes in the environment since their last visit. They identified the grass was ‘tall’ and some blades were taller than our Butterflies! We saw lots of insects such as butterflies and ladybirds. We found lots of minibeasts hiding in their habitats in the logs. The children showed great care and concern for the minibeasts and the forest school environment.
We’ve explored road safety, what this means to stay safe near the road and the role of a traffic light. Our Butterflies identified the sequence of lights on a traffic light and could tell us what the red and green lights meant. We finished our day with the traffic light game on the bikes and trikes in the playground! We’ve ended our week making a roadway in our classroom with the children collaborating and elaborating their amazing ideas! What a busy week!
Nature, all around us
This week, our Butterflies have transferred our sweet pea seedlings from their seed trays into large pots. They’ve shown great care, looking after the growing corner, watering and identifying when the plants have grown.
On Monday, our Caterpillars and Butterflies participated in an 'environmental sounds' walk. They identified familiar sounds, such as birds singing and an aeroplane flying in the sky. Many noticed that the trees were full of green leaves and the blackberry bushes were full of white blossom. Our Butterflies used a tick sheet to mark when they had seen specific objects during their walk and were proud to celebrate their successes in finding all the items on their list.
We used paint pads and chunky chalks to practise our early mark-making skills using lines and circles for the Caterpillars. The Butterflies began mark-making to form familiar letters from their phonic sessions in their paint pads. Finally, we’ve welcomed 5 tiny caterpillars to our class. We will observe the changes as they eat their food and begin to grow. The children are showing great care and concern for them. We can’t wait to share their progress!
Barry, the giant Hawkmoth
This week, our Butterflies have explored mark-making in shaving foam where they were encouraged to write familiar numbers using their fingers. They’ve completed their set 1 phonics sounds with sounds ‘i’ and ‘n’. We are incredibly proud of our Butterflies and their enthusiasm to participate in their daily phonics sessions!
In PE, we practised our ball skills, throwing and catching large balls, progressing on to kicking a football at a target on the wall.
Our Caterpillars used vehicles and paint to explore a variety of marks created by vehicle wheels moving them up, down, round and around! They used the children’s knives to help our Butterflies cut an enormous watermelon to see what was inside. They ate the watermelon for snack the following day.
On Tuesday, we found a moth in the outside area. The children showed great care in finding a home for it, and ensuring it had food to eat. We used the large screen to research what type of moth we had found. We believe it was a giant Hawkmoth. Later in the day, a group of children took the moth to the courtyard area where they set him free. They named the moth Barry!
enormous lighthouse Model
We’ve had another busy week in Preschool! The Caterpillars and Butterflies demonstrated their fantastic collaborating skills when creating their enormous lighthouse using cardboard boxes before collecting their paintbrushes in preparation to paint their masterpiece.
We’ve made sea creature biscuits and some amazing under the sea pictures using coloured cake cases and PVA glue.
In PE, we’ve focused on our hand-eye co-ordination, using bats and soft balls to practise hitting them across the school hall. The Butterflies showed great perseverance with this and didn’t give up until they succeeded! We’ve used paint to colour our water trays, where the children have shown great enthusiasm by filling and pouring water from pots and bottles down the waterways.
Makaton Signs of the week: Lighthouse, shell, rock pool
Our Nursery Rhyme of the week is 'Jack and Jill'. This week in Preschool, we’ve created rock pools using yogurt pots, newspaper, PVA glue and sea creatures. The children used their fine motor skills to scrunch paper to create rocks before gluing them into their pools. We’ve explored pebble painting and used textured paint to decorate sea creatures.
Our Butterflies continued their daily phonics sessions, learning sounds: ‘t’ and ‘i’. They’ve listened to rhyming stories and engaged in a cutting and sticking activity matching words that rhyme.
Our Caterpillars have shown great enthusiasm exploring the sandpit and water tray, scooping and pouring water from one container to another.
We’ve used the outdoor stage to perform an amazing show for our friends using instruments and ribbons.
Our Butterflies have shown great care in the environment, watering the seeds they’ve planted, and they have observed the changes as the carrot seedlings begin to shoot.
Makaton signs of the week: Rocks, sand and beach
This week we continue our focus of ’Under the Sea’ and ‘Splash’. Our Makaton signs of the week are rocks, sand and beach. Our rhyme of the week is Rub-a-dub-dub.
The Butterflies began exploring rockpools -what they are and what you would find in them. We had lots of water play, fishing for sea creatures and exploring floating and sinking. In the mud kitchen, the children engaged in some amazing imaginative play where they prepared a picnic for a trip to the beach.
