A wonderful week at Preschool

Another busy week in Preschool....

Within our personal, social and emotional development, we discussed the choices and actions of the characters within the story 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears. For example, Goldilocks went into a stranger's house. Was that a good idea? Why not? Should she have gone into someone's house without their permission? We also discussed how the bears felt/reacted to what Goldilocks did and why? Then we thought about how we would feel? I am super impressed at how we have developed our understanding of feelings and emotions during this term, at the beginning of this topic we would typically answer "happy" or "sad" when discussing emotions but now, we are beginning to distinguish between different feelings and emotions, for example, using language, such as, worried, angry, frightened, scared, excited, shocked

Within our Heart Smart session, Boris reminded us that 'I am special and so are you!'. We played a circle game, we sang the 'Special Song' whilst passing Boris around the circle.

I am special, I am special
You can see, you can see
Someone very special
Someone very special
Yes it's me,
Yes it's me!

When the song stopped, whoever was holding Boris said something special about themselves. " I am special because I am good at tidying" " I am special because I am kind" "I am special because I help mummy" "I am special because I love all of me" "I am special because I am getting brave".

To support our well being this week we have taken part in Cosmic Kids yoga. We discussed how we felt after these sessions, "I feel happy", "Good".

As part of our phonics sessions, to support our communication and language development, we played the game 'Bear' says... This game supported our listening skills, it involved listening for a signal. We were very good at the game so we challenged the children by giving them 2/3 and even 4 signals to follow. Great listening skills Preschool!

To support our physical development, we have continued with daily dough disco sessions/Squiggle whilst you wiggle sessions to develop our fine and gross motor development.
We have also been exploring healthy eating and we discussed why porridge is a healthy food. Then, we talked about other foods that are healthy or unhealthy. We enjoyed sorting foods into categories as a group then during lunch time we discussed our healthy choices within our lunch boxes.

To support our literacy development, last week, we began talk 4 writing in Preschool and learned the story 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears'. The children have done a fantastic job at learning the actions to support them being able to retell the story. I know this is the case as lots of mummy's have told me that they have heard their child reciting this story at home – wow! Within your writing activity, after discussing, what do we think Goldilocks should say to the three Bears and why? We made a card for the bears from Goldilocks to say sorry.

This week in our mathematics development, we built upon our learning of 'one' and we were introduced to 'another one'. After watching a numberblocks episode, we learned that 'one add another one is two'. We played a matching pairs game, sorted gloves, wellies and Noah's animals into the ark to explore this concept. Then, to develop our mathematical language, we focused on saying a stem sentence, for example, "one snake and another snake is two snakes". Next week, we will learn more about 'two'.

To develop our understanding of the world we made porridge for snack – yum! We learned how to make porridge and explored what happens to the ingredients as they are mixed together and heated. We agreed that it must have been Baby Bear's porridge as it tasted 'JUST RIGHT!'

As we begin our nativity preparations, this week, we were introduced to a very special story 'The first Christmas'. Then, we discussed the characters within the story and talked about how we were going to retell this story to our families. Next week, we will begin to learn our songs and make props.

Within our expressive arts and design development, we explored ways of moving like the different characters in the story, e.g. Daddy Bear is large and slow and Baby Bear is little and lively. We also used masks and props to retell the story.

We have also started making special Christmas crafts and cards for our families but we want to keep these a surprise!

During our free play, we have, travelled to India to celebrate Diwali, helped Santa to load his sleigh and deliver presents, enjoyed picnics, written messages on post it notes, painted pictures, read stories and even learned about hydraulics!

I wonder what we will get up to next week?!

Have a great weekend everyone and I look forward to seeing you all next week,
Tara