Metheringham Pre-School

16/10/2026

🍁✨ Outdoor play ✨🍁

This week has brought all weather conditions ☔️⛅️💨☀️ but it hasn’t stopped us enjoying our outdoor play ☺️

This week we have been developing lots of our gross motor skills and engaging in lots of team games and turn taking activities including:

✨ balancing beams
✨ obstacle course including a tunnel to crawl through
✨ hopscotch
✨ Footballs and football goals
✨ water wall and containers and funnels
✨ an autumn fairy small world

I wonder what next week will bring? Have a wonderful weekend everyone ☺️

16/10/2026

✨ The power of play ✨

At Metheringham Pre-school we value the power of play and foster this within our curriculum. We plan play invitations to support children’s next steps in learning and development and to encourage progress across the 7 areas of learning. The Aunties will also incorporate themes based on events and celebrations throughout the year and children’s interests as well as introduce new topics to spark curiosity and awe.

This weeks invitations to play:

🎃🤌🏻 Geo boards and pumpkins with elastic bands to strengthen fine motor skills and support hand-eye coordination.

🔤🧲 Magnetic letters to introduce early reading skills and recognise colours, patterns and letter shapes.

🍁✨ Autumn collage to support creativity and independence in choosing own resources and allowing exploration of materials.

💬☺️ Capturing the children’s voice “who are your friends at pre-school”

🎭🎪 Puppet show to support speech and language skills, story telling and personal and social development.

🐴🐎🪏 Horse small world play to allow children to share their own knowledge and experience of horses and introduce vocabulary, facts and knowledge through shared play.

🎃🍁 Curiosity Corner with an autumn and Halloween theme to spark discussion and curiosity about seasons and celebrations.

✨ Play today…brighter tomorrows! ✨

09/10/2026

09/10/2026

🎃👻🕸️🍂 Spooktacular fun outside 🍂🕸️👻🎃

Things have started to get a bit spooky outside this week!

Children have enjoyed some autumnal and spooky resources promoting discussion, wonder, curiosity and awe around the changing seasons and the upcoming event of Halloween! 🎃

They have had the opportunity to explore:

🍁🔢 conker counting and tweezers
🌈🤌🏻💦 Pipette manipulation to create a colourful autumn tree
🕷️🕸️ Incy Wincy Spider water play and drainpipe
🛞🪜 Balancing on the obstacle course
🪄🧙🧪Witch potions and dress up
🤌🏻✨ Posting spaghetti into the spooky spider bottles
🎃🥄 Pumpkin exploration - from painting them, washing them, cutting them open and scooping out the pulp and seeds to having our own pumpkin patch! So many opportunities with one resource ☺️

A wonderful week for some spooky fun 👻
Wishing you all a great weekend and we look forward to seeing you all next week for more play adventures together!

09/10/2026

✨ Learning through play ✨

Another fun filled week at pre-school full of opportunities to play and learn alongside the aunties and our peers 😊

‘Play-based learning is an approach that uses play, exploration, and hands-on activities to help children build fundamental academic, social, and emotional skills. It encourages creative thinking and helps to foster a positive attitude towards learning as discovery and curiosity are rooted in fun.’

This weeks play-based learning at pre-school included:

🦊🐭🐍 The Gruffalo story and props and small world set up
🦷🪥✨ Dentist role play
🚂🛤️ Constructing our own train tracks
🎨🍁 Conker rolling paintings
🍁🍂🤌🏻 Autumn stickers and mark making tools

What did your child enjoy this week?

02/10/2026

🍁🌤️ Outdoor play and learning 🌤️🍁

Another lovely week of sunshine and we are making the most of the weather by spending lots of time outdoors! This week we have been exploring:

🛞🏐🚙 Rolling - with lots of planks, guttering and resources that can roll and travel down them children have been exploring cause and effect, comparisons of fast/slow, up,/down, practising problem solving skills and enjoyed transporting and having their own ideas in play.

🍁🍂🥣 Autumn sensory tray - children have been mixing, scooping, pouring and tipping using the rice and autumnal resources. The numbers, conkers and pine cones allowed for opportunities of number recognition, counting and using number language within play.