In PE, we’ve explored balancing and co-ordination using benches and A-frames to climb over, under and through apparatus. The wooden benches were used to balance along an elevated platform to promote balancing and strengthen gross motor skills as they climbed up the bench. We’ve moved large balls around the hall by throwing, rolling and kicking and used targets such as buckets to improve the accuracy of our aim.
The Butterflies used a variety of media to mark-make from gloop, paint and large felt tip pens. The Caterpillars used water, balls and paintbrushes to observe the marks they make when dipped in water and placed on the ground.
On Wednesday, the whole class participated in "Miles for Mosaic". We ran a total of 399 laps of the playground! This is a distance of just under 20 miles, which is amazing! If you would like to make a donation to the Just Giving page, the link is still live, and we would appreciate any donation towards this worthy charity. Thank you, in advance, for your generosity.
the seaside
We moved our focus to the seaside this week in Preschool. The children shared some lovely memories of their experiences at the beach!
We’ve created marks in a variety of textures and the Butterflies have used tools, such as brushes and pens, to write letters and numbers.
We opened an ice cream parlour, where the children used their early mark-making skills to take orders from customers before creating some delicious treats! Our Caterpillars and Butterflies created an amazing under the sea scene, which is displayed in our room. It looks fantastic!
We began planting seeds in the outside area. The children have shown great responsibility in watering the pots and are waiting patiently for the carrot shoots to pop through the soil!
Exciting new topics
This week, we began our new topics. The Caterpillars' topic is 'Under the Sea' and the Butterflies' is 'Splash!' We began our week exploring different sea creatures using sensory play such as rice and shaving foam to hide creatures to initiate ‘what’ and ‘where’ questions.
On Tuesday afternoon, the children used their imagination to design a fish! They chose the colour, pattern, textures and how many senses they would have, such as eyes and mouths, and the locations of these features. They were fabulous!
During outside play, our children collaborated and elaborated their ideas to create a ‘pirate ship’ using the large wooden blocks to create the shape. It was amazing to observe the children using their mark-making skills to show their ideas, working together to create a most imaginative ship!
Spring and Easter
This week our focus is Spring and Easter. We visited the Forest School area for Spring Walks to observe the changes in the environment as we move from Winter to Spring. The children showed a keen interest in the Bug Hotel, where they used magnifying glasses to see minibeasts in their habitats.
Our enrichment activity for the week was making chocolate nests using shredded wheat. The Butterflies explored ways to melt the chocolate and identified what was needed to turn it from a solid to a liquid; heat! They chose objects to smash their chocolate eggs in preparation to sprinkle on to their nests. Many chose the enormous rolling pin!
We made a “Thank You” card for Chelsi from Little Robins Gymnastics Club as the children participated in their last gymnastics session on Wednesday afternoon. It’s fantastic to see the progress they have made in the last 11 weeks!
We ended our week working together to create a giant egg for our window display and an egg hunt. We’d like to wish our families a very Happy Easter.
Old Macdonald had a Farm
This week our focus Nursery Rhyme is Old Macdonald had a Farm and our Makaton signs of the week are Cat, Horse and Farmer.
The Butterflies created scarecrows using a variety of 2D shapes. They displayed fantastic fine motor skills when cutting their shapes naming each shape they selected.
The Caterpillars have shown great enthusiasm in the outside area where they’ve practised scooping and pouring using jugs and cups to transfer the water from one object to another.
We’ve made sandwiches for snack, embedding our learning of where our food comes from. The children had the choice of cheese or jam for their filling. They looked delicious!
Healthy Living
This week, our Butterflies have been learning about healthy and unhealthy foods and drinks. They’ve sorted foods into groups: foods we should eat lots of, such as fruit and vegetables, and foods we should eat less frequently, such as chocolate and cake.
The Butterflies made farm machinery, such as tractors and combine harvesters, during a cutting and sticking activity and identified how the machine is used on a farm.
Our Caterpillars have participated in a whole-class PE session in the hall with a focus of balance and co-ordination. The Caterpillars listened and followed instructions very well with the guidance of the Butterflies as their positive role models – fantastic!
We made cupcakes to continue our topic of 'Food from the Farm'. Our Butterflies named the ingredients needed to make the cakes and could identify where on the farm they came from, such as flour from wheat, eggs from chickens and milk from cows.
World Book Day
We’ve had an incredibly busy week in Preschool. Our nursery rhyme of the week is Baa Baa Black Sheep and we’ve learnt the Makaton signs for cow and pig.
