Footsteps Preschool Watermead

Inspired by the childrens interest in Palaces and castles from watching the Royal funeral over the Bank Holiday, we decided to make our own! 🏰

We think that it is fit for any Prince 🤴or Princess👸 - the children just thought it was fit for them all 😂

Remembering Our Queen at Footsteps

As we all joined together to celebrate the life and reign of Queen Elizabeth II yesterday, find out how we have acknowledged her service to us here at Footsteps.

Remembering Our Queen at Footsteps The passi g of our mo arch Quee Elizabeth II was a huge loss to the Royal family a d to the Natio . We felt it was importa t that we helped the childre withi our setti gs to make se se of this atio al eve t, its importa ce i History a d also to help them egotiate a y feeli gs arou d the eve ts that....

What a week!

We have been celebrating the life of Queen Elizabeth II. We’ve learnt lots about her and laid flowers 🌸 in her memory at our flag 🇬🇧

We have fed the ducks 🦆 on our walks and had so much fun inside and out with all the activities on offer as our children grow in confidence.

Some right Royal 👸🤴 treats in store this week at Footsteps. 🏰 🇬🇧

Everyone at Footsteps was greatly saddened to learn of the death Her Majesty The Queen.

On behalf of all of our team we would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to the Royal Family on their loss. Our hearts 💔 are with you.

You can’t say we dont teach our children 😂 🧦

What a great start to our new term this week! 🤩

We have made our faces with paper plates and wool, investigated magnets, practiced our ball skills, practiced how far we can jump to the stepping stones, explored the reading corner and celebrated a birthday 🎂 Not to mention all the fun we have had with new friends and old. We are so proud of all of our children!

Wow what a fun day we've had this
We have all settled beautifully back in to the routine of pre school and have enjoyed seeing our friends! We have been drawing pictures of our faces, we have squashed and rolled the play dough and had fun playing outside in the garden - practising our jumping skills.

Stuck for ideas of how to entertain your little ones this summer? How about a Forest School favourite and build a den?

Building a den is a brilliant back-to-nature challenge that will awaken your child’s inner caveman, and it’s a great project to get stuck into with a friend or sibling.

Find some thick, long sticks and challenge your child to create their own shelter, either by leaning them up against a tree, or by lashing them together with string at the top for a tipi-style den.

You could take an old sheet out with you to give their den-building more scope.

This is a good test of problem-solving skills that involves your child working out how to balance the sticks and make them stay standing, as well as providing an opportunity to be physically active.

All emotional 😭 thinking back on our amazing Graduates 🎓 of 2022.

A toast from us to you 🥂

To all the fun and friends we’ve made
To making a mess and a little first aid 🩹
To learning to climb and draw and share
To so many ways that we show that we care
To hugs and stories and building up towers
To cars and dolls and painting for hours
To all our children leaving us for big school
Still think on us fondly when you get too cool
To all our amazing parents and staff
We’ve had some tears and plenty of laughs
To an amazing summer where our children will grow
And come back taller, but with much more to know
We will miss you all.

See you in September xx

Today we’ve made shaving foam ice creams, helped shells 🐚 and sea creatures 🐢 break free from ice 🧊 relaxed with yoga 🧘🏼 and practiced our throwing skills with a target 🎯 and velcro balls!

Today we have built up our arm muscles manipulating playdough, we've talked about the changes over time with ice 🧊, made the frogs 🐸 jump into the pond and we have celebrated Andrea and Kerry's birthdays!

Feeling the heat at Footsteps

It’s hot hot hot 🥵 out there! We are taking every precaution following the official guidance to keep our children cool and happy! Plenty of calm time inside and lots of fun ways to stay cool 😎 🧊 on offer today and tomorrow! You can check out our guidance here
https://footsteps-nursery.com/feeling-the-heat-at-footsteps

Feeling the heat at Footsteps As you are all probably aware, a red weather war i g has bee issued i our regio for extreme heat. We wa ted to reassure you that at prese t ursery will be ope as usual a d we will be taki g steps to keep childre as cool a d comfortable as possible duri g this time. Please dress your childre i light....

