St Marys Playgroup

26/06/2025

🎒✨ Starting School in September 2025? ✨🎒

Get ready for the big step with a fun and friendly meet-up at Rugrats and Halfpints this summer! 🌞

Come along and meet other children starting school this year – a great chance for your little one to make new friends before their first day. 👫🎨

📅 No booking needed – just walk in!
👧 For reception-age children (4/5 years old) and their siblings
🎉 Enjoy a 25% OFF entry discount!

📍 Rugrats and Halfpints, Banbury
📞 Call us at 01295 250060
📧 Email: [email protected]

Let’s make the transition to school a little easier – and a lot more fun! 💫

10/10/2023

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Chatty Tuesday!

Today’s Top Tip is to make a collection of socks – it can include odd socks and pairs!

Talk about the socks you can see. You could talk about size, pattern and matching. E.g. ‘Here’s a big sock….and this one is much smaller!’ and ‘I can see two spotty socks! That’s a pair! They match!’ and ‘These are both stripy, so they’re similar but not the same. This sock has thick stripes and this sock has thin stripes.’

Remember to use lots of comments rather than questions.

The children might have their own idea for things you could do and play with the socks. Or you could layout a picture on the floor. You could layout the first letter of their name. Could you make sock puppets? You could make sensory socks by filling the socks with different items and then tying a knot in the top of each one – try using pasta, lentils, coins etc. ‘Wow this one is heavy!’ ‘This sock jingle-jangles!’ Remember to stay with children to supervise the activity….and chat!

Each Tuesday, we will be posting top tips, helpful hints and playful activities to promote early language development. Pop along and join in the chat! Have you started to share these ideas with families every Tuesday?

26/09/2023

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Chatty Tuesday!

Today’s top tips are about sharing stories with children and come from Michael Rosen, author and poet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azRDNDQUjSk

• Enjoy the book, that way it’s an enjoyable experience together.

• Books tend to have a rhythm, find the rhythm of the story so your child can hook on to the words ready to join in with you.

• Talk about the pictures. Not only can it be a fun activity to do but it will also help your child to understand that there are clues in pictures that will later help them when they learn to read independently.

• Take the opportunity to answer any questions that your child might ask.

"You (the reader) are the bridge between the book and the child."

Michael Rosen

Each Tuesday, we will be posting top tips, helpful hints and playful activities to promote early language development. Pop along and join in the chat! Have you started to share these ideas with families every Tuesday?

19/09/2023

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13/09/2023

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Chatty Tuesday!

Today’s top tip is to celebrate children’s home languages!

Will hearing me speak more than one language confuse my child? Is the speech of bilingual children delayed? What language should I use at home? The BBC page Tiny Happy People has many short videos to support parents / carers and professionals working with bilingual children.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/bilingual

Each Tuesday, we will be posting top tips, helpful hints and playful activities to promote early language development. Pop along and join in the chat! Have you started to share these ideas with families every Tuesday?

08/07/2023

Welcome to

Every Friday we will focus on one of the activities featured in the ‘50 Things to do before you’re 5’ app. This week we are going to ‘Splish, splash, splosh’

Activity #26 Children love to play with water, inside and outside, splashing, pouring, and paddling! You don’t need water trays or expensive equipment to enjoy water play – exploring water in the bath or using a washing up bowl with yoghurt pots is brilliant. Water can be used in a wide variety of ways in order to encourage communication, vocabulary development, sensory experiences, imaginative play and much more.

Download the app and find out more! https://oxfordshire.50thingstodo.org/

Please share this post to help more people find out about this new app which suggests activities to do with your child in their early years. Interacting with children while they are playing is an investment in their future.

16/05/2023

Located at The Friends Meeting House, Horsefair, Banbury OX16 0AH.
Spaces available for September 2023.

20/02/2023

A fabulous first session with St Marys Playgroup . The children all joined in really well with their scarf warm up and the action to their sounds which this week were p and i. The children were all very good at sorting the objects into the right sounds. I look forward to seeing you next week. Well done everyone 😀🐻

06/02/2023

St Mary's Playgroup:
Last day of term Friday xx

22/11/2022

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Chatty Tuesday!

Today’s Top Tip is to make a ‘collection’ of items.

You could decide to make a collection of hats, for example. Choose a bag or a basket and set off on an adventure around your home (or setting) collecting items for your collection. Talk about the different items you find “Wow! This is a woolly hat for wearing in the cold weather! I’ve found a straw hat – this could keep the sun off me. I’ve got a firefighter’s helmet – this will help protect me!” Make comments about the similarities and differences between the hats. You could lay out the hats as if in a museum, label them together, count them or make a hat shop! See what ideas the children have and follow their lead!

Other good collections might be shoes, spoons or bowls. You could suggest more open-ended ideas to children, such as ‘Let’s collect things that are round like a circle” or “Let’s find lots of things that are soft and cuddly”. Let us know what ideas you have for making collections!

Each Tuesday, we will be posting top tips, helpful hints and playful activities to promote early language development. Pop along and join in the chat! Have you started to share these ideas with families every Tuesday?

15/11/2022

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Chatty Tuesday!

Today’s top tip is to really explore nursery rhymes with children as part of national nursery rhyme week! Nursery rhymes introduce children to new words and help to develop their phonological awareness. They can also help you develop your bond with your child. We want every child in Oxfordshire to know 8 nursery rhymes before they start school. There are some wonderful videos here to help you:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/tiny-happy-people/nursery-rhymes-and-songs-collection

Each Tuesday, we will be posting top tips, helpful hints and playful activities to promote early language development. Pop along and join in the chat! Have you started to share these ideas with families every Tuesday?

25/10/2022

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Today’s top tip is to talk about what things are for!

Make a few collections of different objects from around your house (e.g. a screw-driver and some screws, some wrapping paper, a toy and some sticky tape and scissors, a tooth brush, toothpaste and a flannel) and put each one in a different bag or box. Let your child choose which box to look in first – talk together about the objects inside. Think aloud with your child about when you might use them and how you use them.

“I use my toothbrush and toothpaste every night and every morning. I have to squeeze the toothpaste hard to get a tiny blob out” and “When it is your birthday, I need to wrap your presents, so I have to use the scissors to cut the paper to the right size….”

Then you can play the tidying up game too!

Each Tuesday, we will be posting top tips, helpful hints and playful activities to promote early language development. Pop along and join in the chat! Have you started to share these ideas with families every Tuesday?