Preschool News: 08.10.21

This week we have been learning all about the Harvest festival.

We began our week sharing the information book 'Harvest Festival and shared James' Harvest journey on Cbeebies'. We learned that a festival is a time when people come together to celebrate and Harvest festivals happen in the autumn. We then explored, why are harvests celebrated? We discovered that crops are plants that we eat and harvest is a time when crops are ready to pick. So, to develop our understanding of the world development, we went harvesting around our school environment. We picked parsnips, apples, pears, carrots, tomatoes, raspberries and beans. We were very pleased with our finds and discovered that if a harvest is good, there is enough food to eat. At a harvest festival people give thanks for a good harvest. Throughout the week we talked about who we say thank you to at harvest time, "God" "The Farmers" "The shop keepers" "The mill" "For vegetables" "The lorry drivers" "Combine harvester" "Having food to eat". We then made a harvest wreath and added pictures to show what we are thankful for at Harvest time.

We learned that we are lucky to have enough food to eat but that not everybody is as lucky as us, therefore, harvest time is a time to share and give food to others who need it. We will be supporting the Nantwich foodbank this year, we are inviting the school community to support us in our work and donate any of the following items, if you are able:
Cartons of long life milk
Tinned meats
Tinned fish
Washing powder
Toothbrushes
Toothpaste
Instant coffee
Chocolate bars and sweets
Cleaning spray (no bleach please)

To support our communication and language and literacy development, we have enjoyed sharing the information book 'Harvest Festival'. We were introduced to lots of new language, such as, crop, harvest, combine harvester, mill, ground, wheat, corn, festival and have explored this vocabulary throughout our week. To understand the hard work that goes into harvest we shared the story 'The Little Red Hen'. The Little Red Hen found some grains of wheat and decided to plant the grains, then when it had grown she cut the wheat. After that she took the wheat to the mill to be made into flour. Finally, she used the flour to bake bread. We have really enjoyed this story and is wonderful to hear then children joining in with familiar words and phrases and answering questions about the story.

So, to support our physical development, we baked bread! We had lots of fun kneading, stretching, rolling, mixing and splatting the bread dough. We have also continued with our daily dough disco and squiggle while you wiggle sessions. We also enjoyed a yoga session each day this week too; we went down on the farm with Jamie from Cosmic Kids Yoga and we have worked really hard to complete all the different yoga poses including, chick pose, cow pose and horse pose. We have enjoyed lots of time outside to develop our gross motor skills, as always, climbing is a popular activity and this week we have developed our confidence in hanging upside down in our trees – what fun we have had!

After learning that during Harvest time some people make scarecrows, to support our expressive arts and design development, we learned the song 'I'm a Dingle Dangle Scarecrow'. Then we created our own paper bag scarecrow – take a look in our photos.

To support our personal, social and emotional development, we shared the story 'Colour Monster by' Anna Llenas. We learned that the Colour Monster is feeling very mixed up. He's yellow, blue, red, black and green all at once. We discussed the feelings of each colour the Colour Monster was feeling and explored what makes us feel this way. This linked nicely with our HeartSmart session this week as we learned to express different feelings and emotions. We sang the song 'If you're happy and you know it...'and we were encouraged to look happy as we sang. We then changed the words to demonstrate different emotions and acted in that way, e.g. angry – stamped our feet. We discovered that how we are feeling comes from inside us, from our hearts. It's important we let good feelings stay in our hearts and we let bad feelings out. Boris says, 'How we feel, starts in our hearts'.

I have been super impressed at how we are increasingly developing our independence this week, from putting on our own coats, using a knife and fork to cut our food, managing own packaging in our lunch boxes, putting on own shoes and it is lovely to see how proud you all are of your efforts – shine your halos Preschool.

In our mathematics, we were introduced to number 1. We watched the Numberblocks episode, Meet 1. In this episode a little block falls out of the sky, meets her numberling, one and discovers one wonderful world of numerous single things e.g. one sun, one tree. We then went on a hunt to find objects to represent one. We are looking forward to exploring one further next week.

In our free play, we have been waving ribbons and streamers in response to music, we have been singing lots of nursery rhymes (our new nursery rhyme cd is a welcome addition to our music area), we have explored different ways to roll balls down the guttering pipes, we have been jumping off tyres, kicking balls, used scissors to snip and cut, played tag with our peers, enjoyed mark making with chalks and whiteboards and pens, made playdough and have enjoyed modelling our dough disco moves, shared stories and we have cooked up a storm in both our home corner and mud kitchen.

I think we definitely deserve a rest this weekend!
Tara