September 2024 - Dear Zoo
The children have enjoyed listening to the story Dear Zoo. They have been very excited to guess which animal is behind the flaps and open the flaps to see if they were correct. The children can match the animals from the book with toy animals and some are beginning to retell the story themselves, exploring the story props to recreate the book and make up their own stories and games.
The importance of reading for children cannot be underestimated. Reading for pleasure can benefit a child’s education, social and cognitive development, their wellbeing, and their mental health.
September 2024 - Settling in to Preschool
A very warm welcome to all the children and their families for the new term.
The children are settling well in to the new routines. They have the confidence to free-flow inside and outdoors within the setting, and are building relationships with their key person and other staff supporting them.
June 2024 - The Magic of role play
Children are naturally inclined to engage in role play, and games of ‘make-believe’ and ‘pretend’ provide so many more benefits to our children’s development than just fun. Whether it’s occupational role play, fantastical role play, or enacting situations from daily life, role play allows our children to explore their ideas about the world in a safe space.
Whether they’re pretending to be an alien from outer space, a parent, or a mischievous pirate sailing the sea, children are trying out different scenarios that develop crucial skills in communication, teamwork, problem solving, and beginning to master their social-emotional awareness. Role play is key in developing creativity and imagination, children are acting out past experiences, Storytelling, negotiating own ideas and thinking. Children also develop skills for life, handling resources, solving problems. Role play activities also help to develop self-help skills, through dressing and undressing, doing up zips and buttons.
One of the best benefits of role play in the Early Years is that it's cathartic. It lends children an opportunity to explore their anxieties, hopes, dreams, and fears about the world in a safe space, before they encounter these challenges in reality.
May 2024 - Water, water everywhere
Water play is an exciting and immersive experience, especially when children spend a long period of time exploring their senses. Water play activities can encourage a child to become completely focused, then increases their overall attention span and ability to concentrate on any task at hand. This will help to shape their academic abilities and contribute to the strengthening of their concentration skills in later life.
Playing with water is also an open-ended activity that allows children to explore their imagination, make meaningful discoveries and connections, and develop important skills such as problem-solving as they start to establish their understanding of why and how things happen.
Water play helps develop children’s motor skills through activities like scooping, squeezing, and pouring water. Additionally, gross motor skills are also developed through activities such as splashing, kicking, wading their limbs through the water, carrying full buckets, and running.
Due to the nature of play, children often narrate their actions as a way of practicing stringing sentences together and making sense of their thoughts and actions, even if they are playing alone. When playing with others, children will naturally take turns whilst speaking and listening with their peers, which will ultimately help them develop their vocabulary and communication skills.
April 2024 - Space, shape and numbers
Developing numeracy skills early gives children an important foundation for their learning and development. It helps prepare them for daily life, including general problem-solving and handling money.
Maths includes noticing numbers, shapes, patterns, size, time and measurement. Incorporating maths into everyday experiences is easy and fun. Maths is everywhere – in the playground, at the shops and at home. Children need lots of experiences in making, counting, drawing and talking about numbers.
March 2024 - Incredible Eggs!
What a delight it is to experience the hatching of our eggs. We observed the eggs in the incubator and ‘wondered’ what might hatch from the eggs. Some ideas included, chickens and dinosaurs. We soon discovered they were duck eggs and we have 6 healthy and very lively fluffy baby ducks.
The children have shown a huge interest in the ducks and many are keen to stroke and hold them, while others prefer to simply observe. We have learnt about how the eggs and baby ducklings need to be kept warm in an incubator, and the brooder, how important it is to make sure they have water and what sounds the ducklings make while in the eggs and once they have hatched.
Curiosity and interest has spread further across the provision and children have explored many duck themed books and other resources.
February 2024 - 'Wow' said The Owl
The children have enjoyed exploring this core book. ‘Wow said the owl’ introduces children to the perspective of day and night and the different colours of the rainbow.
