The Lodge Pre-School

New research for the Royal Foundation shows the need to increase action and awareness on the importance of the early years of childhood. It has been recognised that Early Education is vitally important in shaping a person’s future life and recognises a person’s future mental health and wellbeing most likely part of adult life to be affected by their early childhood.

The blue tables pirate display. They made the sea by painting with their feet!

Last week one of our teachers read us a book she had bought in Hong Kong called Found in Hong Kong. We talked about the front cover and we noticed there were trams and taxis on the busy Hong Kong street, but no cars, because in Hong Kong people often live in tall buildings without space to park cars so they often travel by taxi or tram.

We read Found in Hong Kong and the children counted the number of objects in the illustrations and showed that number of fingers. They then found 5 ladybird spots hiding around the room. The children found lots of different ways to make a total of 5 by putting the spots on the ladybirds wings in different ways. The children then painted their own ladybird with a total of 5 spots. The children talked about the different ways they had made 5.

We also enjoyed the Catching Numbers Treasure Basket which had water today!

Last week we had fun in the sun with paint! At carpet time after our maths, phonics and shape work we worked in pairs to help each other get our paint aprons on and done up. Then we went into the garden to create some art!

We had a table covered in paper and we could choose from different tools and colours to create a large piece of art as a team. We experimented with making different prints and patterns and mixing colours.

We also spray painted today! We chose from different colours and each had a turn using our strong hand muscles to add our own mark to the artwork. We were very pleased with our pieces of art created as a team!

Our artwork looked very effective and one of our teachers made a border and caption to complete our display.

Last week was all about the sun. One morning the blue tables read a book about the weather. They tried to work out from each picture what sort of weather it was, and describe how it might feel and look. We talked about what clothes we would wear for each of the weathers, such as coats, sunhats etc. Our teacher challenged us to stop her when we got to the part of the book where we thought it was May, our new month. We talked about how we all got to school today and what we wore, such as coats, wellies etc.

We thought about what the weather is usually like this time of year and how it will start to get warmer and sunnier. One of our teachers showed us how she could make a sun painting. She used a thick brush to make a big circle and fill it in with yellow paint. She then used thinner brushes to add details in other colours. We each had a go painting our own sun picture and created this stunning sunny display.

This week is all about the alphabet. The yellow tables made this super display. They looked at all the letters in the alphabet, and sang the Alphabet song too. One of our teachers brought in a monkey toy who had hidden some of the letters of the alphabet! We played a game putting each letter in correct alphabetical order.
We looked at how some letters look the same as their capital eg, w and W, while others look very different eg, d and D.

We shared a book called Chicka Chicka Boom Boom about a coconut tree which had lots of different letters. We looked closely at their different shapes and upper and lower case letters too.

Our activity was to make a picture of a coconut tree using paper shapes, scissors and glue to add features. We had lots of foam letter stickers to add to our tree depicting the story in the book.
We stayed on task very well, producing some great pictures making a stunning display!

This week we have explored the topic of The Sun. Thank you for getting your hat on today sun! We've explored the different seasons and weathers and how you dress and stay safe in them, planted seeds, had lots of fun in our mud kitchen and created outdoor works of art spray painting!

A big thank you to last week's very special visitor, our Police Community Support Officer PCSO Timothy Darling. We heard lots of very informative information from him. He told us all about the different modes of transport the Police use in order to help and keep people safe. We saw photographs of Police cars, helicopters, motorbikes, boats and bikes. Tim told us how specially trained animals are used to support the Police such as dogs and horses. Tim showed us the special clothes he wears and we felt how heavy his special vest was, which held a phone and a camera. He also showed us the unique identity number on his shirt sleeve and explained why and when the Police need to wear high viz jackets. We went outside to see his Police car and Tim showed us some of the items that were in the boot such as a broom and shovel, Police warning signs and even a horse harness! We thanked Tim very much for visiting us and making it such an exciting morning at The Lodge. The hall was set up today with a Police van, police cars, a zebra crossing and traffic lights which we enjoyed roleplaying with.

This week we have been talking about jobs people do. Today we set up the hall to reflect a busy high street! We have discussed all the many jobs that people do and roleplayed this in our Lodge High Street. We had a toy shop and a clothes shop where we had tills, cards and coins to pay for our items. We had to queue at times as it was so busy! The clothes shop had a very busy changing area to try on lots of outfits in front of a mirror. There was a supermarket where we could use our lists to put items in to baskets, a cafe which had waitress service, a library where we could choose a book to take away and be given a library card and a school with blackboard and chalks . There was also a doctor's surgery with a waiting area. We all had a lovely time visiting all the different places and played imaginatively too. We are really looking forward to our visit tomorrow from our local Police Community Support Officer.

The topic of the week is planting and growing. We have heard how you can plant seeds in all different types of places and read the story Anywhere Farm. This week we had to cancel our planned visits to the allotment and so we found a different space to do our planting in the garden. Our teachers brought in early carrot seeds and seed potatoes. We went into the garden and recycled the soil from the mud kitchen into patio planters. We worked as a team filling the planters and enjoyed planting the potatoes and carrot seeds. Afterwards we had a lovely play in the garden.

This week we have also planted sunflower seeds. Across the week we have recapped what we spoken about - all the things that a seed needs to grow. We have heard how farmers plan ahead thinking about when their crops will be ready later in the year. We've looked at an information book showing how a seed grows into a sunflower. We listened to vocabulary such as sprouting, growing, roots and shoots, and heard how flowers are important to bees, insects and wildlife.

In the garden we each had a pot which one of our teachers had made from newspaper. We discussed how the newspaper had been recycled. We each had a sunflower seed which we placed carefully in the soil and gave it a little water. We were excited to take our pots home at the end of the morning.

As part of the Planting and Farming topic, we have also listened to the story Tractor in Trouble. Our teacher demonstrated how we could make a picture of a tractor by using different shapes. We heard sizing language such as biggest, and smallest and positioning language - above, on top, next to etc. We saw how to place certain shapes on our picture to resemble a tractor. We had a go at making our own tractor picture using the shapes provided. We did very well and our tractors looked great on the display board.

The Lodge recently celebrated World Book Day - many of us dressed up in costumes of characters from our favourite books.The teachers roleplayed the story of The Very Hungry Caterpillar who ate through lots and lots of food before turning into a butterfly.
We all took part in our World Book Day Parade, proudly showing off our costumes with a twirl on the stage.

This week has been all about conservation! We have talked about how we can all play a part in taking care of our Earth. If we take care of it we can enjoy it and it will take care of us! We have looked at all the things we love about our planet, such as trees and oceans, and why they are important. We thought about things we could do to protect these parts of our Earth.