This week’s activities

The judges from Britain in Bloom came along to the School this morning on their tour of the village. They were very impressed with our allotment garden, noting that the children not only help to nurture the plants but get to taste them too.  There is a display of some of the children harvesting and tasting some of the fruit we have grown on the wall to the building if you would like to take a look.

We have also been able to harvest today some potatoes, onions, rhubarb, radishes, beetroot and broad beans. The children will be finding out about them by having hands on experiences and we will taste and cook some of them over the next few days.

We would like to say a BIG THANK YOU to the volunteers from Eynsford in Bloom for their fantastic efforts on turning our overgrown garden into a flourishing vegetable plot.  We would love it if we could have some volunteers from our own families to help out from September.

We continue to work on the children’s turn-taking and negotiating skills by using a variety of resources. They have been learning to follow the rules of board games, such as the ‘Farm Dominoes’, as well as the usual sharing of the large ride-on toys.

We take pride in the children’s ability to do things for themselves and, inspite of the chaos that appears to ensue when the children need to put on full waterproof clothing and wellies, the hard work, patience and determination of the team to help children achieve these vital life skills, is paying off dividends.

Children continue to enjoy the great outdoors – no matter the weather. Sadly, we are still only able to use Robin Garden due to the flooding that occurs whenever we have heavy rain in Wren Garden.  We are hopeful that a long term solution will be happening some time in the future with the waterflow to the river being improved during works by the School.

To ensure that the children are expending their energy and having opportunities for large physical movements, we have used the available space to engage in running races, obstacle courses, hopscotch, climbing frame and slide. The slide was fixed by one of the children’s lovely granddads and we are very grateful that the children are now able to use this equipment again. Many of the children feel a real sense of pride and achievement when they manage the firefighters pole on their own for the first time.

The children making the transition to primary school are being supported in a variety of ways through targeted transition groups in the afternoon. This could be around role play being at school, such as answering to a register, having good listening skills when a story is being read, talking about themselves and developing their self-confidence, or doing PE on the large school field.

We also engage in regular small group work around understanding emotions and safeguarding, such as understanding how to use technology safely, what is meant by stranger danger and how to keep safe in different situations.

In their technological play, they have skillfully used the remote control cars, making tunnels out of chairs for them to negotiate, alongside using the CD player, which they are able to access themselves, learning which switches do various things; they can even turn the volume down as well as up!

Sorry that it is a shorter version this week but again there are photos on our website for you to access and enjoy.

The Pre-school Team