It has been a busy year which went very quickly in between lockdowns.
Season Activities.
Autumn Term
We enjoyed welcoming the children back, meeting new children and families and enjoying the late summer making the most of the warm sunshine. We have had fun all year seeing the changes:
- Leaves changing colour and dropping
- Sweeping leaves
- Playing in them
- Bug hunts
- Feeding the birds
We had fun measuring, weighing, sizing and painting our pumpkins before opening them up to explore what was inside. We were really impressed how our 2 year olds used the cotton buds to make their skeleton prints.
For remembrance day thinking about what people have done in the past so that we can enjoy things today.
We enjoyed doing lots of Christmas activities, music sessions and doing the reindeer cokey.
We were really amazed with how children settled within the pre-school whilst restrictions where in place, especially our younger 2 year olds.
Spring Term
In January some parents chose to keep their children off during lockdown, those that came in adapted to older and younger children being placed together for sessions.
The children had a shoe shop out to play with and some children wanted to make their own felt slipper, measuring and drawing around each others feet, cutting out the pattern and sewing up, it was interesting to touch and feel a shoe last to help with measurements.
We started our Healthy Smiles teeth cleaning programme in the butterfly room, each day the children clean their teeth. The children liked playing and exploring the resources:
- Our giant teeth and toothbrush
- Playdough dentistry set.
- Dentist books and leaflets.
- Our teeth brushing song.
Throughout the year we encouraged children to try our rainbow of fruit and veg to promote health and wellbeing, there is always water available within the rooms.
When it snowed the children could not wait to go and investigate outside, we used the magnifying glass and mini-scope to look In detail at the snow flakes and were amazed at the patterns they saw. It was also exciting to make a snowman, and make patterns with wellie boots, rollers and to see prints left in the snow and decide who could have left them e.g. Birds, cats etc.
We also conducted an experiment to:
- see first if we left a container of water out to see how quickly it froze
- How long it took a chunk of snow to melt both indoors and outside.
Our paper plate sundial created by the children helped them understand that the were other ways to tell the time and that the sun could be used for this. They created their own weather symbols and became weather reporters, they put their symbols on our British Isle chart that they helped to draw.
Our gardens have enjoyed lots of watering, the children loved getting the watering cans and watering everything. We grew some vegetables and were able to see as the roots and shoots grew quickly over a number of weeks before planting outside in our tubs.
It was exciting when Laura brought in her stick insects, the children were fascinated that they really looked like sticks and were curious about what they eat and do.
Summer Term
All children have returned by now and all children were back into the Butterfly and caterpillar room.
For the second year running we observed the life cycle of Painted Lady Butterflies, the children were captivated at all the different stages and the eventual release of all the butterflies. It is the special times that we most enjoy together with the children as staff are also in ale of the wonderful process and how engaged all the children were.
Workmen were upgrading the roof on valley and the children in the caterpillar room noticed and were intrigued at what they were doing, we decided to get the work bench and tools out and the children had fun pretending to be workmen too.
Whilst outside the children investigated our water pumps, syhpons and water shute alongside taking care of the garden, using children’s gardening tools to weed and plant new flowers.
We have experienced a vast array of different weather some all in one day; sun, rain, hail, thunder and lightening and a flash flood (who forgot to close the classroom doors!) The children have found this very exciting, learning about the world around them and all our wonderful planet has to offer.
It was then transition time for our older children, some met their teachers and went on school visits, Valley Primary Academy came in to read a story to their new children and were invited to join Valley at their family picnic.
We had also been invited to meet the farm animals at Valley every two weeks on a Monday, the children that have already been enjoy meeting all the goats, chickens, guinea pigs and rabbits.
Just to say our staff gained new skills through zoom meetings, reading stories through Facebook and getting to know parents over the phone, you would be pleased to know we upgraded our phone and are able to WhatsApp and bring Jackie into the 21st century.
We are glad we have shared lots of wonderful experiences with them, we wish luck to our children in their new Primary schools, look forward to welcoming old ones back and meeting new children.