Parkwall Pre-School

Hello families and friends (Term 6 week 2)

This week we would like to say congratulations to another family on the birth of their baby daughter and younger sister. It was so lovely to meet her earlier today.

In the toddler room this week the children have been thinking about people who help us and in particular the medical profession of doctors and nurses. The children have helped to make each other better as well as some of the dolls and cuddly toys who needed bandages added, temperatures taken and injections.

The children used the magic writing frames to write and draw. Some of the children decided to practice writing numbers and counting so the writing activity overlapped into numeracy too!

The children explored the play dough and its properties with some of them even noticing that it was still lovely and warm (I was busy cooking it at 7am on Monday morning). They decided to manipulate it by rolling it into a long line to make The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Others decided to roll it around and around in a circular motion to form a ball. This led nicely onto our football world cup sweepstake. Hayley has ensured both staff and children have a team to follow and the winner will receive a little prize! We are all very excited!

Spoiler alert! We know it is Father’s day next week (Sunday 21st June) but we have been super organised with the cards and a little gift and given most of them out this week. The children in both rooms have used their creative skills along with an abundance of glitter to make a stunning piece of art!

In the preschool room this week the children have used their media and material skills with construction. They used the small pastel wooden bricks to build different structures. The children made houses and towers and thought carefully about how to build in a way that would not easily fall and stay stable.

Following on nicely from using bricks for construction the preschool children also carried out creative construction. They used a variety of different containers, resources and glue to make things. This activity proved to be very popular with children who used their imaginative skills to make binoculars, telescopes and a party box.

*A few polite reminders…

*Please remember to collect your child’s artwork from the boxes in the foyer.

*Please put your child’s snack box in the box provided to simplify things for staff at snack time.

Thankyou for your continued cooperation.

Enjoy the photos

The staff at Parkwall preschool.

Hello families and friends Term 6 week 1

Welcome back from the half term break and we all hope you had a lovely time. It is very strange to think that we are now in the last term of the academic year and our last as Parkwall preschool.

We have some very exciting news! Some of you may have noticed Hayley’s absence over the last few weeks. She has had surgery and is now well on the road to recovery. We will be welcoming her back next week on a phased return.

More exciting news… one of our preschool children has a new baby sister and we would like to say congratulations.

In both rooms this week staff have been observing the children and ensuring they have objectives linked to all of the learning areas. The children have been little superstars and are doing very well. The staff have also been superstars and lots of reports are in the process of being saved. Later in the term we will be releasing the observations and sending the reports out to parents.

Also, this term we will have reception class teachers popping in to say hello to their future students and getting to know them in preparation for September. We will let families know when this will be taking place.

The children were very happy to arrive back to find their sunflowers seeds had grown over the holiday. They have been observing the differences and looking after them by giving them a drink and ensuring they are positioned in the sun.

In the toddler room this week the children have been busy creating freestyle art work with pallet paints. Some of them named their pictures as family members whilst others experimented with adding water and mixing different colours. The children used the new ipads to activate sounds and follow instructions. They enjoyed using the little libraries with popular characters, such as Bluey, Teletubbies and Mr Tumble to say what was happening in the pictures and retell the stories to one another.

Both rooms joined up to have fun in the garden with the big parachute. The children listened to instructions and took turns to play parachute games. On a particularly rainy day they also joined up to burn off some energy in the form of dancing. The children requested popular K pop tunes and showed off their moves.

In the preschool room this week the children have been thinking about summer holidays and the seaside. They have been using their creative skills to make and design seaside themed items to add to the new display! Next week when it is finished, we will post a photo for you to see.

Enjoy the photos

The team at Parkwall preschool

Hello families and friends
This week in the toddler room the children have continued to focus on the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle.
By using the display and the story sequencing board they are starting to name the characters and items and understand the order.
It ties in well with our welcome time routine book when the days of the week are named. It has also helped the children to name food types and count quantities.
The children looked at the life cycle of a butterfly and ordered the toys.
A link has been added below and maybe your child will be clever enough to learn a new word (metamorphosis and its meaning).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kZD6rlSLUw
In both rooms this week the children have been busy focussing on the world by planting sunflower seeds. They have looked at pictures of the stages of growth (seed, germination, shoot, flower) and what a sunflower looks like.
The children took great care putting soil in a pot, adding the seed and giving it a drink. We decided to put them in the window so they will get the sunshine they need to grow.
In the preschool room the children have been using technology in the form of EARL (a bee-bot robot). Earl can be programmed to move forward, backwards and turn left and right (he is very clever).
The bee-bot is used in conjunction with a street mat which includes a road with different shops along it. This also compliments the world and people who help us because different professions can be included.
The children needed to use many skills to programme Earl to reach his destination. Once his journey was completed, they needed to clear the instructions for the next person. There is a lot to think about when using him but they managed well and staff got lots of lovely technology observations.
Today the transition forms were sent to the receiving primary schools so the children’s information is now with their teachers for September.
In term 6 (after next week’s half term break) reception class teachers usually visit preschool to meet the children and say hello. It is exciting times!
Tomorrow, we break up for the half term break and return on Monday 1st June.
We hope you all have a lovely break.
Enjoy the photos
The team at Parkwall Preschool

