Term 2 Week 8

Our last week of this term has seen us enjoying lots of festive activities. We had our second production for those of you who couldn’t make Friday’s performance. Thank you for all your support and costumes sent in for your children, I think you’ll agree they all looked great and performed fantastically. 

We have had our  Christmas jumper day and school Christmas dinner which was thoroughly enjoyed by children and staff.

We got to spend Mrs Minns’s special day with her and she treated us all to yummy cakes. 

Our last day of the term will see us enjoy the end of term assembly and get to see some more of our parents before the end of term.

The Little Ospreys team would like to wish you all a very Merry Christmas and hope you enjoy your time with your family

Term 2 Week 7

The highlight of Little Ospreys week has got to be our pool & Christmas party we had on Tuesday. The children had a wonderful day starting in the  pool where the children showed great confidence and enjoyed our fun swim. The children then got to enjoy the wonderful party food parents kindly brought in for lunch. The children then showed off their dance moves and enjoyed playing pass the parcel, musical chairs and musical statues. Thursday saw the children have their first dress rehearsal of our Christmas production to the whole school and was greatly enjoyed and our children sang their  little hearts out, it was so wonderful and I for one am very proud of them. 
 

Term 2 Week 6

It has been a busy festive week in Little Ospreys with the Christmas production in full practice mode ready for the show.

The children have made a start on their Christmas cards choosing whether to use their hands, feet, cookie cutter or fingerprints to create their artwork.

Our maths challenge this week has been to count baubles and finding the matching number.

We have also been creating our class Christmas tree for the school competition and putting up and decorating our real class tree.

This led very nicely into making lots of Christmas crafts for the real main school tree in the hall, these included big father Christmases and paper bag snowmen.

We also got to share a very special 4th birthday with Ivy and we hope she has a wonderful joint birthday party with her brother Arthur to celebrate.

Term 2 Week 5

The Christmas festivities have begun this week with children starting to learn their Christmas production songs which we are doing with Proud Puffins class.

We have only done a few days yet the children are already getting used to the songs and singing their hearts out.

Our volunteer Mrs Flood has been getting creative and has been helping to make the children's hats, trees, and sleighs for the production.

The children have been out foraging with Mrs Minns to collect sticks to make our own Christmas tree for the school competition and a very big branch to make our very own advent calendar.

This week the children have been learning about the story called "Leaf Man" where autumn has come, the wind is gusting, and Leaf Man is on the move. Is he drifting east, over the marsh and ducks and geese? Or is he heading west, above the orchards, prairie meadows, and spotted cows? No one is quite sure, but this much is certain, a Leaf Man's got to go where the wind blows.

The children have been making their own leaf man out of leaves from the garden, printing leaves in salt dough and painting them. They have been making leaf biscuits with Miss Davey too.

Term 2 Week 4

We have enjoyed a Scottish themed week within preschool, celebrating St Andrews Day. The children have been enjoying a book called “Katie in Scotland” where Katie goes and  discovers the sights of Scotland. With so much to see and do in Scotland, it's lucky that Katie, Jack and Grandma have a very special guide to show them the best spots, Nessie, the Loch Ness Monster!

We have enjoyed learning facts about Scotland, the traditional dress like the kilt, the Scottish dancing and the famous stream called “The Jacobite” and the fantastic scenic journey through Scotland.

The children have been creating their own kilts using lots of different designs, fabrics  and made highland cows out of toilet roll tubes.

The Scottish train led perfectly on to our weekly train themed Write Dance with lots of gross and fine motor movements to be learnt, but also being fun and messy.

The end of the week the children will be making delicious shortbread with Miss Davey.

Term 2 Week 3

The week has been a week of remembrance and the people who made our country a safe place to live. The story we have enjoyed is "The Tin Soldier"  which is the telling of the timeless classic by Hans Christian Andersen. Tom is delighted when he receives a box of tin soldiers for his birthday. But he has no idea they come to life while he's asleep! 

The children have enjoyed messy play this week with Mrs Minns doing what she does best and making a big red jelly bath in the class. It started off being a lovely poppy but is very much mixed up now. 

The children have been practicing their fine motor skills by cutting out poppies, with some learning to write their names. The children were very active  practicing their crawling, jumping, climbing, pulling and balancing in hall time. As a special treat, they were able to use the climbing apparatus for the first time. They were using their gross motor skills to pull themselves up, over and under the equipment and showed great strength!

They end of the week saw the children enjoy decorating biscuits with Miss Davey using red food colouring, icing sugar and mini Oreo’s. However, I’m not sure they will make it home.

Have a great weekend.

LO Team 

Term 2 Week 2

The festival of light or Diwali, has been well and truly enjoyed by all this week.

The children having been trying traditional Diwali clothing and learning how to Diwali dance.

The children have been very creative with Mrs Minns and myself making  Diya lights out of clay, then painting them, bottle lanterns, Rangoli sun catchers and money envelopes to receive a chocolate coin as a sign of good fortune and prosperity.

The end of the week will see the children make a traditional Diwali sweet called a Laddo which are made from Coconut and milk. 

Term 2 Week 1

Hello and welcome back to all our lovely children. They seemed very pleased and excited to be back which is great for us knowing they are so happy and settled.

