Blog

We have had a wonderful start to the New Year! We have had some new friends join Framfield Pre-School and the children have really enjoyed sharing their Christmas experiences with the staff and their peers. We have started off the year settling back into Pre-School routines. The children have had great fun playing with familiar toys and activities, some which have become firm favourites as well as exploring newer activities too!

January greeted us with some cold icy weather. The children have been learning to put on their coats and their winter weather accessories to explore the ice in our Pre-School garden. We have experimented with turning water into ice over night as well as pouring hot water into our water trays to create steam on the colder days. Also, this term we have explored sounds in the environment, creating rain makers and singing in our big band exploring loud and quiet singing and musical instrument playing.
Dinosaur week encouraged the children to become palaeontologists and learn about different species of Dinosaurs and how to dig out fossils. We became story tellers in National Storytelling Week, using our imagination to create our own narrative play as well as enjoying much loved familiar stories. The children had great fun becoming wolves for our Three Little Pigs tuft tray and Trip trapping over our wobbly bridge.
We also celebrated Hector, our wonderful Pre-School pet on the 2nd of February for Hedgehog Appreciation Day.
This week we have been exploring patterns, we have been looking at different textures and patterns in Pre-School and learning new describing words. We have also extended the children’s learning of patterns by exploring comparison of big and small and differences of colour.
We enjoyed a variety of celebrations such as Lunar New Year, Valentines Day, and Pancake Day!

Welcome to the Autumn Term
We start the term with some new resources and areas to explore. Over the summer break we have replaced the climbing frame and soft play areas. We have also created a construction area for the children to enjoy and explore.
Indoors our home corner has some exciting new wooden food and accessories which the children have enjoyed unpacking. They have enjoyed lots of role play creating picnics, breakfast trays and sweet/ice cream shops.
Our focus for this half term has been ‘All About Me’. We have incorporated news from our summer holidays, through discussion and photos shared by the parents. We have also shared photos of our families and discussed our family members in detail. The children were invited to create a family portrait to put on our display.
The children have been learning about friendships and how to be kind to one another, taking turns and sharing resources. Everyone coloured in a petal to add to our Friendship Flower.
We now move on to exploring emotions and encouraging the children to express their feelings through songs, stories and activities. The Colour Monster story is helping us understand our feelings through the representation of colour. The children have also had opportunities to make their own emotion faces by looking in the mirror and mark making their facial features onto a face template. We have also created life size drawings of the children and they have been using coloured tissue paper to represent their feelings through colour.
We have incorporated caring for our pets at home and at Pre School. They have been invited to feed, care for and clean our animals and their enclosures, promoting their responsibilities within the setting. Our parents have shared photos of family pets from which we have created a scrapbook to share with the children.

A few weeks ago all the children got the chance to plant a giant (titan) sunflower seed and take them home to grow. The seeds, compost and pots were very kindly donated to us from Staverton Nursery. We are excited to see how tall they all grow as they could exceed 3 metres! From what we have seen, they all seem to be growing really well and they’re doing better than mine which doesn’t seem to be growing very fast at all!

We have started to look at phonics this week starting with the letter S. We have seen some real snakes, and played some games with objects beginning with S. We will be focussing on a different letter each week, with activities themed around this.

It was also pancake day on Tuesday and the children were very lucky to have pancakes at snack time! We have also had pancake themed playdough in the tough tray this week