Hollingbury Park Pre-School

This half term we had a visit from a member of the oral health team to speak to the children all about the importance keeping our teeth healthy and different ways that we can look after them. The children listened beautifully and loved contributing their ideas! They even got to have a go at brushing the dinosaurs teeth which they were all eager to get involved with!

We would like to wish you all a very Happy Easter and we look forward to seeing everyone back in a couple of weeks!

World Book Day 2026! We are super impressed with the efforts from all our families this year. The children have loved showing off their costumes and communicating with their peers about their chosen characters! We have been able to share some of our children’s favourite books during our whole group story times which has promoted some important aspects of literacy and communication and language all whilst having lots of fun! Well done everyone!

This Valentine’s Day, the children were busy creating their cards for someone special at home. They showed great care and creativity while designing their cards. 💕
We have also been exploring in our tuft tray, which was filled with a variety of different materials and utensils. This hands on experience helped to promote and strengthen their fine motor skills, as the children practised grasping, pouring, scooping and manipulating the different tools and textures.

Today we have returned to our garden bunkers being transformed into a cosy Astro area! We fundraised £700.00 from our sports day fundraiser which helped pay for the work to be done!

The children were very excited to test out the new grass and jumped straight into the mud kitchen! We had lots of fine motor skill action with digging the spoons into the mats to collect the mud and turning our water butt on and off!

Snowy learning fun! ❄️
We hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year! We have all enjoyed our first week back and loved playing in the snow and ice. Inspired by the cold weather, We have been expanding our understanding of the world by using cornflour ice cubes as they learned about cold climates and animals such as Arctic foxes and polar bears. Building towers and igloos supported fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination, problem-solving, and early engineering skills. Sensory play with ice also encouraged curiosity, teamwork, and imaginative play — all while having lots of winter fun! 🧊🐻‍❄️

This week the children have been busy celebrating firework night, using their fine motor skills and imagination to create some fantastic pictures and explore our firework sensory tray! The children have used communication and language to speak about the safety around fireworks and their own experiences with watching firework displays.
We would like to wish everyone a safe and fun filled firework night!

Good evening everyone!

Does anyone have any old newspapers they could donate please! We have a lot of paper mache to do! 📰🗞️😊😀

This half term the children have been super busy creating lots of winter crafts and exploring our winter and Christmas themed sensory trays! We have created a selection of winter scenes in which the children have been able to use their imagination and show off their understanding of the world. We have been able to promote fine motor skills in our ‘decorate your own Christmas tree’ and Christmas light trays, the children have loved showing off their creations! This week we set up a ‘make your own hot chocolate tray’ which we then supported through carrying out a group activity where the children got to make their very own real hot chocolates! We have had so much fun so far and are looking forward to our Christmas dinner day and Christmas concert that we have coming up in the next couple of weeks!

The children have made some fantastic firework and rocket pictures for our display! We have also created a firework sensory tray with play dough and pipe cleaners that the children have loved getting stuck into! They’ve been able to show off their knowledge of colours and use their fine motor skills to experiment with it. We have also taken time to speak about the safety around fireworks and given the children opportunities to share their experiences!
We hope everybody has a safe, fun filled firework night this week!

Our children this year have shown a huge interest in dinosaurs! We decided to use this idea to support the children’s learning through making a dinosaur themed sensory tray! The children have explored the different textures of the sand and dried rice and used their imaginations to role play different scenarios! They have been able to showcase their knowledge of the different dinosaur names which we have supported through reading books about dinosaurs. The children have loved listening to these and are now able to recall lots of different parts of the stories themselves!

Halloween is in full force at Hollingbury Park Pre-School!!
We are enjoying thinking of different activities for indoors and outdoors with the children.

There is Messy play, creative activities, constructive fun and lots more!

We have been reading Halloween books to spark lots of communication and language!

And the children are really enjoying making their own ideas come to life! 🎃👻💀🎃