Our first week back after half term was a short one with Fridays Inset day.  We hope you all had a fun day if you took the opportunity to visit the Royal Cornwall Show.  It was definitely the better day for the weather!

This week we have started to introduce our Summer Term 2 enquiry question 'How do we stay healthy' - we have been talking about all things fruit and vegetables! We sorted lots of different foods into healthy and not healthy groups.  This opened lots of fun discussions about why we have certain foods as a treat and others are better options to keep us healthy.

We talked about names of fruits vegetables and shared with each other what ones we had tried and if we liked them or not.

This topic has been a great way to expand their imaginations and language during their explore and learn time in our Cafe and Mud Kitchen role play areas.

This week also seen us complete our Liskeard Show art entries.  Inspired by our Spring topic around gardens and planting seeds, we have entered our own 'Springtime Garden' artwork.  Look out for it if you visit Liskeard Show on Saturday 11^th July.

The pre-school Team

For our final couple of weeks in pre-school, we explored the exciting world of minibeasts!

We have learnt lots of interesting facts about how many legs the insect may have, whether they have wings or not, and what colours or patterns may be on them.

We painted water-colour minibeasts and enjoyed our minibeast garden tuff tray as part of our explore and learn time.

It's been a fun half term learning all about what we can find in a garden, and how we plant seeds and care for them.

The children's young sunflower seedlings have started to be sent home, we would love some photos later in the summer if they flourish into successful sunflowers!

This year pre-school will be entering an art competition at Liskeard show.  Inspired by our recent learning the children have started their 'Spring Time Garden' art to enter into the competition.  

After half term we will be moving on to a new enquiry question, 'How do I stay healthy?'

We will be looking at healthy foods, hygiene and exercise. Perfect timing as we will be practicing for Sports Day when we return too.

More details about Sports Day and other key dates will be available shortly after we return.

On Thursday the children in pre-school got a treat from Miss Edwards when they were able to toast marshmallows over the campfire.  All the children listened well to the instructions to safely hold their marshmallows, and then gave 10 blows to cool them down before eating! Yummy!

We hope everyone has a lovely half-term week and enjoys the planned sunny weather.

We will see you when we return on Monday 1^st June.

The Pre-School Team.

This week the children have all enjoyed planting some sunflower seeds, in the hope that little shoots will start to show in the next week or so.

All the children thoroughly enjoyed learning about the key features of the life cycle of a plant and showed their understanding with a sequence sticking activity, showing what happens when we plant a seed.

We are expanding this learning over the next couple of weeks as we begin to look at the many wonderful minibeasts that we may find in the garden and look at some of the life cycles of these too!

This topic is always good for group discussions on the importance of respecting and caring for living things and our natural environments.  The children have all shared their own experiences and understanding through our grand conversations at carpet time.

The children this half term have had lots of number challenges given to them, to really build up their confidence in number recognition.  We encourage counting in all areas of play, even when reading a story, and its good practice even at home to count small groups of objects and then to know the last number reached. We have also been practicing showing our 'finger numbers' to numbers 1-10 alongside this.

With this being a very short term before we begin our final term before summer break, I want to reassure parents of those children that will be starting Reception in September that all information will come out to you in plenty of time.  There will also be an opportunity to book a parent consultation with a member of the team during Summer Term 2.  We will let you know available dates after half term.

The Pre-School Team.

We have enjoyed such a productive and busy week in pre-school with a variety of fun activities.

The children started the week helping us to clear our tyre flower beds of weeds in readiness to plant some plants. We have enjoyed learning about how to plant and care for seeds and next week we will begin planting our own variety, from sunflowers to peas and wildflowers.

On Monday the whole school were very lucky to receive a special visit from Georgie's mum who bought along their family pony, Millie, for the whole school to meet and ask questions about how they look after their ponies and what it takes to become a showjumper!

The visit was enjoyed by all of the children, it was a very different but inspiring assembly.

Alongside this excitement, the children have been investigating seeds from different fruits and vegetables, and we also enjoy lots of art focused on flowers.  The children were asked to paint their own flowers after watching a demonstration, they remembered to include the stem, the bud, petals and leaves.  They will make a wonderful display in our garden center role play area.

