Briary Pre-School

🎪 Carnival Day Today 🥳👇🏻👇🏻

Starts today!! Don’t forget your lunch! 😊

Rare Breeds Centre a wonderful day out 🐷 🐴 🐮 🦋

What a fantastic day we had on our preschool trip to the Rare Breeds Centre in Woodchurch, near Ashford!

It was wonderful to spend the day with our children, families and staff team, making special memories together. We loved meeting all of the amazing animals, including the guinea pigs, rabbits, horses, donkeys, pigs, goats and cows.

One of the highlights of the day was walking through the beautiful butterfly tunnel and experiencing the tropical rain shower, the children absolutely loved getting soaked! 🌦️🦋

We also enjoyed a fun tractor and trailer ride through the woods and fields, explored the Mysterious Marshes where the children challenged themselves on the obstacle course, practising their balance and coordination while developing new skills.

There was plenty of time to explore the different play areas, enjoy a picnic lunch under the outdoor barn, cheer on the exciting pig racing, and, of course, finish the day with a well-deserved ice cream before heading back to the coach 🍦

It wasn't long before lots of sleepy heads appeared on the journey home after such a busy and exciting adventure! 💤

A huge thank you to Nic, Maria, Lucia and Chloe for organising and preparing such a wonderful trip, and to our fantastic staff team for making the day so much fun. Finally, thank you to all of our families for joining us, we hope you enjoyed the day as much as we did!

The Snorker 📖 🐽

Continuing our celebration of books and reading for the upcoming Canterbury Children’s Literary Festival, yesterday we welcomed one of our parent’s to read two stories written and illustrated by their Uncle for their children. The Snorker Comes to Visit and The Snorker in the Woods, which features the children. These lovely stories were brought to life with the help of our little ones who did their best snorts. The Snorker is a friendly, cheeky and funny creature who lives in the woods and likes to hide. “You can’t get me” we all shouted! Thank you for sharing your wonderful stories with us, it was such a fun story time ✨

As part of the upcoming Canterbury Children's Literature Festival, we are celebrating the joy of books and reading.

Today, we were delighted to welcome children's author Le’Anne Arney, author of Inara and the Glow. Le’Anne visited us this morning to read her wonderful story and share her love of storytelling with the children.

Inara and the Glow is a heartwarming story about kindness, self-belief, and the inner light that shines within us all. The children thoroughly enjoyed listening to the story and were inspired by its positive message.

We would like to thank Le’Anne for taking the time to visit us and make our celebration of books even more special.

www.leannearney.co.uk

The Life cycle of the Butterfly 🦋

What an incredible few weeks of learning and wonder in preschool! 🦋

Our children have been carefully observing and nurturing our caterpillars as they grew and changed each day. Last week was especially exciting as the caterpillars finally emerged from their cocoons, dried their wings, and on Friday afternoon took flight as beautiful butterflies! 🦋✨

Watching this amazing transformation up close has provided so many valuable learning opportunities. The children have developed their observation skills, learned about life cycles and the natural world, practised patience, and gained a deeper understanding of growth and change.

Experiencing the process firsthand also encouraged curiosity, empathy, and a sense of responsibility as they helped care for the caterpillars throughout their journey.

The excitement, awe, and joy on the children's faces as they released the butterflies was truly magical. What a wonderful reminder of the beauty of nature and the importance of hands-on learning experiences! 💚🌿

achieve

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A great start to the term…

We've had a wonderful start to the term.

The children have been busy nurturing our garden, planting sunflowers, picking strawberries, and admiring our beautiful blooming poppies. Gardening and spending time in nature supports children's wellbeing, encourages responsibility, builds confidence, and helps them develop an understanding of the world around them. Our caterpillars have arrived too, observing their life cycle helps us to understand metamorphosis up close.

We have loved seeing new friendships flourish through acts of kindness, teamwork, and collaboration.

Our loose parts play has inspired creativity, imagination, problem-solving, and communication as children explored and created together.

A special highlight was Teddy's therapy dog visit and story session, which supported children's emotional wellbeing, confidence, and communication skills.

We have also seen a growing enthusiasm for mark-making and writing, with children eager to share their ideas, stories, and experiences through print.

These meaningful experiences help children thrive across the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), supporting their Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Communication and Language, Literacy, Physical Development, Understanding the World, and Expressive Arts and Design. Through play, exploration, and positive relationships, the children are developing the skills, confidence, and resilience that provide strong foundations for future learning.

Bee Awareness Day 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝 🐝

This week the children have been busy learning all about bees and how we can help to look after them. We have talked about why bees are important and discovered how they help flowers and plants to grow.

The children enjoyed learning where honey comes from and had great fun squeezing honey onto toast before tasting it too! 🍯🍞

We also explored our small world wildflower garden, where the children investigated different flowers, insects and mini beasts, sharing observations and showing curiosity about the natural world around them. There were lots of wonderful discussions and questions as the children noticed similarities and differences between the creatures they found.

Later this week we are excited to install our bee hotel in our woodland area and place our bee cups into the growing garden to continue creating safe and welcoming spaces for pollinators and wildlife 🌼

These experiences support sustainability learning by helping children understand that we all play a part in caring for our environment and protecting nature. By encouraging children to value and care for living things, we are helping them develop early awareness of responsibility for the world around them.

Our learning also links closely to the EYFS, particularly Understanding the World, as children explore the natural environment, observe living things and begin to understand how they can care for them. It also supports Communication and Language through discussion and questioning, alongside Personal, Social and Emotional Development as children learn about kindness, responsibility and caring for their environment.

We can't wait to see who might visit our new bee-friendly spaces! 🐝🌸

New Book - Inara and the Glow

We are excited to share a lovely new children’s book, written and published by by our Deputy Manager, Nicola’s sister Le’Anne. A lovely story about kindness and how inside every child there is a light waiting to glow. This story is about one little girl who happily lets her light shine. We will be adding this lovely story to our lending library and bookshelf. Le’Anne will be visiting soon to read to the children. If you would like to order a copy or find out more, please take a look on her website ⬇️

https://www.leannearney.co.uk/