The children are able to retell the story through the pictures, they have learnt new words and can identify the colours in the book, linking their knowledge to our pre-school environment, items of our clothing to the world around them.
January 2024 - What does Maths look like in Pre-School?
Introducing maths to children from an early age helps to develop their understanding of all elements of problem solving and reasoning in a broad range of contexts.
All children can be successful with Maths provided they are given the opportunities to understand it in a way that makes sense to them.
Ensuring children are engaged, motivated and thinking critically for themselves is vital for mathematics.
For example, encouraging children to problem solve by asking: ‘How many spoons do we need for everyone in this group to have one each? How many have we got? How many more do we need?’
From birth, children have a keen interest in the world around them, but to have the confidence to explore it they need the support from adults around them.
December 2023 - Festive celebrations
Christmas is a very exciting time for the children. To celebrate this festive season, we have decorated the trees together, played Christmas themed games, worn our Christmas jumpers on National Christmas jumper day, shared Christmas dinner and danced away to some very merry Christmas tunes.
We wish you all a very merry Christmas and a Happy and peaceful New Year.
November 2023 - Preschool Animals
Our Pre-School pets - Mildred the Millipede, Turbo and Boost the giant African land snails, Sunny stick insects and Bijou the Tenrec.
Interacting with animals supports children’s learning and development, and gives children the opportunity to learn how to be gentle and responsible for others.
Sensory Development
Pre-schoolers discover all about their world through seeing, hearing and touching. Stroking and interacting with animals at close proximity teaches children how various textures feel. The various animal noises will help children identify the animals’ unique sounds.
Motor Skill Development
Motor skills are constantly being developed throughout a pre-schooler’s life. Motor skills are simply anything that uses their muscles. Gross motor skills involve large movements such as running or climbing, and fine motor skills are small movements such as holding a brush to groom an animal, or using tweezers to feed them.
Language Development
Spending time with animals is great for learning lots of new words – like whiskers, snout and paws. Children will usually return home at the end of the day and chatter away to the family about the animals.
Empathy
Young children begin to develop the ability to understand and share the feelings of others, and this includes animals too! When a child is asked questions such as, “Do you think Bijou likes being stroked?” and “Do you think the snail is hungry?” these can help children to consider the animals’ feelings.
October 2023 - Autumn
Autumn is a wonderful time of year to really use nature to promote the development of children. Whilst this may seem like an odd statement to make as the wet and dreary weather kicks in, the days grow shorter and everything seems somewhat muddier and duller, it doesn’t take away from the wealth of learning that appears at this time of the year.
All of the above along with the leaves changing and falling off trees, are all very noticeable changes. This may be the first spark of interest in children discovering more about the world around them. Leaves have so many incredible benefits from mathematics, sensory benefits, understanding the world and even literacy.
We are keen to be outdoors talking about the changes, the colours, and following the children’s lead. The outside during autumn seems to hold a new level of intrigue for children as they kick leaves, notice new natural objects such as pine cones and acorns, and become more in tune with wildlife. They may notice cobwebs more, spot squirrels and discover feathers on the floor. This makes teaching and learning incredibly easy around this time of year as there is so much to discuss and do. If the children are showing a keen interest the benefits will be even greater.
An autumn scavenger hunt is a fun way to talk to your children about the change in seasons and encourage them to look closely at each leaf's shape, size, and colour, and then tell you what they see, conversation around what's safe to touch in nature (for example not to touch some berries), why the trees drop leaves, and which foods animals eat this time of year.
September 2023 - We are Independent!
Independence is important because…
It promotes confidence and self-esteem as well as motivation and perseverance in school. It fosters self-reliance, allowing your child to feel they have control over their life.
Some of the most important attributes of independent learning include children being able to use the environment for themselves, to make choices and decisions and to start to develop their own thoughts and views.
Independence fosters one's ability to be self-reliant and self-sufficient, to be able to do what is necessary to create a fulfilling life for oneself and one's family.
