Preschool news 7.3.25

This week in preschool has been filled with dragons, books, pancakes, and the wonders of spring!

Our book of the week was Zog by Julia Donaldson, a fun and engaging story about a little dragon learning new skills.
Our rhyme of the week was Five Little Dragons, which helped us practice counting and singing together.
We explored alliteration with the sound 'a' through fun activities like Silly Soup and Singing Phonics, tuning our ears into words that start with the same sound.

In our Heartsmart lesson, we played Boris' Friendship Game. The children took turns rolling a dice to choose a friendly action, such as a high five or a thumbs-up. They then picked a friend to complete the action with, reinforcing kindness and positive interactions.

For our maths focus, we introduced tally charts to record our favourite things, including favourite pancake toppings for Shrove Tuesday and favourite colours as part of a communication and mark-making activity. The children practiced speaking and listening to share their preferences, making tally marks and counting up their results, and writing numerals to record the final numbers.

World Book Day on Thursday was a fantastic celebration. The children had so much fun dressing up as their favourite book characters. We read a variety of favourite stories and even made up our own during Helicopter Story Time. The children acted out each other's stories, showcasing their creativity and confidence.

We ventured outdoors for a spring walk to observe the changes in nature and were amazed at how much had changed in just one week! We spotted buds on trees, daisies growing, and more daffodils blooming. This sparked discussions about the arrival of spring and the new life we can expect to see soon.

The children have been creative this week enjoying painting water colour pictures of daffodils using their observational and mark making skills, they have also made daffodil models out of paper cases, straws, glue and tape.

Shrove Tuesday was a big hit! The children enjoyed flipping pancakes around the circle. For snack time, we had a special pancake treat. We read The Runaway Pancake and Mr. Wolf's Pancakes, linking our literacy and maths activities. We then used tally charts to record our favourite pancake toppings, reinforcing our counting skills.

Our outdoor learning included building activities riding in our big cars, and plenty of fun in the mud kitchen, where the children created 'mud pancakes' inspired by Shrove Tuesday!
Indoors, our games table featured the Knickerbocker Glory game, which encouraged turn-taking and counting.
The children also enjoyed a fine motor pom-pom and tweezer challenge, carefully filling cups using tweezers to strengthen their hand muscles.

Next week, we will be celebrating Science Week! The children will be exploring science through play, including a Doctors and Baby Clinic role-play area, a first aid activity where they will practice putting plasters on 'patients', and lots of other science-themed fun to spark curiosity and exploration.

It has been a magical and busy week, and we are looking forward to another exciting week ahead!