Invicta Park Playgroup

What a lovely end of term picnic we have had today, under the shade of the trees and in the garden for our littlest ones to keep them safe while they were eating. It was such a lovely turnout of parents and grandparents too.

Even though we couldn't go out on our trip to Cobtree, the children all still had a great time here on camp. They explored the grounds and carried out their nature hunt, the toddlers went to the park and then the older children ended up on the gym floor due to the rain where they continued to have lots of fun doing yoga and whizzing around on the crawl boards, please excuse some of the blur in the pictures - it is very hard to get our small people to stay still for a picture!

After such a hot week last week it is nice to have slightly cooler temperatures today.

Thank you to all those parents who were able to arrange to keep their children at home for some of the week. Despite buying extra fans and having lots of water play, we struggled to keep our room temperatures below 30 and this is a particular concern for sleeping our younger children and following safe sleep guidance.

The children and staff did manage to have lots of fun with water play in the garden - keeping in the shade of course! They all also enjoyed a few treats of ice creams and lollies. I have added a few photographs to show some of the fun they had - playing in water trays and on the splash pad, plus a delicious snack of watermelon pizza (involving slices of watermelon topped with yogurt and fresh fruit).

The warmer weather looks set to continue - which should be expected at this time of year, it is the summer after all, however we will closely monitor and communicate with you in more detail if we get extreme weather warnings again before the end of term. We are hopeful that it stays manageable as we have lots planned for the last few weeks.

Apologies that it has been a little while since I put photographs on. The children have been a busy bunch as usual with lots of outside play. The garden is now growing well with pumpkins, cucumbers, beans and herbs. They love going up to see what has come up and helping with the watering. If anyone is passing and would like to help with watering then please do so.

We have some really lovely weather lately and the garden has had a much needed tidy up too. The children have spent lots of time outside, exploring some new resources and rediscovering things we bought last year. It is great to see some fabulous "risky play" going on - who knew that the ladders would be so popular!

The children have enjoyed the water tray too and are loving the recently added basketball hoop! It is proving to add a real challenge to their play and they are using the planks and podiums to add a bit of height to make it easier.

This week I have been out and bought lots of plants and the pre-schoolers have been been busy digging over the planting area at the back of playgroup, ready to do some planting tomorrow. They are going to be doing lots of growing activities leading up to half term, including cress, broad beans and sunflowers.

Don't forget the sun cream in the morning please - the UV levels are moderate to high at the moment and as you can see we have lots planned to be outside as much as possible.

Thank you to everyone who came and supported our coffee morning and cake sale, we raised an impressive £179 which is going towards the purchase of a second toddler trolley so we can take all our youngest children out on walks together safely