Preschool News 21.01.22

This week has flown by.

In our personal, social and emotional development, we have continued to talk about the people that are special to us. During our HeartSmart session, we talked about how we all have special people in our lives that we can show love to. First, we recapped the story of Boris the Robot and discussed who loves and cares for Boris in the story. Then we talked about how the characters show love for Boris. Next, we took it in turns to talk about who we love, "Mummy" "Daddy" "Mille and Mitzy" "Truffle". Finally, we described how we show that person we love them, "I stroke her" "I give daddy cuddles" "I play games with my brother". Thank you Boris for reminding us that we all have someone we can show love to.

To support our communication and language development, we have have developed our understanding of prepositions. First, we took it in turns to place the pig, 'under', 'on top', behind' 'next' and 'in' the house and then we worked hard to use the appropriate language to describe where the pig was.

During our literacy sessions, we have continued to use our talk for writing actions to help us recall the story of 'The three Little Pigs'. It has been lovely to observe the children using the story masks in their play to re-enact the story. We are looking forward to sharing our retelling of the story via Tapestry next week. We also continued to share different versions of the story and have discussed similarities and differences between the texts. We love to sing and this we week we learned the rhyme 'Old MacDonald had a Farm' and had lots of fun making the sounds of all the different animals. For our writing activity, we drew a picture of all the animals on Old MacDonalds farm.

In our phonics sessions, our younger children have continued to explore environmental sounds. We have explored the Preschool garden and the school grounds by going on daily listening walks. To concentrate more on the sounds around us instead of what we can see, it has been helpful to close our eyes. 'Close your eyes and turn on your listening ears – what can you hear?' Around the school, we have heard "birds, children, singing, feet stamping, people, a helicopter" and even "cars, a campervan, a bus" closer to the road.

Our older children have learned to identify the next set of the RWI picture cards, 'insect, net, pirate and girl' and enjoyed the game, Fred says..... "can you put your hands on your h-e-d?". the children are already showing confidence helping Fred to say the word – great job! We have also been clapping out syllables. I introduced syllables as 'how many claps in the word?' and modelled clapping out the syllables, e.g.'pen-cil'. We will continue to practice this skill over the coming weeks. We have ended each session singing some of our favourite nursery rhymes.

Please see Tapestry for this weeks phonics home-link.

Within our physical development, we have continued to develop our balls skills. This week we focused on throwing and catching a large ball. At the beginning of the week we practiced throwing a ball in the air and to catch it. Then on Thursday and Friday we worked in pairs to throw the ball to each other and catch it – great job everyone! We also enjoyed many activities to develop our fine and gross motor development, including, threading, drawing, rolling vehicles in paint then rolling onto paper to create marks and we used a knife to spread mortar (shaving foam)onto blocks and small bricks to build a house. Our older children have continued to develop their pencil grip and are now using the rhyme, 'nip, flip, grip' to support their grip. They have also completed tasks that involve using a pen to trace over lines. I am super proud of all your efforts.

During our mathematics sessions, we were introduced to the number three. At the beginning of the week we watched the Numberblocks episode 'Number 3'. After that, we answered questions based on the episode. We then looked at different ways to represent 3 and went on a three hunt. We were very good at this activity. At the end of the week, we recapped all the numbers we have learned so far and sorted objects to represent numbers 1,2 and 3 – wow, well done everyone!

We continued to talk about our families as part of our understanding the world development and spent time discussing what makes our family unique "My daddy has no hair" "My daddy is so tall" "My mummy has long hair". Next week, we are going to make our own family portrait. We also explored the season winter. In class we discussed winter and talked about some winter pictures on the whiteboard. After that, we thought about how we should dress for winter, "hats, scarves, gloves, coats". We dressed appropriately then enjoyed a winter walk around the school grounds. We talked about the colours we could see during winter time, ""blue, grey and white" and observed "bare trees, ice, a robin, no apples or pears, our breath". Next we will think about how we can look after birds during winter.

As part of our expressive arts and design development, we learned to sing the rhyme Old MacDonald had a Farm. As we sang the song we naturally tapped our knees in time to the beat. As we did such a fantastic job we were introduced to the glockenspiel. We all worked hard to tap in time to the beat. We also continued to create our homes using junk and began to add the features from our home to our creations, such as, doors, windows and roof tiles.

During our free play, we have role played, witches, spiderman, dogs and mummies and daddies, we have built obstacle courses outside, kicked a ball, read stories, baked mud pies, explored the frozen mud, sang songs and have enjoyed drawing pictures and creating marks in a variety of ways.

Thank you for another great week!

See you all next week
Tara