Our week at Preschool 07.05.21

Preschool, you are all superstars and it was wonderful to share how proud we are of you all during our Key Person appointments this week. It may have been a shorter week than usual but it certainly has been jam packed!

In our personal, social and emotional development, we continued with our HeartSmart unit 'I tell the truth'. This week we learned about words that are kind and true and words that are unkind and untrue. We began by recapping the Scrapman from our story and how he uses unkind and untrue words about Boris. I explained that being HeartSmart means using kind and true words to talk about other people and ourselves. We then listened to some words, e.g. clever, brave, love, horrid, nasty and we smiled if they were kind words and looked sad if they were unkind. We were set a challenge to see how many kind and true words we could use this week, I am pleased to say that this wasn't hard for us! Thank you Boris for reminding us that 'Kind words are the best words'.

During our wellbeing time, we lay down looking up at the clouds and imagined what lies beyond... We also talked about the different shapes we could see and even looked out for the Giant!

To support our communication and language development, we have been comparing the stories 'Jack and the Beanstalk' and 'Jaspers Beanstalk' discussing the similarities and differences between them. We have also been observing more changes to our bean seeds and have developed our understanding of the words, root, shoot, seedling, leaves, flower and bean pod. We then used these words to support our learning all about the life cycle of a bean.

Within our physical development, we have continued to play our 'Moving Beans' game and have been moving in a range of different ways. We have taken part in daily dough disco and squiggle while you wiggle sessions. Please see Tapestry for this weeks focus.

In our literacy sessions, we been learning to speak the story 'Japers Beanstalk' by Nick Butterworth. We learned the days of the week song to help us recall the order of the story and have begun to add some our our talk for writing actions too. During our writing sessions, our older children have continued to work on tracing/writing their names and have looked at forming the letter 's' using the rhyme 'Slither down the snake' to support. We have also taken part in daily phonics sessions, please see Tapestry for this weeks focus.

In our mathematics this week, we have been singing number rhymes, such as, 'Five Little Ducks' and Five Currant Buns'. These rhymes involve us taking one away and encourage us to think about the number'1 less ' from a given number. After learning that 1 less than 1 is 0, we watched the Numberblocks episode to explore 0 further. We discussed that a world with nothing would be very empty and one child even commented "That if there was nothing we wouldn't even have Earth!".

Our Number theme continued today as we took part in Number Day to raise money for the NSPCC. We have been counting, read lots of number stories, played snap, played board games, such as, snakes and ladders and even made number hats! Thank you for all your kind donations and fantastic number outfits.

In our understanding of the world development, we have continued to explore the life cycle of a bean and have observed even more changes to our bean seeds, we now have lots of roots, a stem and some small leaves. I wonder what changes we will observe next?

In our expressive arts and design development, we have continued to use props to re enact the story of Jack and the Beanstalk focusing on using intonation. I think our favourite character to play is definitely the Giant "FEE FI FO FUM!". We have also learnt the song "I'm a Little bean".

During our free play, we have been mark making, drawing and writing at every opportunity. We have been managing risk whilst developing our love of climbing the trees and the large tyres. We have rolled balls down the guttering, catching them in bowls. Used our ICT equipment to role-play 'going to work', had numerous conversations with people on our phones, and have used scissors to snip and cut – what a busy week!

Thank you for a great week Preschool. Take time to rest this weekend and I look forward to seeing you all next week.
Tara