We hope everyone enjoyed their bank holiday weekend,

The Pre-School Team.

Our first week back after Easter break has seen us enjoy some beautiful but windy weather!

The children all came back excited to share what fun they had shared with their families over easter, and how many easter egg hunts they had all been to!

The children settled back into pre-school quickly and they enjoyed our garden center role play area, planting seeds and selling plants.

We talked about our new enquiry question for this half term, 'What can we plant and see in a garden?'  The children talked about what they know can grow in a garden, plants, fruits and vegetables.  We looked at different types of seeds and how we plant and look after the seeds to make them grow. We also enjoyed stories such as Sam Plants a Sunflower and Jaspers Beanstalk.

Next week we will be getting our big tractor tyre flower beds weeded in preparation to plant some plants into them.  The children will help to water them daily and look out for signs of them growing.  We will also be starting some seeds off and hoping they grow too!

The children on Thursday are lucky to be joining Lantic and Mrs Edwards for a short forest school session, the first one this week was thoroughly enjoyed.  We know not all of the children are here for a Thursday session, but to reassure you that all the children will be accessing forest school at times over the summer term.  We quite often go exploring over there when the afternoons allow us to.

The Summer Term school lunch menu is in our entrance area, remember all our children can order a school lunch.  If this is something you would like to do, please pop in and see Mrs Thompson if you need a Parent pay account setting up.

The pre-School Team.

This week we have continued our Pirate adventures as the children have had such fun with this topic.  We also introduced some Mermaid stories and artwork.

We have also been discussing our Spring changes and what we have been doing seeing outside as the weather begins to warm up.  Some of our children are lucky enough to live on farms and have shared with us the excitement of having baby lambs being born!

With the school field drying up nicely we were able to enjoy lots of running and exploring outside, the children noticed lots of buds appearing on the trees and birds singing as we stood quietly to listen.

Next week is our final week before the Easter break, we will enjoy some Easter themed activities and the Easter service over in church on Wednesday afternoon.

A reminder that School and Pre-school finish at 1.15pm on Thursday 2^nd April.

Ahoy there me hearties! We have had a week of Pirate fun in pre-school this week.

The children thoroughly enjoyed this week's activities discovering all about pirates, decorating treasure chests, Pirate dancing, Treasure Chest Tuff tray and even finding out what our own Pirate names would be.

We enjoyed watching some videos of Ocean life and talked about all of the different types of sea creatures and fish that live deep down below the waves.  The children were amazed at some of the amazing colours and differences of fish that there are!

As well as all this we enjoyed some lovely play and exploring time outside, our big pirate flag has inspired the children to use the climbing frame as their own pirate ship, with lots of the children made to walk the plank! All good fun whilst also giving plenty of opportunity to build those gross motor skills and confidence in climbing and moving around the equipment.

Another activity the children enjoyed was our bubble shape art.  We mixed washing up liquid into our paint and using the shape cutters we practiced the names of the shapes as we made bubbles on to the paper.  The children loved popping the bubbles that appeared.

Next week we will continue with some more pirate fun and introduce some Mermaid stories and activities too.

We hope everyone enjoys the glorious spring sunshine.

The Pre-School Team.

This week in pre-school we have been discovering rock pools and all the wonderful sea life we may discover in them!

Our rockpool tuff tray set up was hugely popular with the children and gave them a good immersive experience of how the animals may hide under rocks or seaweed. The children were able to understand that if we were to go rock pooling on a beach, we must be very careful whilst exploring, and that it is important to not disturb the creatures in their homes.

We took our playdoh play to another level with lots of shells, google eyes, pipe cleaners, gemstones and sea creature shapes to expand our experimenting to make our own sea creatures.

The children have all shown tremendous teamwork to help us tidy up our playground area with lots of sweeping and scrubbing with bubbly water. We were then able to enjoy some ocean themed water play and practice our scooping and pouring skills with the water play area.

We even gave our box of shells a good clean using scrubbing brushes.

During our phonics this week we have also been discovering Jungle Animals - our activities including recognising and naming the animal sounds, using instruments to move like the animals, and listening to the first letter sounds.

Lastly, the children were busy creating a special card for Mother's Day and we hope that all our lovely pre-school mums have a special day on Sunday.

The Pre-School Team.