We have loved sharing our own experiences of the beach over the past few weeks. It has encouraged lots of discussion with both staff and friends alike. 🏖
The children have used their imagination and creative skills to create a variety of things you may find at the beach to enhance our display. 🦀 🌊 🪨 🏊‍♂️ 🚤 🐠
Some of our older children have also shown lots of enthusiasm for writing over the past few weeks. Always keen to help develop their interests - they have helped us write some labels for our display!

We dug up our potatoes and some wiggly worms 🪱 and we have explored lots of different messy play activities. It’s such fun feeling all the different textures of paint 🎨 on our hands or the foam soap between our fingers.

Today we have practiced using scissors ✂️ to cut tickets for our graduation ceremony 👨‍🎓. We explored clay and had fun making kites 🪁 which we then flew in the garden.

Today we have made butterflies🦋 , fished for numbers 🎣 and watered 💦 our plants 🌱 to help them grow.

Celebrating 10 Years of Service: Our Top Team!

It was a 10 year celebration for Footsteps Chalfont St Peter this January but also a 10 year celebration of some of our staff working throughout our expanded Footsteps family. With us from our first tiny footsteps 👣

A testament to the wonderful place that Footsteps is! 🎉

https://footsteps-nursery.com/celebrating-10-years-of-service-our-top-team

Celebrating 10 Years of Service: Our Top Team! As well as celebrati g 10 years of Chalfo t St Peter this year, we are also celebrati g our members of staff that have bee with us from the very begi i g! We are so proud that these dedicated practitio ers have chose to spe d all this time with us, a d the impact that they have had o the hu dreds of...

We have had such a busy day today practising our physical skills, moving in different ways balancing and 🧗

Ornella came to do a tapping tots music 🎶 session, this is such a fun way to encourage lots of singing and language development 🇪🇸 .

We enjoyed bark rubbing outside on the tree 🌳 exploring what different marks we can make, and watering 💦 our allotment checking on how things are growing.

Then we finished off our day by making play dough, mixing and rolling the dough. This is a great activity to help strengthen those hand and arm muscles ready for writing.

We have been building foundations for a great set of new skills!

Practising using tools, role play, puzzle solving and cooperation. All on display at the Footsteps site today!

👷🏼‍♀️👷🏻👷🏻‍♂️ 🧱 🚧🏗⚒🪛🪚

We have been exploring what happens when you mix cornflour and water. It allowed for lots of opportunities to explore language. The children have had fun risk taking by climbing and swinging in the tree and we used tools in a safe way with our Tap a Shape game.

This morning we made sandwiches 🥪 for snack! We practiced using tools safely by spreading the butter 🧈 and then made our own choice of what we would like inside (jam and cucumber 🥒 being a popular choice 🤣). This activity was a great opportunity to talk about the different fillings on offer and whether they were a healthy choice or not. It then allowed us to talk about what we do to look after our teeth 🦷 .

We have matched cars to the corresponding number or shape. We have explored what happens when we mix sand and water together as well as talking about what we make at the beach with buckets and spades. We have also planted some herbs in our sensory garden which will be a great talking point for our children as we discuss how they look, smell and feel.

What a exploring tools ⚒️ and water 💦 as we experiment on this beautiful sunny ☀️ day.

We have been busy exploring colours and shapes!

We have used Shapes to make Kites 🪁 boats ⛵️ and even people.

We have practiced matching colours and numbers and enjoyed spotting familiar shapes in the garden.

We hope all of our Footsteps families, staff and friends had a brilliant 4 days of

We can’t wait to hear all about them. We thought you might like to hear about ours too.

https://footsteps-nursery.com/footsteps-celebrate-the-jubilee

Down at the Bottom of the Garden……

We hope all our families are enjoying the start of half term. If you haven’t already had a chance to read it, we thought that this was a great time to share what has been going on in our gardens 🪴 recently.

https://footsteps-nursery.com/down-at-the-bottom-of-the-garden

Down at the Bottom of the Garden…… At Footsteps our ethos is based arou d getti g lots of fresh air, Forest School pri ciples a d lots of fu physical activities i our surrou di g space. As such, our Footsteps locatio s have always bee very importa t. They all have bee chose to e sure our childre have access to lots of outside space,....

has been electrifying 💥 💡 ⚡️

We’ve been learning all about circuits and what happens when we put the battery 🔋 🪫 in and out. We love igniting their fascination with how things work and experimenting!

