Welcome Back Preschool!

It has been wonderful to welcome you back this week Preschool and what a super first week back we have had!

Our first few days, we were blown into Preschool and we couldn't work out whether it was the weather or in fact the big bad wolf! Strangely, after we had built our wolf trap the wind seemed to disappear – is this just a coincidence?! Can you guess what story our new topic is based around? ;)

Aside from all the huffing and puffing this week, we have been very busy...

In our personal, social and emotional development, we began our new HEARTSMART unit, focusing on 'Forgiveness'. We learned that we enjoy doing lots of different things with our friends. We played a circle game and Boris asked us "to describe some of the things we like to do with our friends" – "playing with everyone "playing in the house and the kitchen" "playing outside" "playing in the sand" "drawing".

During our well being time, we manipulated playdough whilst listening to relaxing music. We discussed how we felt after the sessions "relaxed" "happy" "a bit tired".

To support our communication and language development, we listened to and joined in with the story 'The Three Little Pigs'. We enjoyed joining in with repeated and familiar phrases "I'll huff and I'll puff and I'll blow your house down" and answering questions based around the story. We have also enjoyed learning and singing the nursery rhyme 'Old McDonald had a Farm' and introduced the names of the baby animals.

Within our physical development, we practiced kicking a ball. We made an obstacle course using a range of different objects including, cones, the tunnel, the large tyre and crates. We then challenged ourselves to get the ball round the course using only our feet. We have also taken part in daily dough disco sessions and have focused on the actions, pinch, roll, splat and our favourite, the doughnut.

To develop our literacy skills, we listened to and joined in with the story 'The Three Little Pigs'. We already know this story so well and we were able to join in with repeated refrains and are beginning to recall and retell the story. For our writing activity, we designed a new house for the Three Little Pigs, we thought carefully about why we needed to design a new house "Because the wolf has blown the house of straw down" and what materials were best "brick, cos it is strong and the wolf can't blow it down".

To develop our mathematics skills, we were introduced to the number 4. We began our week by watching the numberblocks episode 'Number Four. We learned that four appears in lots of contexts, such as, four legs on a table, four sides on a square, four legs on a chair, four wheels on a car. We then become a '4 detective' to find how many different representations of 4 we could find around Preschool. We continued to build upon our learning of four throughout the week and made a collection of objects to represent the number four. To end our week, we explored how many different arrangements of 4 we could make.

To enhance our understanding of the world, we began a new unit 'on the farm'. We listened to the story 'The Enormous Turnip' and discussed the role of farmers. Next, we thought about animals that live on a farm then we learned to identify their offspring. Finally, we played a game by matching the baby animals to the adult animals.

We have enjoyed colour mixing as part of our expressive arts and design development and have explored how to make the colour pink – you can see our colour mixing display on the photos attached. With our new knowledge, we experimented with colours to make brown. We the painted boxes and used different materials to create the Three Little Pig's houses.

During our free play, we have made various wolf traps, built houses and checked their strength by trying to blow them down, shared stories in the cosy corner, developed our fine motor skills through using the tap tap shape, threading and twisting nuts on bolts, scooping and pouring sand using the construction vehicles and rolling cars down tubes – what fun!

Thank you for a great first week back, enjoy your weekend Preschool superstars!
Tara