Stogursey Preschool- Little Acorns

01/05/2026

My last post for Stogursey preschool..... I would like to thank all the staff and parents for my lovely gifts and cards. It has been a pleasure to have been part of the Stogursey school team for the last 2 (and nearly a half) years ❤️
Good luck to those in year 6 who will be moving up to secondary school later this year and to my 2 little superstars who will be going into reception.
To all my little acorns, continue to be the curious, adventurous, imaginative and affectionate personalities that you are ❤️
Love Julie x

01/05/2026

Last week one of our core books was 'The very hungry caterpillar'. The children enjoyed learning about the life cycle of a butterfly. We went on a nature hunt to see if we could find our own hungry caterpillar. The children each had a magnifying glass and looked closely at leaves on the trees and hedges to find evidence of caterpillars. They got very excited when they found evidence of the caterpillars munching holes on the leaves. Sadly we didn't find any caterpillars but we did see lots of butterflies!
This week our core stories were 'The little mouse the red ripe strawberry and the big hungry bear' and 'Peck, peck peck'. The children enjoyed learning what new words such as 'disguise' and 'guarding' meant. They played a game, to test their listening skills, practiced their subsitising skills and explored mixing shaving foam and paint to mark make. We also had two visitors to preschool - 2 extremely large spiders that had decided to make their homes in Julie's welly boots! We caught them in a cup and took a look at them before releasing outside to make a new home!

18/04/2026

For the last two weeks of term, we continued to learn about plants and how they grow. We looked at how bees pollinate flowers and planted our own radishes, carrots and chives, so we can watch them grow. The children made flowers from tiles and used numeral-quantity to complete the flower puzzles. Our core books were Lulu loves flowers and Going on a bear hunt.
The last week of term, we learnt about the origins of Easter and have been recalling the Easter story, which Reverend Alison has read to us over the last couple of weeks. We also read, Going on an egg hunt. The children made Easter themed cards and decorations. They counted Easter eggs and used their descriptive language skills to describe items they found inside plastic eggs. We also held our Easter stay and play session and egg hunt and would like to thank all who attended.

13/03/2026

Over the last couple of weeks, we have been looking at colour and patterns. The children have enjoyed mixing colours in various forms to create new colours and have been looking at patterns in the environment and copying patterns with tiles. We have been working on recognising number and starting to form numbers. This week, our core books were Handa's surprise and Orange, pear, apple, bear. We practiced our fine motor skills, by using tweezers to sort out the pom pom 'fruits' and cut open the fruits from the story to look for the seeds inside. We discussed the different sizes of seeds and what we need to help seeds grow. The children then tried the different fruits, with pineapple and mango bring the favourites.
This week we also celebrated science week. We did two experiments with the children. In the first one, the children used skittles sweets and put them in a circle around a plate. Then they added water and we watched as the sugar coating from the sweets reacted to the water and began to melt, causing the colours to migrate towards the centre of the plate without mixing, to create a rainbow of colours. This demonstrated the principles of dissolution and diffusion in simple terms.
The second experiment we did, was to simulate a volcano erupting. The children mixed bicarbonate of soda with orange paint. They then used a pipette to add vinegar. The chemical reaction between the acid (vinegar) and the base (bicarb), caused a chemical reaction to create CO2 which caused the mixture to bubble up causing a volcanic eruption effect which the children were fascinated by!

08/02/2026

This week at Preschool, we have been using fine motor skills to make marks in different media and have been practicing our early writing shapes. We have made natural paint brushes and explored the different marks they make on paper and listened to different types of music and used drawings to represent how we thought the music would look. We listened to slow, fast, quiet and loud music and moved the pen in time to the music with great results!
The children have been practicing their subsitising skills whilst playing 'The game of ladybirds' and enjoyed listening to the bible story of David and Goliath read by Reverend Alison.
Our core book this week was 'Pass the jam Jim' and we practiced our spreading skills by making jam sandwiches for snack. The children used various tools to 'spread' playdough jam onto 'bread slices' in the tuff tray and we then used a selection of tools to make our own 'Strawberry jam' The children had fun using a mortar and pestle, sieve, whisk, forks, knives and spoons, to cut, squash and mash the fruit before using spoons to decant it into little pots. The children then opened a jam shop and sold the jam for £60 a pot!