The calm before the chaos!

We had such fun at our party. Thankyou to all our families and caters who came to join us to celebrate and play!

👑 🍰 🎉 🇬🇧

Talking about looking after our and why it is so important. The children shared what colour their toothbrush is, when they brush their teeth and demonstrated how they should brush their teeth too.

Planting beans 🫘- we can’t wait to see if they are magic 🪄 and watch them grow 🌱

Today we've made our own buildings out of coloured bricks, made playdough Eid biscuits and made real biscuits for Eid. The activity created lots of mathematical language as well as talking about other cultures and their celebrations.

Just a little snapshot of some our activities and talking points so far this week! No such thing as at Footsteps

Building foundations and skills for future learning.

We’ve got that

Thanks to all our hard work on our sponsored listen👂🏻! Now as a result of our fantastic family community and sponsorships we have all these incredible new books 📚 to take us on new adventures!

Choices, choices…. What will interest our children to engage and learn this

Today is 🌳🌳🌳 and it has never been more important to do what we can to help to negate our carbon footprint.

Footsteps always place a huge emphasis on learning about our impact on the world 🌎 around us. We teach the children about sustainability, climate change, biodiversity, recycling and protecting the environment.

We are committed to maximizing the potential of our outside and forest School areas where the children care for plants, animals, flowers and vegetables.

The incredible team at Footsteps is a huge part of our caring, welcoming environment. We are really pleased to welcome two new brilliant staff members Andrea and Kerry. We hope they will love joining us on all our adventures!

It’s been an Easter 🐣 🐰 🥚 eggstravaganza today!

Lots of lovely Easter 🐣 Activities at Footsteps today! 🥚 🐰

Even our staff behaved like angels 👼 today! Snow much fun!

What a fun start to the week! We have loved playing in the mud kitchen mixing up mud pies 🥧 we have climbed and swung 🙊 on the tree 🌳shared stories 📚 and made a start on planting for our allotment - first up potatoes 🥔

To all our amazing mums, stepmums, like a mums, grandparents, carers and amazing staff - Happy Mother’s Day from Footsteps!

We want think of others before ourselves
Just like mum
We want to laugh and have fun
Just like mum
We want to be gentle but brave
Just like mum
We want to be a good friend
Just like mum
We want to be patient and kind
Just like mum
We want to love unconditionally
Just like mum
We want to be….
Just like mum

We want to say Thank you for all that you do
You are always there for us, and we are here for you too.

Developing growing minds and bodies to adapt to new skills takes time and practice. We like to create fun and engaging activities on a daily basis to help strengthen those arm muscles in preparation for children learning to write. Here are just a few

We've had a lovely playing in the sun, we have been making marks with water, recognising numbers, matching animals to their patterned markings, then to finish our day we had a nice walk and spotted a bird 🐦 building a nest around the lake.

Out came the sunshine ☀️ and dried up all the rain 🌧
And all the children at Footsteps, went outside to play again!

A wonderful day in the sun getting active and using our imaginations!

World Book Day at Footsteps 2022

It’s been over a week since and we are still thinking about all the fun we had! Why not check out ow we enjoyed celebrating with the joy of reading with all of our Footsteps family 📰 📚

https://footsteps-nursery.com/world-book-day-at-footsteps-2022

World Book Day at Footsteps 2022 On Thursday 3rd March, children and teachers across the United Kingdom celebrated the magic of literature as they donned costumes and undertook themed activities to mark World Book Day. The annual global event celebrates reading and is marked in more than 100 countries all over the world. With readi...

Sticking, cutting ✂️, pouring, placing, printing, sorting, drawing ✍🏽 and painting 🖌
Just some of the ways we can tune those fine motor skills, whilst using our imaginations, creativity, language and social skills too. Most importantly though it helps us get to know our children inside out, and meet their individual needs, strengths, interests and uncover their unique personalities!

Happy International Women’s Day to all our amazing team, parents, grandparents and carers!