A wonderful week of special celebrations! 

With Monday (April 22nd) being the annual date that we celebrate our remarkable planet with Earth Day, we decided to continue this theme throughout the week so that all the children could access some learning and activities that help them to understand how important it is to protect and care for our planet and the different ways we can do that working together.  

The children were already aware of some the things that we do to help protect planet Earth and all it's living things. They told us it is really important to not drop litter, especially into the ocean as the fish sometimes mistake it for food and will eat it, making them poorly! They were also able to tell us some of the things that we can recycle to be used again, and how we must not waste water.

One of our hands on activities this week has been to make wildflower seed bombs. We learned that not only do wild flowers look pretty, but they are very important for the wildlife, including our special bumblebees. They have been planted into our garden areas and hopefully we may see some beautiful flowers popping up where there wasn't any before! 
We have also celebrated our cress heads growing. The children could not believe how quickly their ‘green hair’ has sprouted! We may need some patience for our other planted seeds.

This week we have also celebrate ‘St George’s Day’. The children were shown a picture of Saint George and asked who he may be, and what was he wearing?  The children said he could be a knight as he had a sword and shield.  We listened to a story explaining that Saint George was a soldier who lived hundreds of years ago, who liked to help and protect people. Saint George rescued a royal princess from a fierce dragon and England adopted him as a patron saint. We then discussed what the words ‘protect’ and ‘fierce’ mean. We talked about St George’s flag and painted our own using our fingers to paint the red cross. 

In other news a letter will be sent home to give information about the ‘Big Brush Club’ we will be taking part in here at Pre-School. It’s an NHS funded scheme to improve oral wellbeing in children. You can visit www.bigbrushclub.co.uk for more information. If you have any questions, then please do come and speak to us at Pre-School.   

Lastly, with weather still being very unsettled, even on those sunny days it is very chilly. Please could we ask that your child still comes in with suitable clothing (layers are good) even if it looks sunny and warm. Also, that they wear shoes with their toes covered. We thank you for your understanding on this.  

Next week we look forward to our book ‘Sam Plants a Sunflower’ and will be planting our own sunflower seeds too! 

Have a lovely weekend, 

The Pre-School Team.  

We have reached the end of Spring Term 2 and what a busy term it has been. The children have really enjoyed our focus on animals and birds with lots of activities and learning focussed on our enquiry question - Who left these footprints?  

Alongside this we have also celebrated World Book Day, St Piran’s Day, British Science Week and Easter. 

This week we have enjoyed lots of Easter themed activities, including egg hunts, egg decorating and even a lovely visit from Mrs Stanbury and 2 of her week old lambs! The children were very lucky to have a go at bottle feeding them and having lots of cuddles. The children and adults all absolutely loved having them visit.  

Some of our children joined the whole school over at church for an Easter celebration service with Reverend Richard.

This week we sadly had to say our goodbyes to Mrs Oliver, the children all made a handprint flower that were presented to Mrs Oliver as a bouquet. All of us at Pre-School will miss Mrs Oliver, but we wish her the very best of luck at her new school. 

On our return to Pre-School, we hope to see some more settled weather so that the children can have more use of our garden area which will link in nicely to our new enquiry question for Summer Term 1 - Are plants alive? The children will experience planting seeds, looking after their plants, discovering minibeasts and learning about simple life cycles.  

From all the Pre-School Team we would like to wish you a very Happy Easter, hopefully we all get to enjoy some sunny days and family time.  

We look forward to seeing the children when we return on Monday 15th April.  

What an amazing week of little scientists celebrating British Science Week 2024! 

We started the week by discussing what we thought Science may be about and the children had some thoughtful ideas such as being able to make things or mix potions! Some of children had not heard of the word Science and that is totally understandable at their young age.  Science at this age is learning about the things that are around us and noticing change, and we link this in to our Understanding the World area of learning.

We have been talking about the four Seasons and so we challenged the children to spot the changes that happen over the course of a year. We used pictures to place into the correct season as a fun way of recognising these changes.  

The weather was something the children found easy to recognise as it is something we talk about frequently – we are always on the lookout for a rainbow! We took this in to our first experiment of the week to grow our own rainbows!
We have also experimented with bicarbonate soda and vinegar to make fizzy colours, used special paper and a water spray bottle for colour diffusing our names, and even made raisins dance in fizzy water!  The children have all thoroughly enjoyed the variety of experiments this week, and it’s been lovely to see and hear their enthusiasm. 

As from Mrs Oliver’s newsletter, you will have received the letter regarding the school's outbreak of Norovirus. We would like to reassure you that extra precautions are in place to minimise the spread of the virus. If you have any concerns, then please contact us at Pre-School.  

Thank you for any donations that were made to Comic Relief on Friday. The link is still live via the Newsletter for anyone still wanting to donate.  

Please can we ask that no additional toys are sent in with your child unless it is their show and tell allocated day. It reduces upset from breakages or other children wanting to use the toy also.  We understand a couple of younger children have a comfort teddy they bring along, and this is still absolutely fine.   

Letters will have started to come out to those of you with children who have changes to their session days/times.  If you have any queries relating to the changes, please do email the preschool email preschool@pelyntprimary.co.uk 

Parent consultations are the week beginning Monday 25th March - Please do book a slot if you feel you would like an informal meeting with Mrs Rickard or Mrs Gravener about your child.

