Preschool News 28.01.22

We have had a wonderful week learning how to look after our birds during the winter months.

During our HeartSmart session, to support our personal, social and emotional development, Boris set us the task to make food for the birds. We thread cheerios onto pipe cleaners then we bent our pipe cleaner into a heart shape. Next, we hung the food around our school environment. Finally, we enjoyed watching the birds eat from it. We learned that helping others makes our hearts grow bigger.

To support our communication, language and literacy development, we have enjoyed sharing fiction and non fiction stories and have been asking and answering lots of questions. We particularly enjoyed the story 'Robin's Winter Song' by Suzanne Barton. We also enjoyed the story 'Listen to the Birds' by Marion Billet. We listened to different bird sounds, then during our bird watch each day we stood, closed our eyes and tried to identify birds by their bird song. For our writing activity, we drew a picture to show signs of winter.

During our phonics sessions, our younger children have enjoyed singing their favourite nursery rhymes and action songs. Using the puppets and props, they have taken turns to choose a song to sing and have used their hands to add actions to the songs. They have sang beautifully and have enjoyed marching round the playground to the 'Grand old Duke of York', twinkling like little stars and winding up their bobbins. What super singers we are at preschool!

Our older children learned to identify the next set of the RWI picture cards, 'orange, caterpillar, kangaroo, umbrella and boot' and enjoyed the game, 'Fred' goes shopping. We identified the items that Fred put into his shopping basket, for example j-a-m, jam. We also continued to clap out syllables. I introduced syllables as 'how many claps in the word?' and modelled clapping out the syllables, e.g.'pen-cil'. . We then ended each session singing some of our favourite nursery rhymes.

To enhance our physical development, we have thread cheerios onto pipe cleaners, used a knife to spread lard onto a toilet roll then rolled into bird seed and we have been working on developing our independence skills and have been dressing ourselves for winter weather. We have also continued with our daily squiggle while you wiggle sessions and our older children have continued to develop their pencil grip and have been tracing lines.

To support our mathematics development, this week we have been counting. We went on a bird watch and marked how many birds we saw. Then we counted our tallies. After that we discussed what species we saw the most and least. We saw lots Magpies and Pigeons and only 1 Robin. Also, each day before lunch we have played a number game on the whiteboard and had to identify the amount without counting the objects, this is called subitising.

In our understanding the world development, we have been learning to identify birds by sight and sound. We made our own binoculars and each day we have enjoyed taking part in our own bird watch. We are looking forward to taking part in the RSPB Big Garden Bird Watch over the weekend. We also completed our family portraits, can you spot your family in the photographs.

After deciding that the robin was our favourite garden bird (after all, he does come and visit us often inside Preschool), for our expressive arts and design development, we used a paper plate, paint, feathers and tissue paper to create our own robin.

During our free play, we have chosen to observe birds in the garden, cooked up a storm in the kitchen, constructed bridges, role played teachers and enjoyed lots of laughs with our friends.

Next week, we will explore Chinese New Year. A reminder to wear something red for our theme day Tuesday 1st February.

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy your bird watch!
Tara