The Butterflies have learnt the names of baby farm animals and completed a cutting and sticking activity matching mother and baby animals. Our Caterpillars have explored the outside area playing in the sandpit and creating seats out of tyres and grass enabling them a space to sit and look at books. We’ve made bread rolls and learnt the process of growing, harvesting and milling wheat to create flour. Thursday was World Book Day. The children dressed up as their favourite book character. It was lovely to see so many children bring in their favourite books for us all to share.
Year 3 joined us for buddy reading and the Butterflies met author Linda Webb. She read her story to the class and gave the children opportunities to meet the characters of the book.
We explored different ways to listen to stories and ended World Book Day watching Room on the Broom!
Shrove Tuesday
This week, the Preschool children had pancakes for snack as they learnt about Shrove Tuesday. They had a choice of toppings: lemon and sugar, orange segments or plain pancakes. They used the new cutlery to eat their pancakes. We linked making pancakes to our new topics ‘Food from the Farm’ for our Caterpillars and ‘Down on the Farm’ for the Butterflies. We explored where flour, eggs and milk come from and took it in turns to toss pancakes in a pan.
As the sunshine made a surprise appearance, our beautiful Spring bulbs came into bloom bringing insects such as bees and bumblebees to our garden. The children were fascinated by the size of the bumblebee! We explored making structures and enclosures using wooden dominoes and wooden blocks.
Chelsi from Little Robins Gymnastics Club ran another amazing gym session where the class were introduced to Hopscotch and used a springboard to jump onto a box. What a busy week!
Chinese New Year
This week, our Caterpillars and Butterflies went on a bug hunt in forest school. They showed great enthusiasm hunting in the rain!
We turned our focus to Chinese New Year where we explored a variety of foods during our food tasting activity and created a ginormous Chinese Dragon for the wall.
Chelsi returned for another exciting gymnastics session using a variety of objects to climb up and over, encouraging the children to jump off of the gym apparatus.
Our mark making found us exploring wax crayon rubbing. We used textured stencils to create dinosaur shapes by placing stencils under large sheets of paper and rubbing our crayons over the top. Our next step for this, is to take our crayons and paper into the outside area to explore a variety of textures!
Fantastic fossils and fluffy polar bears
This week the Butterflies have explored fossils. They used fantastic language to describe the varying textures of our classroom fossils, printed the smaller ones in playdough and created their very own salt dough fossils. In PE our focus was gross motor skills, climbing up and over the A-frames.
Our Caterpillars continue their focus of animals and, this week, they’ve explored polar animals, creating fluffy polar bears in the craft area. We’ve extended mark-making activities by printing fantastic animal and dinosaur creations that the children made using their fingertips on a painted surface. We’ve made great use of the new puddle suits as the children have shown great excitement puddle-jumping in our ginormous puddle!
Outdoor learning
We’ve had another busy week in Preschool! Tuesday afternoon, we visited the Forest School area where the children explored the mud kitchen and took it in turns to climb the tree. Our Butterflies went on a shape hunt in the outside area and extended their hunt into the school playground; they found a variety of 2D shapes. One of the Butterfly focus groups introduced ABAB patterns where they demonstrated amazing understanding extending their patterns to ABCABC patterns, fantastic! The Caterpillars focused on rote counting, using objects such as cotton reels to create towers in preparation to practise their counting in sequence.
We explored lots of mark making both inside and outside using many medias and a variety of tools. We ended our week making pizzas.
forest school
Preschool began their week with a visit to the forest school area. They explored the environment, walking through the squelchy mud, lifting logs to hunt for minibeasts, played in the mud kitchen and climbed trees. It was fantastic to see our Caterpillars and Butterflies enjoying the outside space.
We’ve made the most of the wet weather this week, playing in the ginormous puddle in our outside space, jumping, scooping and pouring water down the guttering. We made bird feeders using pine cones, seeds and butter. Once set, our children will hang them around the outside space to welcome our little visitors to the garden. We’ve been busy crafting, creating handprint dinosaurs and flying pterodactyls. It’s lovely to see our Butterflies working collaboratively in the garden area, building and balancing using crates and tyres.
Gymnastics
This week, Chelsi from Little Robins Gymnastics Club led her first Gymnastics session. The children demonstrated great listening skills and showcased their fantastic balancing and co-ordination skills when navigating the equipment. Our Caterpillars further developed their balancing skills during an adult-initiated physical development session.
We continued our focus on Winter where we explored ice painting and a snow-themed tuff tray with a variety of textures and arctic animals. In Maths, our Butterflies focus was matching numerals and quantity and our Caterpillars further developed their counting skills, counting objects up to 5.