Hello families and friends (Term 5 week 3)
In the toddler room this week the children have been focussing on the area of health and self-care.
They have used toothbrushes and toothpaste to brush the false teeth (which has proved to be very popular). We discussed why it is very important to brush our teeth. The children had some knowledge about what is good for teeth and what is not, for example, water is better for our teeth than fizzy drinks and squash.
The children have carried out free style paintings which always, inevitably turned into hand painting which resulted in a little practise of washing and drying hands.
They had great fun at the hairdressing salon. The girl’s world heads certainly needed an intense conditioning treatment! The children brushed, blow dried and straightened their hair. They styled it with hair scrunchies and claw clips as you can see in the photos.
The children practised dressing and un******ng the babies and feeding them. They chose different outfits and learned how to secure them by using the buttons. Lots of lovely role play took place and babies were well looked after.
In the preschool room this week Nicola put her maths coursework to good use with lots of lovely activities!
They used a tough tray with shapes drawn on with rice and paintbrushes to fill the different shapes.
The children used picture cards with small wooden shapes to match and recreate the pictures. They took ball pit balls and rolled them down different length cardboard tubes.
The children took the maths activities outside too and had lots of fun throwing bean bags into a bucket. They stood at short and long distances to see if they could hit the bucket.
The children used construction to build three dimensional shapes and large structures. A number counting framework was used for children to finger paint a number line.
If you want to extend your child’s number skills CBeebies has some fun number games, a link is below…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games/numberblocks-make-and-play

Enjoy the photos
The team at Parkwall preschool

Hello families and friends (Term 5 week 2)
In the toddler room last week, we had a focus on mathsand included the area of number and shape, space & measure.
The children used wooden disks in a counting frame tocount a quantity of five.
They used different vessels including cups, beakersand cylinders to measure capacity by seeing how many cups it took to fill eachcontainer.
The children identified different shapes and drew aroundthem to make shapes pictures.They completed puzzle shapes puzzles and looked at theirfeatures, for example, a triangle has three sides and three corners and asquare has four sides and four corners.
The children used square and triangular magnetic tilesto build different three-dimensional shapes such as cubes, cuboids and pyramids.
They built different structures and made towers and houses.The children used their mark making and creativeskills to print shapes with paint and made some lovely paintings to take home.
In the preschool room this week the childrencelebrated another birthday with some yummy cakes!
The children experimented with planting at the gardencentre tough tray. They took small spades, soil and pots to fill and addplants.
The garden centre activity also incorporated buyingand selling plants.
The children used the labels to decide which items orplants they wanted to buy and then they used the pretend money to purchase.
All of the children have enjoyed lots of lovely outdoorfun this week. They have been using their large motor skills to ride bikes,crawl through the tent tunnel and play chase!Enjoy the photos!
The team at Parkwall preschool

Hello families and friends (Term 5 week 1)

