Holy Trinity Playgroup

🎉Happy Father’s Day to all of our playgroup Dads, Grandads and carers 🎉

The children have been super busy this week, making lots of lovely gifts and sharing stories of their favourite ways to spend time with you (playing Lego was a firm favourite!)

Our Forest Schoolers made some fantastic keychains - making beads from elder branches, cutting pieces with loppers and secateurs, removing the pith with skewers and then threading them onto string.

The children showed great patience and concentration with this venture, as it was quite a challenge for fine motor skills and intricate and fiddly in places! 🌿

Meanwhile, over at Playgroup, the children got creative, designing and crafting cards.

They also had lots of squishy fun making play dough to bring home as a present so that you can play together.

We hope the recipients enjoy these lovely gifts and have a super special day. 🎁

Last week at Playgroup we introduced the children to the NSPCC ‘Pantosarus’.

Pantosarus is a bright yellow dinosaur created by the NSPCC to help children learn how to stay body safe in a simple age appropriate way.

We read the Pantosarus story, shared the video and learnt the song, which all led to lots of useful talks and discussions.

The children then role played homes and families and dressed dolls and teddy bears in pants.

Out in the garden, the children had a lot of fun using the pump to make bubbly water - an activity that supports coordination and cooperation.

And, as summer is well and truly on its way (honestly - it is! 🫣) there was lots of creativity at the easels making summer paintings. 🌞

Our Forest Schoolers were very busy last week, learning all about one the most important creatures in our ecosystem - the bee! 🐝

Understandably, for children (and actually some adults) bees can elicit an element of fear - it can be hard to get past the thought of that ‘sting’ until you have an insight into a bee’s lifecycle, purpose and nature.

As is always the case at Forest School, we help build connection and understanding by sparking curiosity and conversation, using different means such as stories, props, ID sheets, hunts, crafting and games.

The children had lots of fun ‘meeting’ various fuzzy buzzy friends in our forest garden, and making bee friends of their own to take home.

As we ate our lunches it was great to see the children ‘connecting the dots’ as they pondered ‘How many items would be missing from our lunchboxes if we didn’t have bees….??’ 🤔 (an awful lot!!)

It’s been a ‘blooming’ marvellous few weeks at Forest School, as we’ve taken full advantage of our beautiful Spring flowers and foliage for some great activities.

🌸 First up, the children had lots of fun learning about ‘Hapa Zome’, a Japanese art form that uses the natural dye from leaves and flowers to create prints.

The children carefully selected and arranged their blooms before using large stones to smash them onto fabric.

This was a great activity for honing hand-eye coordination, exploring creativity and learning a little about the flora that we can find during this season.

🌼 This week our elder trees have come into bloom and so, having talked about safe and sustainable foraging practices, we collected some flowers, carefully made a batter and cooked elderflower fritters over the fire.

This was a new experience for the children and we were so impressed by their willingness to try something different. It was a really tasty treat enjoyed by all. 💚

Last week at Playgroup the children practiced ‘mark making’ - a precursor to forming formal letters and a vital foundational skill for early writing.

They also practiced using scissors to make some beautiful butterflies - a great opportunity for us to explore the concept of symmetry whilst honing hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills.

Butterflies and bugs also featured heavily in sensory play, where slime was stretched, squeezed, explored and enjoyed. 🦋🐞

For the past few sessions our Forest Schoolers have been bringing their tool skills together - sawing, whittling, drilling and hammering - to make some super spinners!

When we introduce the children to tool use, safety is always our top priority and we work with age-appropriate protocols with a high level of adult support and supervision.

It’s a fantastic opportunity for the children to learn how to assess risk in a controlled way and most adults would be amazed at how ‘serious’ and focused they become during these activities.

As well helping to develop gross and fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and spatial awareness, making something from scratch gives them an enormous sense of pride and achievement. 💚

There was a big focus on frogs at playgroup last week.

Learning about the life cycle of frogs is a brilliant introduction to biology for preschoolers, with the stages of metamorphosis being simple and easy to follow, but ‘magical’ enough to spark engagement, curiosity and lots of great questions!

As well as life cycle painting, the children had sensory fun with chia seed ‘frog spawn’ and water play in our ‘pea’ pond where peas were poured and popped!

Naturally playdough took on a froggy-green theme and rolling, cutting and moulding was enjoyed by all. 🐸

At this time of year we love sharing the story of ‘The Bog Baby’ with the children.

The Bog Baby is a magical creature who lives in a pond in a bluebell wood, and the story focuses on caring for nature and having empathy for the creatures that inhabit our environment. (And we’ll be honest - it’s a bit of a sentimental one that we sometimes struggle to read without getting ‘a little something’ in our eye! 🥹)

This week, taking full advantage of the beautiful bluebells in bloom, our Forest Schoolers made their own ‘Bog Babies’, following the descriptions in the story (spiky tail, boggly eyes, wings no bigger than the petals of a daisy) to carefully model their clay creatures.

Using paint and glue they made ponds for the babies to live in, along with sand, stones and bluebells - everything a Bog Baby needs to stay happy!

Planting and growing has been a big theme at Playgroup, with lots of imaginative play and ‘flower construction’ taking place.

Outside, the children made a mix of compost and oats and enjoyed exploratory play with diggers, spades and scoops.

Getting fingers and hands in the soil and learning how food is grown is great fun and the children got busy planting strawberries and potatoes to create our own little kitchen garden. 👩‍🌾

It was lovely to welcome back our Forest Schoolers after the Easter holidays and leaning into ‘growing season’ we set about planting some radishes and potatoes. 👨‍🌾

Gardening is an activity that provides so many benefits for children including physical, cognitive, social, and emotional development.

It’s a great opportunity for them to learn where food comes from and understand how much time, effort and patience is involved in getting food from farm to fork.

Fingers crossed we’ll have some tasty veg to nibble and cook before the end of term! 🫜