Welcome Back Preschool 11.06.21

Welcome Back Preschool!

I hope that you all had a lovely half term break and are ready for our final half term together. This week we very excited to explore our Preschool environment and learn that our new theme is 'Minibeasts' and that we are going to focus our learning around the story 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle. Today we were greeted at Preschool by five tiny and very hungry caterpillars. We are super excited to watch the life cycle of the butterfly unfold in front of our very own eyes!

In our personal, social and emotional development, we began our new HeartSmart unit: 'No way through isn't true'. This unit will focus on developing our perseverance skills and we will learn that 'we can do it'. Our activity this week focused on us persevering to complete a challenge. Boris gave us a selection of nuts and bolts and asked if we could help him to screw the correct nuts onto the correct bolts. It was quite tricky but we all persevered to complete the task! Boris reminds us to " Keep trying, you can do it!

To develop our communication and language and literacy skills, we have listened to the story ' The Very Hungry Caterpillar'. We discussed words within the story and have been answering questions, such as, Why did the caterpillar get so fat?. We have also been introduced to some new words, including, cocoon, pupa, chrysalis and tentacles. The Very Hungry Caterpillar story will be the focus of our new talk for writing unit. To support us to retell the story, we have developed our story telling through exploring our story sack and ordering sequencing cards. Next week, we will use our T4W approach to recall the story, using a story map and actions. We have also enjoyed looking at our new fiction and non fiction books in Preschool, we are finding out lots of new information about minibeasts each day – wow! In our writing activity, we drew a picture of the character from the story, it was lovely to hear your descriptions of the caterpillar and then discuss how he changed into a beautiful butterfly.

To support our physical development, we have taken part in 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' yoga. We listened beautifully and worked hard to manage all the different yoga poses. What is great about this activity, is that it also supports in our recalling of the story. To support our fine motor development we have used tweezers to pick up different sized (plastic) minibeasts and to develop our gross motor skills, we have been jumping and climbing outside.

The focus of our mathematics sessions this week has been to develop our subsidising skills. To support this skill we played the game Ladybird Spots. We rolled the dice and attempted to say the amount without using our fingers to count ( Mrs Burns you would have been very impressed at our skills). Then, we had to find a card with the same amount of spots on. Finally, we turned our card over and again attempted to say the amount without counting. Great job everyone!

To enhance our understanding the world development, we have spent a lot of time outside hunting for minibeasts. We have found ants, spiders, worms, beetles, ladybirds, wood lice, ear wigs and the most exciting find, was a tiny caterpillar. We used the interactive whiteboard to research about the different minibeasts and we enjoyed finding out lots about caterpillars and butterflies whilst watching Minibeasts with Jess on CBeebies. We were super excited to find out that like bees, butterflies are wonderful pollinators. We ended our week with 5 new additions to Preschool, five tiny and very hungry caterpillars. We can't wait to watch the life cycle of a butterfly.

Caterpillars and butterflies have been the focus of our expressive arts and design development. Using pipets and paint we explored colour mixing and symmetry to make a butterfly. We squeezed paint onto our butterfly template then folded in half, we then opened to reveal our butterfly butterflies. To make a hungry caterpillar, first we painted a toilet roll tube green then, we wound green thread around the tube. After that, we scrunched up red tissue paper and added to the tube to create his face. Finally, we added googly eyes and poked pipe cleaners into the tube to create our caterpillars tentacles.
We were also introduced to a new song 'There's a tiny caterpillar on a leaf'. We learned the words and added actions. This song supports our learning on the life cycle of a butterfly.

During our free play, we have completed jigsaws, developed our turn taking skills by playing games such as snap, enjoyed a tea party, hunted for minibeasts, shared stories, made homes for our bugs, explored instruments and so much more...

It really has been a wonderful week, thank you Preschool.

Have a lovely weekend and I can't wait to see you and observe changes to our caterpillars next week
Tara