Good Morning,
We hope you all had a lovely weekend. The weather seems particularly mild for this time of year and the rain seemed to hold off over the weekend so we hope you managed to enjoy some time out in the fresh air. Don't forget children can come to Preschool wearing odd socks today to celebrate their uniqueness as part of anti-bulling week.
Important date: Friday 18th November is Children in Need. If your child attends Preschool on a Friday, it will be non uniform on the 18th. Children are welcome to come in wearing something spotty but this is not compulsory and they can wear anything that they feel happy in. We will be fundraising for Children in Need and each classroom will have a pot for donations. If you are able to donate a voluntary contribution of 50p we would really appreciate it but please do not worry if you cannot.
This will be our last week focusing on, The Enormous Turnip. Last week the children participated in story telling activities and especially enjoyed saying the repeated phrase, "they pulled and pulled but the turnip did not budge" while pretending to pull on a turnip! We also used a story basket to tell the story in sequence and at the end of the week, we hid all the characters under 'soil' and pulled them out one at a time to discuss. This story has been used to initiate discussions and develop the children's understanding of this half term's Character Education Gateway which is, Leadership. The children have become confident answering questions about how the farmer reached his goal and have enjoyed suggesting ways they may have done things differently if they were leading instead of the farmer. This week, we will be creating story maps of, The Enormous Turnip to encourage the children to make meaningful marks and discuss the story sequence.
In Phonics this week we will be learning about alliteration. We will play games that encourage the children to listen to and remember the initial sound in words and will develop their ability to match words with the same initial sound. You can help support your child's learning at home by playing games such as 'I Spy' and making up silly sentences that include lots of alliteration.
In Maths this week, we will be subitising numbers 1-5. We have started exploring this a little already as it is an important skill for the children to develop. Subitising is when you are able to recognise an amount without having to count each object one at a time. Children learn to do this without realising when they play games using dice. We often use dice at Preschool and it is a lovely way to encourage subitising. We will also be placing amounts in different arrangements and will be talking about the way that 4 for example, can look different but is still 4.
We have been continuing to use Makaton throughout the day for instructions, animals and feelings. This week, as we finish off The Enormous Turnip, we will learn some Makaton for different vegetables which we hope will also encourage discussions about the vegetables we like, or might like to try. Please find a link below if you would like to learn the signs together at home. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lp0jFLJPWEg
A little request...as the weather is slowly beginning to change, children are bringing in hats, coats, gloves and more jumpers etc. Please can we ask that all items are named as it can be hard for staff to recognise everyone's belongings, especially jumpers. It would also be really appreciated if drinks bottles are clearly labelled as well. Not only does this help the staff but it is a brilliant way of help the children begin to recognise their names.
We are very excited to be beginning to think about Christmas in Preschool. If you haven't seen it yet, a memo went out at the end of last week explaining our plans. Thank you to everyone that has let us know they will be attending. If you haven't seen the memo yet, please take a look.
As always, we thank you for your continued support,
The Preschool Team :)
