Welcome back, we hope that you have all had a lovely Christmas and wish you a very happy and healthy 2024!

A short week for us this week, but it was so lovely to see the children and welcome them back to Pre-School for our Spring Term.
 
We enjoyed listening to the children telling us about all the exciting things they got up to over the Christmas Holidays and was really good to see them all listening well to each others stories.

We have made a few New Year items this week including some cool 2024 glasses which the children really enjoyed colouring in and wearing.

We went over to "Big School" on Friday afternoon to join the whole school for an assembly, this was a special assembly with the whole school trust, all 14 schools joined up on a Teams meeting to celebrate 10 years of being part of Bridge Schools.

Next week we will start our Spring Term 1 topic of "Where can we go in England and how shall we get there?"

And will start off this topic with a lovely book called "Rosie's Walk" by Pat Hutchins, this book is all about a hen called Rosie. Rosie is going for a walk, but she'd better watch out - there's a very sneaky fox hot on her tail feathers!


Applications to start Reception in September 2024
The deadline to apply is Monday 15th January. If you need help doing this we would be very happy to assist.

Please apply via the Cornwall Council website https://www.cornwall.gov.uk/schools-and-education/schools-and-colleges/school-admissions/


Funding for children under 5 is changing From April 2024, eligible working parents of 2-year-olds will be able to access 15 hours of free childcare, spaces permitting.
From September 2024, this will be extended to eligible working parents of children from 9 months, although at present we plan to continue to only offer care from age 2.
From September 2025, eligible working parents of children under the age of 5 will be entitled to 30 hours of childcare a week. To allow us to plan additional staffing to accommodate needs, please contact Pre-School for more information, if this applies to your family.


The weather is looking dry for next week, but also might be very cold, please can you send your child in with suitable, warm clothes for outside play as it will be so good to spend some time outside after all the rain we have had over the last few weeks, plus we have some exciting new play equipment to try out!!


We hope you all had a super weekend and look forward to seeing you all next week.

Best wishes, Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.

Christmas has arrived in Pre-School!!

We have had an amazing week here at Pre-School.

The children have been very busy wrapping presents, writing labels and cards and making paper chains in Santa's workshop.
We have danced, played party games including pass the parcel, musical bumps and musical statues, we have baked and decorated gingerbread people and chocolate crispy Christmas puddings, enjoyed some winter sunshine and messy play in the mud kitchen and even had some delicious hot chocolate sat in our garden area..

We have also had a special 3rd birthday this week too, Happy 3rd  Birthday Sienna, Sienna even wore a beautiful dress in to Pre-School on her birthday.

We are coming to the end of our first term here at Pre-School and it has flown by so quickly.
This is always such a busy first term and starting off in warm, hopefully sunshine, then ending in cold, wet weather and even a touch of snow.

We finish on Tuesday, but want to thank you all for your support this term.  We have certainly fitted in a lot of learning and activities along they way.

Thank you to all of you that attended our school Christmas fair on Friday, we have raised just over £700 which is amazing, we would like to pass our thanks onto the FOP's for organising such a successful event for us all.

We will hopefully be having a special visitor arriving in school on Monday and then in the afternoon we have our whole school Christmas Singalong at St Nun's Church at 2,30pm, it would be lovely to see you there. Our last day is Tuesday which is Christmas fundraiser Jumper Day and maybe a few more party games!!

We return back to Pre-School on Thursday 4th January 2024 and are looking forward to seeing you all and hearing about your news over the festive period.

We would like to wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

With best wishes from Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.
 

* Monday 18th December 2.30pm Christmas Singalong (St Nun Church, whole school) ·
* Tuesday 19th December Christmas Jumper Day fundraiser/Christmas parties (whole school)
   Last day of school for 2023.

* Thursday 4th January 2024 return to Pre-School.

Snow!!

Well what an exciting week we've had this week in Pre-School.

We started off our week looking at our book of the week "The Jolly Christmas Postman".
- The Jolly Postman has a busy day ahead. It's Christmas Eve in Fairy-Tale Land and there's plenty of post for him to deliver!
He met The 3 Little Pigs, The Gingerbread Man and Little Red Riding Hood on his travels to name a few.

We made our own post box and have been writing letters and drawing pictures to post into our box.
The children have been talking about writing letters to Father Christmas and what they would like to say,



We also read the story "Dear Father Christmas" written by Alan Durant. - When Holly sees a man who looks like Father Christmas, she decides to write him a letter: “Dear Father Christmas – is it snowing in Lapland? Please answer. Love Holly.” And so begins the start of a touching pen pal friendship with Father Christmas himself in which Holly learns about the magic of elves, reindeer and life in Lapland, as well as getting some very special Christmas surprises.

We have made some paper chains and snow flakes to start decorating Pre-School which the children really enjoyed.
And over the weekend a Christmas Tree and some decorations have appeared. Christmas and all its glitter and sparkles are on the way!!

Next week we are looking at Hanukkah (also spelled Chanukah or Chanukkah)which is a Jewish holiday that lasts for eight nights and usually occurs in December. It is also known as the Festival of Lights. As well as making some decorations for our tree and lots more.