Welcome back and we hope you all had a lovely Easter holiday.
This week has been a busy one!
We have welcomed two new children in the toddler room and one in the preschool room with a further toddler starting next week! It is safe to say that the setting is full.
Also, this week we have celebrated a birthdays, another took place during the holidays and we have one tomorrow too!
All of our school leavers should now know which school they are going to and a list has been completed to enable children and families to buddy up with friends moving onto the same primary school. The list will be displayed in both foyers and if it is not correct or if changes have taken place, please let us know.
This week in the toddler room there have been a few changes. Some of our older children have transitioned across to the preschool room and we have new children settling in. It has been all about making new friends, learning the routine and learning where things live. The children have enjoyed activities such as playdough, waterplay, stories and building with the big foam breeze blocks.
Both rooms have enjoyed exploring the garden with the freshly cut grass, the new climbing frame, balance boards and finding lots of minibeasts.
They found a caterpillar which complimented our Term 5 story for both rooms The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. The children have listened to the book and also watched the story on DVD, a link is below…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75NQK-Sm1YY
The story is very popular with our children and lots of lovely activities have been based around it this week, for example, story sequencing, naming characters and items and using the crocheted story sack to act out the story.
There is also a memory game online based on items from the story. We plan to play it with the children next week but if you would like to carry out a little bit of pre-teaching the link is below.
https://wordwall.net/resource/7185827/the-very-hungry-caterpillar-memory-game
In Term 5 & 6 there will be a focus on transition to school. We will be thinking about moving on and what our new school will look like. Each year we organise a transition display with photos of the different local schools, their Head teacher, Reception teacher, their logo, uniform, book bag and PE kit. This helps the children to familiarise themselves with their given school and teacher.
The children leaving for school will also have transition forms completed which will go to their primary school. Staff have already started the forms which will then be given to parents to sign, watch this space.
Enjoy the photos.
The staff at Parkwall Preschool

Hello families and friends (Term 6 week 6)

This week in the toddler room the children requested small world animals to play with. They named the dinosaurs and role played roaring and stomping with one another. The children explored the wild animals by naming them, putting them into category groups and organising families, for example, mummy tiger, daddy tiger and baby tiger cubs.

The toddler children used their large motor, coordination and balance skills to step on to and manoeuvre the new balance boards from left to right. The children showed perseverance and determination to master them.

Both rooms have been very busy using arts and crafts to create Easter characters, pictures, cards and eggs (see the photos).

In the preschool room this week the children have explored Easter tough trays, practised writing their names and built large structures from mega blocks.

Both rooms have had lots of fun hunting for Easter eggs in the garden. They scooped them all up and had some yummy chocolate biscuits as a reward!

Today we break up for the Easter holidays and reopen on Monday 20th April.

We have lots of exciting things going on in Term 5.

* Four new children will be joining us, two in preschool and two in toddlers.

*Some preschool children will transition over to the preschool room.

*In week 2 Nicola will plan some new whizzy maths activities from her course for both rooms. She has worked very hard to gain the qualification and the setting will reap the benefits!

*Preschool will start to focus on transitioning to infants (remember leavers will find out their chosen schools on Monday 16th April). We usually compile a list of who is going where so friends know who they will be with.

*In term 5 & 6 we will start some basic pre-teaching of phonic knowledge to the preschool children (phase 1 & 2) Most parents have some knowledge and an understanding of phonics, sounds and word building but there is more information on the link below…

https://phonicsfamilycom.wordpress.com/phases-of-phonics/

Have a lovely Easter break.

Enjoy the photos

The team at Parkwall preschool

Hello familiesand friends (Term 4 week 5)
We are nowofficially on the countdown to the Easter break! Pleaseremember we break up on Thursday 2nd April and return on Monday 20thApril.
In thetoddler room this week the children have used their expressive arts skills tocreate music. Some of the children were tapping the table to make sounds sostaff decided to get the musical instruments out. The children discovered how to activate the instruments, some needed to be pressed, some needed to bescraped, some needed to be shaken and one needed to be pulled (accordion). They enjoyed singing along to familiar nursery rhymes and tried to follow a beat.
The children learned how a material can change. Corn flour was placed in a tray and water. The children found it fascinating how the consistency changed and it became aliquid. They played with it for a long time and found it highly amusing whenthey held it, clapped their hands and it went everywhere! The next day afterbeing left to dry it appeared hard to touch but when the children picked it up itwas crumbly and powdery again. The children enjoyed rubbing the corn flourbetween their fingers and watching it crumble and return to its previousstate.
Both rooms have had lots of fun in the garden this week with the obstacle course still being of great interest. They walked across the soft blocks and arranged them in different ways. The mega blocks in the big tyre are proving popular forbuilding and it works well because they are contained. The water had fish and fishing nets added which the children thought was great fun. Staff added some floating solar activated mini fountains which worked very well when the sun came out.The children learned how they only worked when it was sunny!
In thepreschool room this week the children had a little gardening theme going on with a tough tray full of soil, plant pots, flowers and spoons for digging. The children used the themed play dough mats to make Spring flowers. As they often do, the children chose activities too and asked for the hairdressing box and the doctors set out. Lots of lovely imaginative role play activities took place and in one of the photos a child is having his hair done whilst his bloodpressure is being taken (that’s what you call multitasking)! Next week wewill be focussing on Easter and if we are really lucky the Easter bunny might bring some chocolate!
Enjoy the photos
The team at Parkwall preschool