Welcome Back & Happy new year!
Our Caterpillars and Butterflies returned to Preschool with lots of enthusiasm to explore our new topics ‘Animals’ for our Caterpillar class and ‘Stomp, Roar!’ for our Butterflies. As the weather was so cold the beginning of our week, we explored ice in the outside area and in the classroom with our ice castles and frozen animals. We’ve learnt what conditions are needed for water to freeze and discussed why ice melts.
On Tuesday, the children were offered crackers for snack where they were provided with knives to spread their butter. Our Butterflies had their first PE session in the school hall where their focus was balancing. They demonstrated fantastic listening skills throughout their session.
Christmas
Our Caterpillars and Butterflies share the same focus for the final three weeks of term, Christmas! At the beginning of the week, our children showed great enthusiasm decorating our Christmas tree. We have made Christmas decorations to hang on our tree and have begun learning our song for the Nativity performance. We’ve explored different ways of mark making: printing Christmas-themed shapes to practising writing in our Christmas Cards. Our Butterflies continue their pre-phonics focus of rhyming and, on Friday, explored different materials in the environment using magnets to test whether objects were made of metal. On Wednesday, our Butterflies joined Reception to create Christingles. They learnt what each piece of the Christingle represents and why the service is important to Christians.
CHRIStingle
We visited the church to construct a Christingle in preparation for the Christingle Service. We learnt what each component of a Christingle represents.
BONFIRE NIGHT
We learnt about Bonfire Night, why we see fireworks on 5th November and what they represent. The children created a variety of firework pictures using different media. We explored a sensory tuff tray which represented a bonfire using leaves, twigs, jelly and spices such as cinnamon and nutmeg. Our Butterflies showed great enthusiasm, using their senses to explore the tray.
Goldilocks and the Three Bears
At the beginning of our week, we revisited our traditional tale Goldilocks and the Three Bears. On Monday and Tuesday, the children were offered porridge for snack, just like the three bears.
For some of our children, this was their first experience of porridge.
Some children were not keen on the texture; however, some asked for more!
We began a group task where the children were encouraged to collaborate ideas to create a structure, such as a house. They decided to draw their ideas and place them in the outside area to remind them of what they would like to achieve. Our children have shown great enthusiasm for this activity, listening to each other, working together and finally ending the task by painting their creation. Amazing teamwork Preschool!
As we continue to focus on Autumn, we created a tuff tray with Autumnal items such as leaves, conkers, pumpkins and apples to encourage our younger children to explore a variety of textures using their hands. The butterflies explored coloured shaving foam, creating marks in their foam using their fingertips. We ended our week with our first baking experience of the year. Our children made apple cupcakes. They looked and smelt delicious!
Autumn Walk
This week, we have been busy exploring colour mixing using primary colours. We’ve used different textures when mixing, such as shaving foam, gloop and poster paints. The children have shown great enthusiasm!
We’ve completed an Autumn Walk in the school grounds finding lots of exciting objects. The children showed great pride in sharing with their peers what they’d found. We’ve completed our week with a shape hunt, looking for basic 2D shapes in our environment.
Our Bodies
This week, our Butterflies continued their focus on ‘Our Bodies’. We’ve learnt we have bones inside our bodies that help create our shape and enable us to stand, walk and run!
Some of our children could tell us these bones make up our skeleton and, without this, we would “Wobble like a jelly!”
We’ve opened a Junk Modelling station where children have used their imaginations to create some amazing models, such as their homes, using gloopy glue, cellotape, scissors and varying shaped and sized boxes.
What a busy week!
Our Butterflies continue their topic "All About Me" where this week we’ve focused on different homes and what these homes may be made of. We’ve observed some amazing creative play in the outside area where the children used foam bricks to create their own home, using sand as cement to stick their bricks together! For Maths this week, we’ve discovered who is the tallest in our class and the shortest, encouraging mathematical language, sizing our children from tallest to smallest and introducing number recognition.
Alongside all the above amazing activities, our Butterflies have made photo frames for their family photographs and iced biscuit faces using icing, sprinkles and chocolate drops to create facial features. What a busy week!
All About me
Our learning focus this half term has been 'All About Me' where we have explored our families, what being a part of a family means, where we live and the different types of homes we live in. Our children have created homes using a variety of resources, such as small construction materials, foam building blocks and large cardboard boxes where the children worked collaboratively to create an amazing structure with a door that opened and closed. It's lovely to observe the children's early mark-making skills when they draw their ideas on to a piece of paper before beginning their construction.