The week started with the halloween celebration with the children enjoying orange cinamon playdough, decorating the room with pumpkins and stories too. The Roll away Pumpkin story seemed to be their favorite which ended with them enjoying pumpkin pie. I spoke with the children and asked if they'd like to make soup from our giant pumpkin we had in class which they excitedly agreed. They helped cut the top off of the pumpkin to clear it out of it's seeds and string. Some children thought this was great using fantastic discriptive words like, squelchy, slimey and gooey and others cringing at the feel of all it's insides. Then on Wednesday, with Mrs Minns they each cut the pumpkin into pieces, cut up some patatoes, oninions, adding stock and cream. The children then put all the vegeatables into a slow cooker and watched to see how they changed in textures and colours once cooked and blended. 

The children had some soup and bread for snack. Everyone tried the soup which is great, but not all were keen to finish the soup however, the bread was devoured. 

The latter part of the week has seen the children making sparklers, using pipe cleaners and using cut up straws to thread onto them. We have also had a very messy but enjoyable firework write dance, using all the movements from the firework song we have been learning all week and turning them into fine motor skills and lots of enjoyable mark making. 

Term 1 Week 6

Can I just say a huge thank you to all that attended the parents meetings over the past few days. It has been really successful and hopefully beneficial group of meetings. The final week before half term has seen us finish our marvellous me topic, with the classroom full of pictures of your families, homes and more importantly pictures of the children themselves! This gives the children a great sense of belonging and safety, being able to see lots of things they find familiar.

We are already looking at next term by collecting conkers and drying them out ready to have a look at them when we get back, and to finish the week we have been baking gingerbread men with Miss Davey. We have also said farewell (for now) and good luck to Mrs Robinson as she goes on maternity leave and look forward to welcoming her back next school year. She will be missed by all.

Term 1 Week 5

Hello and another week whizzes by in Little Ospreys. We have had another little boy start with us this week and we welcome him and his family to our school. We also got to celebrate someone's 3rd birthday and we are very lucky to be given some tasty treats for the occasion, so thank you to his parents. This week has seen the children learning about different emotions which is linked to the Colour Monster story. For our younger children we did happy and sad, and our older Ospreys were learning, scared, angry, calm and love. The children got to look at real life pictures showing different emotions and had to find the matching coloured monster and talked about when they have felt sad, who they love and when have they felt scared or angry. We chatted lots about the emotions we see in class and then the children chose the matching coloured pen and drew faces showing the different emotions. The children were really engaged in this activity.

​​​​​​Term 1 Week 4

Another week has flown  by and the children are coming into preschool more confident and showing us they are starting to feel comfortable and settled within their surroundings.

The week has been a musical one, as the children have been practicing their singing and dancing for the assembly on Friday. We hope all our parents can come and see their wonderful children taking part and just how fantastic they are.

The children are growing in confidence within the pool, with more and more children wanting to jump in from the side and blowing bubbles in the water.

Our PE time saw us playing a game called Sticky Toffee, where the children get to practice their gross motor skills by catching balls. The children sat in a circle and had a turn at catching different sized balls. We started with the biggest ball we had, then a soft rugby ball and all the way down to a tennis ball. When I threw the ball I shouted sticky and the children had to try and catch it hoping their hands were sticky and they would shout toffee. Great fun was had by all the children and they even had a go at throwing the ball back to me and hopefully I caught it.

Term 1 Week 3

What a damp week we have had in school this week, however the children are starting to feel better and less runny noses in the class. This week the children started their self-portraits. Using mirrors, they looked at the features of their faces and told me what colours they needed and then using buttons for their eyes and wool for their hair their faces are starting to come alive. Hopefully, they will be up in our class gallery very soon.
This week's hall time was to give the children positional instructions like in front of, behind, sit on or underneath. They each had a chair and looked at me very confused when they were asked to go to the underneath and between the legs of the chair.
Thursday saw the children learning about colour mixing and each child had a zip lock bag, chose two colours they liked. They then rubbed and squeezed the bag to mix the colours to see what new colour it made. Then, they each were allowed to open their bag, using the new colour paint to paint a picture.
 

Term 1 Week 2

The first two weeks have seen us getting to know each other, making new friends, and enjoy playing with our interesting activities in our very curious classroom. The children have been gaining confidence in swimming, playing water games, and enjoying splashing Mrs Davison. We visited our forest school and enjoyed exploring the freedom of the great outdoors. The children got very dirty with paint by learning how to do our first Write Dance of the new term. 

Friday has seen us begin our weekly baking sessions where the children made yummy cupcakes with Miss Davey to enjoy in class. 

For this to happen every week we do ask for a small voluntary contribution of £2 per term to help staff put towards the cost of baking resources we buy, so we would be extremely grateful if you could help us with this cost. 

Term 1 Week 1

Hello and a huge welcome back to you all and a very warm welcome to our new children who have settled in fantastically and are a delight to have in our preschool. 

Our week began with us just settling back into pre-school life, welcoming the new children, and learning the different names of our new friends. Tuesday was swimming day where our children are all working on their water confidence by singing songs and playing games in the pool. Wednesday is our hall time where the children were practicing their listening skills and seeing how well they responded to the simple instructions, with the help of some new ring games. Thursday saw us enjoy our very first "Write Dance" of the new school year. Write Dance is a programme which provides movement opportunities so children can develop the physical skills needed to develop their handwriting. Rhythm is closely linked to rhyme and children are encouraged to use their voices to describe the actions as they move and dance. Mark-making and "movement drawings" ensure that the children progress from whole body dance moves to fine-motor movements with fluency and speed. It was the first time for some, and these children were a little reluctant to get dirty and enjoy being messy.

Friday saw us visit our Forest school in the morning before the sun gets too hot and next Friday will see the return of weekly baking.