We have continued to look at countries we can fly to with our focus last week being France.  We took a closer look at the famous French landmark, the Eiffel Tower. 

The children didn't believe that you could get to the top, so we watched a clip of a family visiting the Eiffel Tower, and how you can climb lots of stairs, or even get in a lift to take you to the top of the tower to look out across city of Paris. 

We said some simple French phrases and the children practised saying 'Hello' and 'Goodbye' to each other in French.  William also shared with us how to say, 'thank you' with 'merci', so we used this at snack time.  

We also looked at how the Eiffel Tower is built and used paper straws to cut and create some of the structure using a silhouette of the tower.  

We also completed some French flag artwork using blue and red tissue paper to complete the correct area with the correct colour.  

This week we have been looking at where we may go for a cold holiday, what activities we could do, and what we would need to pack.  We looked at skiing holidays, climbing snowy mountains, sledging and ice-skating. The children were amazed that these activities were not only done at Christmas time, and some countries have snow a lot of the year. 

Lots of learning and understanding the world around them as we take a closer look at some different countries.  

In other news, an email has been sent home from school for those parents of children transitioning to Reception in September.  Tuesday 8th July is our transition morning for those children.  If your child attends pre-school on a Tuesday, then we will walk them over to Lantic class.  If your child does not attend pre-school on Tuesday mornings then please take them to the school entrance for 9am, they will then need to be collected from the school again at 11.45am. 

Any questions then please do come and speak to one of the team.  

Have a lovely weekend, 

The Pre-School Team. 

This week we have been enjoying our book ‘Kitchen Disco’, a funny rhyming book where the fruit comes to life and parties in the kitchen after dark! 

We had our own kitchen disco dancefloor and have enjoyed lots of disco music and dancing.  

The children have been identifying healthy and unhealthy foods and with a couple of new songs we have been singing, do not be surprised if you hear the lyrics ‘vegetables and fruits, are really very yummy, so put them in your tummy’ being sung by the children.   

The children sorted pictures of foods into the correct groups, and we talked about how we eat lots of the healthy foods, and a little of the unhealthy.  

We had a pineapple to look at and create through paint, the children used sponges and their fingers to paint with, then painted their hands green to make the pineapple top. 

Outside we are all excited to have our sandpit filled with sand again, it has been very popular! 

Next week we will start to plant some seeds of some fruits and vegetables for the children to look after and watch them grow in our garden area.  

We hope everyone has a lovely weekend. 

The Pre-School Team 

We have enjoyed some early easter celebrations and activities in pre-school this week for our final week of Spring Term 2. 

The children have continued to use their senses to explore our springtime changes this week. We also have enjoyed some easter baking, card making, egg painting and the excitement of our easter picture hunt to win a chocolate egg!  

This half term has been wonderfully nostalgic for all the team as we have thoroughly enjoyed our enquiry question ‘What is a fairy tale?’ Which has seen many of the traditional tales enjoyed with the children, alongside many other non-traditional but just as lovely tales in between.  

This theme has also followed through into our role play areas with a fairy tale castle and then The Gingerbread Mans bakery, inspiring some fantastic imaginative play and language opportunities for the children.  

When we return for Summer Term 1, we will have a new enquiry question ‘What do we like to eat?’ We will also use this as our opportunity to also investigate what we can grow to eat too.  

We hope that all our families have a wonderful easter and enjoy some celebrations together.  Hopefully the sun continues to shine too! 

We return to Pre-School on Tuesday 22nd April. 

The Pre-School Team. 

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.