As well as a snow day on Thursday it was also Ted's birthday, He was super excited that it was snowing on his special day. We all hope you had a great day and thank you so much for the wonderful cake.

We hope you have all had a lovely weekend.
See you al next week.

Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.

What another super week we've had here at Pre-School.

Our focussed book this week was Stickman - The Julia Donaldson & Alex Scheffler story follows Stick Man who lives in the family tree with his stick lady love and their stick children. He becomes separated from his family and goes on a mighty adventure to reunite with loved ones in time for Christmas.

We have collected sticks, made our own stickmen from the sticks we collected, painted pictures using sticks, talked about who lives in our own family tree, counted and ordered sticks, plus lots more activities around our weeks theme.

We have spent some more time outside, making the most of the dry spells, although the children are starting to notice that is has turned quite cold over the last few days.

We celebrated Alfie's birthday this week, we all hope he had a lovely day.

Next week our focussed book will be "The Jolly Christmas Postman". -  The Jolly Postman has a busy day ahead. It's Christmas Eve in Fairy-Tale Land and there's plenty of post for him to deliver! 
We will be doing lots of activities linked to this book. 

Christmas and all its glitter and sparkles are on the way!!

Hopefully you have all now been able to access Seesaw?
We are now uploading items onto this weekly, if you are having problems accessing it please come and see us or drop us an email and we can help you.


We hope you all have a good weekend,
looking forward to a fun week ahead.

With best wishes, Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.

This week the children at Pre-School have been learning all about Diwali.
We read the book - 'Lighting a Lamp' and joined in with lots of activities to celebrate this special celebration including some beautiful Clay Diva lamps, tissue paper Rangoli Patterns and Piping Henna designs with paint.

Diwali is also known as the Festival of Lights. In the very old Indian language, Sanskrit, Diwali (or Deepavali) means 'row of lamps'. People light lamps at Diwali to show that light is more powerful than darkness. Diwali also celebrates new beginnings. 
We watched a short clip that showed us how Hindu Families prepare to celebrate Diwali and what it involves.

This week we also learnt about Remembrance Day in an age appropriate way and watch how the poppies are made in a factory. We also listened to The Last Post, played by The Royal Marines Band.

We made some suncatcher poppies to decorate our windows and made some willow stick poppies with red wool and a shiny button.

We went to the church on Friday afternoon with the whole school and Rev. Allen talked to us about Remembrance Day, we then placed our poppies outside by the War Memorial. 

Next week we are continuing our "How do we celebrate?" topic with Birthdays.

We have now started to put items onto Seesaw, hopefully you have all managed to access this? If you haven't and need some help, please contact us so we can sigh you up to get you started.

We all hope you had a good weekend,

Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Miss Carr and Mrs Rowe.

We have got to the end of our first half term in Pre-School and what a truly wonderful few weeks we've have had.

The weeks have flown by but looking back we have fitted in a lot of learning and fun from playing outside with the cars, bikes, skittles, sand and water to name a few in the sunny weather which started off our new term in September to autumn welly walks around the school field to look for autumn treasures as the season and weather started to change, to cooking cakes and biscuits, making fruit kebabs, joining in with a whole school danceathon, enjoying listening to the children with our weekly show and share activity and finally pumpkin themed activities to finish.

Our topic heading for Autumn Term 1 was "Who Am I?" and we have been learning
All About me, Keeping Healthy, Homes and Houses, and Families/Diversity.

We have been focusing on a different book each week and started off our new term with The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman.
The other books we have covered are Daisy, Eat Your Peas! by Nick Sharratt, In Every House on Every Street by Jess Hitchman, Here We Are by Oliver Jeffers, The Leaf Thief by Alice Hemming and ended this week with The Legend of Spookley the Square Pumpkin by Joe Troiano.

The children really enjoy the books that we share with them and all the activities that we link to them throughout the weeks.

We also had our first birthday to celebrate this week and would like to thank Charlie for bringing in some delicious cakes to share with us to celebrate his 4th birthday.
We all hope you had a super day.

Our next terms topic heading is "How Do We Celebrate?" We will be learning all about Seasonal Changes - Halloween, Bonfire Night, Remembrance Day, Birthdays, Diwali, Christmas and Chanukah.
This is always an exciting half term with lots of chance to discuss different celebrations that happen around the world and to get all festive with plenty of sparkles to add along the way!

The weather has certainly now changed, with this in mind we only have a few items of spare clothing in Pre-School so please may we ask that all children have some spare clothes that can be left in Pre-School on your child's coat peg. Please can you also name any items of clothing/coats and wellies so it is easier for us to keep these items with the correct children especially since they are in and out of them throughout the day.

Please may we also ask parents/carers of those children that are still in nappies to check their bags and replenish any supplies if required.

We hope that you all have a wonderful half term break and we are very much looking forward to seeing you all in the week beginning Monday 30th October.

With best wishes Mrs G, Mrs Rickard, Mrs Rowe and Miss Carr.

I have added a selection of photos at the bottom to show some of the wonderful things we have done during the last 7 weeks.