Hello families and friends (Term 4 week 4)
In the toddler room this week the children havefocussed on their listening and attention skills and turn taking. They have shown a good understanding of the welcometime routine by responding well to the transition song and acting upon hearingit. The children sat well with minimal reminding and are starting to learn the boundariesand expectations. The welcome time book is so well structured with childfriendly visuals they know what is coming next. The children contribute wellwith the interactive parts when they need to self-register, identify what theweather looks and feels like, name the day of the week and count how manyadults and children are in attendance. There is an element of turn takinginvolved which the younger children are beginning to adhere to. The toddler children have been thinking about therules of play, turn taking and tolerating a delay (something which can be quitetricky for little ones). They played a game of pop-up-pirate with Kerry, whichas tempting as it was to quickly push all the swords in, they needed to wait aturn for the game to work. The children used different activities of highinterest to turn take or wait a turn. Staff modelled using the 2-minute sandtimer to enable the children to visualise and measure a unit of time. It hasbeen lovely to see the progression and understanding develop this week.Both rooms have enjoyed outdoor play this week.Nicola has almost completed her maths course and set up a range of activitiesto promote learning. This included building an obstacle course to find outabout prepositions, different ways of moving, making repeating patterns and spatialawareness. Nicola used “cardinality” . I have added the definition (the total numberof elements or unique values within a set or database column, defining the sizeor numerical relationship of data) to help the children learn about differentaspects of maths whilst having fun.In the preschool room this week the children havecelebrated St Patrick’s Day by having a green theme. The water had green foodcolouring added and the children used spoons to stir it in. They added greenballs with fishing nets to catch them. This turned into a game of who couldcatch and count the most! Some of the children placed their hands into thegreen water and said “I’ve got Hulk hands!” The green theme continued bybuilding different structures with green stickle bricks. The children watched a short Cbeebies video about StPatrick's Day. A link is below…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/watch/lets-celebrate-st-patricks-day
Today is Red Nose Day so the colour theme has changedto red. Lots of children and staff wore red clothes today and more funactivities took place. The children used small plastic syringes to pull up wateryred paint and sq**rt it onto a circular cotton pad to create a red nose. Thisinvolved some tricky fine motor skills but they mastered it quickly. They usedred icing to decorate a round biscuit to enjoy a yummy treat. Today the waterchanged colour again but this time the children stirred in the red foodcolouring. One child commented “Spiderman hands today!” Different sized jugswere added and lots of filling and emptying took place whilst learning aboutcapacity. The children also enjoyed using red mark making tools to colour inthe red nose sheets and add stickers too!
A little reminder, we break up for the Easter break onThursday 2nd April (2 weeks today).
Enjoy the photos.
The team at Parkwall preschool

Hello families and friends (Term 4 week 3)

At the end of Term 4 our reports are due to be sent out along with the Evidence me observations from January – April.

We are presently checking that the children have got evidence in all of the learning areas. The number of observations and the amount of evidence depends on different factors such as how many hours a child attends and if their attendance has been good.

This week in the toddler room we focussed on lots of different forms of mark making to help to obtain the area of writing for those toddlers who have not yet achieved it.

The children used the electronic writing pads to make marks and draw their friends and favourite characters such as Peppa pig and Bluey. They used the large magnetic boards with printing shapes to make marks, draw their family and see how marks can be changed when they are dragged rather than printed. The children used different textured pads in kinetic sand to make different marks and observe the different patterns.

The Spring display is now finished, complete with sunshine, rain clouds, rainbows, flowers and Spring baby animals.

Spoiler alert! Both rooms have been busy creating some beautiful cards for Mother’s Day which falls on this Sunday (15th March). They used pretty pastel-coloured paints to make their creations.

In the preschool room this week the children have been thinking about healthy and unhealthy foods and which food types we need to eat to have a healthy diet. They played the game supermarket to identify shopping items and food types for their trolleys. The children used foods from the home corner to sort into healthy and unhealthy which made them think about the foods in their packed lunches. They discussed how some foods help us to stay fit and help us to stop becoming ill. The children learned about how food gives us our energy and helps us to grow big and strong!

A polite reminders…

*Please can you remember to supply wipes and nappies for your child.

Thank you for your continued cooperation.

Enjoy the photos.

The team at Parkwall preschool