Spring is finally here!
Our favourite time at Pre-school as we can now start to plant. The children will actively engage in choosing what we grow and learn to care for them. They will work together, sharing ideas and learning lots of new vocabulary. We will add supporting resources such as books for them to reference, and they have free access to the mini greenhouse, which houses the tools they need to care for their plants. If you have photos of your children caring for their garden at home, we would love to see them and display them on our Family wall.
We will be exploring new life too, looking at life cycles of different animals such as Frogs and Butterflies and also learning lots about the wonderful job Bees have in our gardens. We have mini quizzes each week so the children can recap on their learning and share their knowledge with their peers in circle times.
We continue to support the children’s phonological awareness through our open ended activities and also through our planned group times. We have wonderful resources to support this area of learning -if you would like further information on how we support the children please do speak to your Key person and we can share ideas for home.
Lots of encouragement to mark make outside using chalks and our new mirrored trees attached to the sheds. It is so important that the children feel no pressure to write before being ready, that is why in all areas of play they have the opportunity to mark make at their will, building their confidence and giving them the choice of different media to use. As the children progress in this area, we will support their grip and encourage them to label their work as they start to form recognisable letters.
We pride ourselves on having a flexible and creative approach, and you may often hear us use the term ‘invitations to play on our Facebook page’ This is where the resources on offer are open-ended, which means that they can be used in many different ways. For example, a pebble can be enjoyed by the very youngest child for its tactile properties, but it can also be used for sorting, counting, creating, and imagining during play. The same pebble can be a cake decoration, a stepping stone for a character, or a magic bean. Through this type of play, a child can develop their imagination, free from the constraints of our more structured activities. Alongside this type of activity, we will also have slightly more structured activities that can be accessed too – this may be a board game often made by one of our staff to suit the child wanting to play or a play-doh activity with purposeful maths resources alongside to help develop their maths skills. For example, you may see Play-Doh with long spaghetti sticking out of it, alongside pasta tubes in a pot with a nice big dice. The focus here might be simple addition or subtraction, or just simply being able to select a given amount. Rest assured, whatever your children are ‘playing’ with, they will be constantly learning new skills alongside developing their personal, social, and emotional skills, helping them to become strong and resilient little beings 🙂
Finally, the children love to listen to stories, especially from visitors. we would love for parents to drop in to read to them, so if you would like to volunteer your time, please do let one of the staff know.
Lisa