🪲🕷️🔍 Bugs - identifying bugs, talking about their features, looking at information books about them, singing songs about them and creating our own story telling! The children have enjoyed transporting them around the outdoor area and engaging in play with others in their own way.

🧦🤌🏻 Peg the socks - identifying patterns and matching them, talking about length and using the vocabulary longer/shorter and practising fine motor skills to control the pegs. A great activity to try at home!

🐯🦍🐆 Jungle - continuing the children’s interest in animals a jungle has also been available outdoors as well as indoors allowing their play to continue in a different environment.

🌈 Colour play - there have been lots of opportunities to name, match and sort the colours as-well as children practising to use the tweezers and “post” the items in the tubes.

✍️ Mark making - children have used the wooden pencils, paintbrushes and their fingers to create lots of shapes, pictures and marks in the sand. They have also enjoyed transporting the animals to the sand and creating their own small world play.

✨ Play is the work of the child - M Montessori ✨

Have a lovely weekend everyone and we will see you next week for more play adventures together 😊

02/10/2026

✨ Let’s play and learn together…✨

Another fun filled week at pre-school with lots of opportunities to learn and develop across the seven areas of the early years curriculum.
This weeks invitations to play included:

🍁🍂 Autumn curiosity corner - a great opportunity to learn about the changing seasons and to find out about and ask questions about our natural world.

✍️🤌🏻 Mark making - this week’s challenge encouraged children to use the cotton buds to rub out the marks and patterns on the whiteboards. A great opportunity to practice our pincer grip and follow patterns with control. Children have also enjoyed making new marks for others to rub out and drawing their own pictures on the whiteboards.

🐯🐘🦒 Jungle/Safari small world - a very popular choice with the children this week with lots of naming animals, making animal noises and storytelling. What a fun jungle adventure they’ve had!

🎨🧑🏻‍🎨😊 Painting - children have loved exploring the paint this week. Mirrors have been added to encourage children to think about their facial features and have a go at painting faces if they wished too. There has been lots of colour exploration and mixing and children have enjoyed watching the cause and effect of mark making with paintbrushes!

🩺🩻👶🏼 Doctors/Baby clinic - children have been role playing experiences of going to the doctors. They have also enjoyed “making the babies better”. The aunties have heard some wonderful language related to their experiences and seen some great co-operative play

🔨🥔👷 Hammering - children have been hammering golf tees into different vegetables and creating their own mr potato heads this week. They have been listening how to use the hammer’s safely and practising this. A great physical development opportunity!

Let’s see what fun next week brings…

01/10/2026

✨ HAPPY LINCOLNSHIRE DAY ✨

We have been celebrating our home of Lincolnshire today 😊

Children have enjoyed looking at the Lincolnshire flag and using paint to represent it, talking about special buildings in Lincolnshire such as the Castle and Cathedral and we tasted lots of Lincolnshire delights at snack today including Lincolnshire plum bread and sausage rolls and Lincolnshire poacher cheese! Yummy 😋

25/09/2026

🍃⛅️ Outdoor learning ⛅️🍃

Also available outside this week:

💦🖌️🪣 Mark making - children have explored mark making with buckets of water and paintbrushes and by using the Aqua doodle. Great opportunities to explore mark making big and small and great for gross motor skills and supporting those fine motor skills!

📚📖 Reading Den - children have loved hiding away in our den! From reading a book to enjoying some time together with their friends 😊

🚜🪏 Diggers - transport, tipping and exploring the stone garden with the diggers and tractors.

We can’t wait for another fun filled week of play and learning next week 😊 Have a great weekend everyone!

25/09/2026

🏴‍☠️🪎✨ AHOY THERE SHIPMATES ✨🪎🏴‍☠️

This week the children have embarked on a pirate adventure in our outdoor area…

✨ Treasure hunting in the sand
✨ walk the plank over the shark infested water
✨ exploring the pirate ship and sea creatures
✨ role playing pirates
✨ singing pirate songs

ARRRR!
What a ‘Jolly’ week we’ve had! 🏴‍☠️