01/02/2026

Preschool have been continuing their theme about 'The world of work'. Last week looked at different occupations and read the story 'All through the night' about the different jobs people do through the night, when we are all fast asleep. We were lucky enough to have several visitors over the week and reception joined us to meet them. On Monday Emma the nurse visited to show us how she looks after people who have been injured. On Tuesday we were visited by Trevor the local PCSO (Avon and Somerset Police), who talked about the different aspects of working in the police force. On Wednesday, Tom and John from Nether Stowey Fire brigade brought in lots of different equipment and showed the children how each item worked and talked about what they do as firemen and on Thursday, Jodie our lollypop lady, talked about road safety with the children.
This week we have been reading the story 'Jabari tries' about a boy who tries to invent a flying machine and the frustrations he feels when his machine won't fly. He keeps trying and with the help of his little sister is able to get it to fly.
The children drew plans of their own inventions and then made their creations using a variety of resources. They used lego to create flying machines and rockets. We watched a Cbeebies film about flying machines, where we looked at a G-yro plane, a harrier jump jet and an old-fashioned biplane. On the biplane a woman was wing walking, one of the children exclaimed "That's too dangerous for me, I'm too little but my mummy can do it!". We also talked about the different holidays we have been on and the different ways we can travel, such as planes, trains , cars and bikes!

27/01/2026

Due to not enough staff not being able to get into school safely this morning, to ensure the school is compliant with ratios, the hard decision has been taken to close the school today. This also includes the preschool.

16/01/2026

We were sad this week, as Ashley had her last day with us on Monday. We will all miss her very much and I will especially miss her kind, happy, bubbly nature. She has been an absolute pleasure to work with and I hope that she enjoys her new role.
This week our core book is the Gruffalo. Reverend Alison came in and read the story to us on Wednesday morning after reading us the story of Moses. We were very impressed with her accents for the different animals in the story!
We used the colours of the gruffalo to add to gloop and then explored its properties as we applied pressure to solidify it, then release; to watch it turn back into a liquid.
Our maths focus was repeating patterns, where the children used a variety of gruffalo pictures to complete an AB pattern. We practiced our fine motor skills by using scissors to cut out a woodland scene and threading pictures of the gruffalo and used our gross motor skills by using the big gym equipment in the hall, where we balanced, jumped and rolled. We talked about how important it is to help wildlife in the winter as they struggle to find food and the children made bird feeders to take home, using fine motor skills to spread the peanut butter onto cardboard tubes, then rolling them in bird seed.We also went on a gruffalo hunt around the fields and past the castle. Unfortunately, we didn't find the gruffalo but we did find some nuts for the mouse!

11/01/2026

This week at preschool we have been reading "Catch that chicken". The children enjoyed re-enacting the story in the tuff tray, using core language from the book as they played. For our maths activity this week, we used rulers to measure different sized chickens to find the biggest and smallest and counted as we measured. We joined Triscombe class on their welly walk to the old oak tree, where we looked at the differences in the environment from the last time we visited and noticed the fields had no crops and that the leaves had turned different colours or fallen from the trees...we also noticed how muddy the fields had become!
The children explored rhythm, using the African drums and copied the patterns of the beats that the adults played and made up their own rhythms.
The highlight of our week was meeting the very tame Chicken Licken, who was very well behaved and the children enjoyed walking her round the setting and petting her.
A big thank you to Claire for bringing her in.

10/01/2026

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Find out when it's best to keep your sick child at home and when it's OK to send them to school or nursery.

03/01/2026

We are looking forward to welcoming the children back to preschool on Monday and hearing all about their Christmas holidays and what presents Father Christmas brought for them.
Our core books for week 1 will be 'Catch that chicken' and 'Duck in the truck'.