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend. 

The Pre-School Team.  

This week our focussed book has been ‘Brown Bear Brown Bear, what can you see?’ The children have all enjoyed the story throughout the week and because of its rhythmic and repetitive language they have begun to tell the story together as a group whilst it is being read, which has been great in developing language and encouraging some of our quieter children to join in.  

The story using vibrant pictures of favourite animals helps to develop colour recognition and we built on this learning through group sorting activities, colour hunts, and their integrated play throughout the week.  

The children have also enjoyed investigating about bears, how many different types there are, where they live, and most importantly that they love to eat fish! We watched a clip of the Grizzly Bear of Alaska and their amazing salmon catching techniques.  

For our artwork this week the children have used soft brown pastel crayons to colour a paper plate for our own brown bears. Pastels are great for the children to explore as they are soft and easy to use for their developing pencil grip, also they can use their fingers to smudge the pastel colour. We then added ears, eyes, muzzle, nose and a mouth to the bears face. Alongside this, the children have painted the animals of the story with the colours from the book.  

With so many of our children now enjoying ‘Show and Share’, we have decided to go back to allocated days to keep it fair and allow us to give each child the opportunity to stand and talk about their item – Please do check the list in the entrance of Pre-School to see your child's allocated day. 

A polite reminder that if your child has been poorly with any sickness or diarrhoea, it is our policy that they must not return to Pre-School for 48 hours from their last episode of sickness or diarrhoea. Please see the attached letter regarding this.  

Next week we will enjoy the story ‘A Tale of Two Feathers’ and discover more about birds.
Also, we will be celebrating St Piran’s Day on Tuesday. Your child is welcomed to dress in something black, white or gold to celebrate this special day, and we will be joining the whole school for our St Piran’s assembly over in church at 2pm.  

World Book Day is Thursday 7th March, we will be sharing some of our favourite stories with the children. Your child is welcome to dress as their favourite book character or bring in a favourite book to share with their friends.  

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend. 

The Pre-School Team.  

Our last week of Spring Term 1 was a celebration of Chinese New Year, this year being the year of the dragon!  

The children have all created some lovely Chinese dragon art and decorated Chinese lanterns. We have enjoyed learning about how families prepare their homes for celebrating Chinese New Year and what some of the traditions mean. The children learned that red was a colour for luck and that gold coins are given in red envelopes to the children as gifts. They have enjoyed looking for our own gold coins in the rice tuff tray and placing them into the Chinese envelopes. 

This week the children have all had the opportunity to try some Chinese foods, the noodles and prawn crackers were very popular! 

We have watched some Chinese festivals and the wonderful lion and dragon dances that are performed. We even had a go at performing as lion dancers ourselves!  

It has been a very busy half term, but the children have all thoroughly enjoyed their learning and exploring time and shown great interest in all our activities. It was so lovely to be able to fit in our first Pre-School trip together too, and we will hopefully get the chance to arrange another outing in the Summer Term so don’t worry if you didn't get to join us on this one.  

When we return after half term our new enquiry question will be ‘Who made these footprints?” With the focus being on animals and birds. A lovely theme as we move into Spring Term 2, and hopefully some visits to Pre-School from some animals.  

We hope everyone has a lovely half term break, and we look forward to seeing the children when we return on Monday 19th February. 

The Pre-School Team. 

What an exciting week we have had in Pre-School!  

The children have thoroughly embraced our book of the week, ‘The Train Ride’. Last week some of the children helped to paint a very important part of our role play corner, our very own green train for Pelynt Pre-School's train station. They have all shown imaginative play skills by swapping roles of being a train driver, passengers, ticket conductors and even ticket office workers.  

Alongside this we have painted our own trains and carriages for our ‘train name’ display – look at the photo of all our colourful trains! 

We talked about keeping ourselves safe at a train station, which also linked beautifully onto our ‘Road Safety’ learning for this week too. We have talked through some very important rules of how we cross a road safely and the children took this learning into their play and explore time. Using the bikes and taking turns being a lollipop person, they stopped traffic and remembered their rules to check it was safe to cross the road. It was great to see them put into practice what we had learned. So hopefully they will all be saying, ‘Stop! Look! Listen! Think!’- When crossing the roads with you.  

We have enjoyed using play doh this week to build on our fine motor skills, rolling and cutting our 2D shapes, and manipulating it into models of transport also.  

We ended the week with our very exciting Pre-School train trip along the Looe – Liskeard Valley Line. It was so lovely to see some of the children not only enjoy their first Pre-School outing, but also experience travelling on a train for the first time! What a brilliant real-life experience after all our learning linked to transport this half term. Once again, thank you to all the parents and carers who came along with us. We hoped you enjoyed the trip as much as we did! 

Please note next weeks ‘Stay & Play’ session is postponed until after half term. We will inform you of a new date when it is arranged.  

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend and look forward to seeing the children next week to celebrate Chinese New Year.  

The Pre-School Team. 

Please remember - School and Pre-School Closed on Friday 9th February for INSET day. 

Spring Term 2 starts on Monday 19th February.