Author: sthelenspreschool

This week has been quiet with regards to celebrations and public holidays, allowing us to focus on the children’s current interests and base activities and next steps around them.

Following on from Diwali, we’ve carried on the shapes and pattern theme. Introducing some activities based around this. Threading shapes to develop our fine motor skills. Following patterns and lines, zig zags, spirals etc, using gems, Pom poms or just simple coloured pencils.

We had shapes in water this week in orange room, scooping and sorting the shapes. And a game of shape bingo, looking for shapes in the environment and marking them off on our sheets. Both rooms had a go at being shape detectives, finding lots of different shaped objects around our rooms and outside.

This week we have been counting and learning numbers, using the ladybirds on a leaf game.

Some of the children love to look at photos of themselves and their friends on the iPads, (most of all they like to take selfies), so the play cameras and binoculars came out for the children to explore. It was so fun to look through the binoculars, everything was far away, then really close when we turned them around.

Yellow room have been on a bear hunt this week…. they splashed through the river, squelched through the mud and ran away from the big scary bear! The tuff tray was set up with the different scenes of the book to explore, and then the children took part in bear hunt yoga. (Link below)

Orange room experimented with shaving foam and the different patterns they could make, using potato mashers, spoons and pots. They took turns making some beautiful smelling playdough using fruit tea mixed with the water. It made the whole preschool smell like berries for the rest of the day.

Lots of our children love to build and create, this week there’s been lots of play focussed on the building blocks and stickle bricks. Sometimes keeping things simple allows the children to use their critical thinking and imaginations. We’ve had a zoo (equipped with cages for the animals), a car park, a police station, a tunnel, and many other things.

We’ve spent this week whizzing, crackling and whooshing around, learning all about fireworks and bonfire night. 💥

We started off the week planting our pumpkin seeds from last week, lets hope they will grow into giant pumpkins. 🎃

Both rooms have enjoyed colour mixing, we added shaving foam and gloop for extra texture. We also used coloured water and pippets to help develop our fine motor skills. 🧫

We created some amazing firework pictures exploring different ways to print, using marbles rolled in paint and adding glitter for the sparkle effect. And also using frayed cardboard tubes and straws to give a firework shape. 🎇

In the garden we drew fireworks on the ground using chalks. Our role play was set up for us to create a big bonfire. We spoke about fire safety and things at home that may be too hot to touch. Then we pretended to warm our hands while cooking sausages and marshmallows on our bonfire 🔥

We practiced our cutting skills snipping around bun cases to create a firework picture. ✂️

We listened to some firework sounds and copied them, then, we tried moving like fireworks, starting off small and whizzing into the air before exploding into a big jump. 🤸🏼

Going into the end of the week and a second lockdown, the emotion puppets came out to play. The children can put on a show using the puppets and this can help them to express any emotions they may be feeling. It also allows us to introduce the language of emotions.

This week at St Helens Preschool both rooms have been looking very closely at nature and what happens when the weather changes.

Orange room have been reading Goldilocks and the 3 bears, they experimented with tipping and pouring using oats.

In our amazing garden we found lots of beautiful, coloured leaves. We used our leaves to make autumn pictures, using different materials.

We’ve explored conkers, acorns and pine cones and decorated our room with some of our fantastic creations. We also had a look at some under the microscope.

The tuff trays were full of autumnal things for us to explore, to count and talk about. We’ve learned about which animals come out in autumn, what they eat and where they live.

Can you find any of these on your walk?…

Acorn

Conker

Chestnut

An orange leaf

A squirrel

A red leaf

What else can you find??……

This week we have been learning all about recycling. We’ve had lots of recycling based activities, made our own recycled robots from junk modelling. And a forest of trees.

As it’s autumn, we’ve began to explore the changes we are seeing around us. What different colours we can see, and what’s happening to our environment and the weather.

Friday was a dark, rainy day , so we decided to turn off the lights and explore light and shadows. We used the animals from Dear Zoo to make a shadow puppet show, and watched the sea creatures swim up and down amongst the bubbles in the bubble tube. It was very calming to listen to the rain on the roof of the conservatory.

Did you know we go outdoors in all weathers? We loved putting on our wellies and stomping in the puddles this week. However, Friday the wind and rain was too dangerous for us to play outside in. We stayed indoors and had lots of fun moving around in different ways and dancing.

We hope you have had a lovely summer.
We also can’t wait to meet the children joining our preschool this September.
If you are a parent or carer that’s new to St. Helens please like our private page just for parents and carers, the link is at the top of this page.
🚀☺️🌟🧚🏻‍♂️🧙🏼‍♀️🦸🏽‍♀️⛑🐉🌈🍎⚽️🎸🧩🎖

On Saturday 30th November we held our annual Christmas fair, including a magical winter wonderland and Santa’s Grotto.

During the afternoon families from the Costessey community and surrounding areas had plenty of opportunities to have fun with the crafts, games and activities. Do some shopping with local stall holders, be entertained by the Ukulele Elves, as well as time to relax over a burger, cake and drink with friends and family. Of course enjoy that special time with Santa and his cheeky elves (supported by West Norwich Lions).

The staff and Committee would like to a say a BIG thank you to all who supported in any way – those who attended, volunteered their time to help out, the stall holders AND all the children for making the afternoon so magical.

This was our first Fair held in our new premises and exceeded the expectations of all the staff, committee, parents and wider community who attended.

The staff worked incredibly hard over the summer readying the new premises for the start of the new term…

You can see just how fantastic a job they have done here…