Headteacher: Anna Moss

What a beautiful end to the week - the sun has shone all day today making our outdoors feel very much like Spring.

It was lovely to meet most of your grownups at Parent Consultations this week - it is always so lovely to find out what you are like at home. :-)

We have begun our "Families" topic and lots of you now have your family photograph up on our wall.  We will be playing some fun games with these over the next few weeks.  If you do not have a family photograph on the wall, please can you ask your grownup to get one to us.

Outdoors we have explored the new pond area with Mrs Allen, it is going to be fun to watch and see how this area develops as the weather warms up.  When the big children go to Forest School in the afternoon, they are always munching on apples and so Mrs Allen decided it would be fun to steal the pips and plant them - how exciting to see if anything happens!  Your looking skills have been put to the test by using the magnifying glasses to explore broccoli, lettuce and asparagus and using the binoculars to find and spot those singing birds.  Our safety rules have been revisited on how we move the long sticks in the building area to build a den.

Indoors we have been role playing the Nursery Rhymes of Jack and Jill by building and climbing up some hills and flapping our wings to fly away to "Two Little Dicky Birds".  Our Write Dance of Pat-a-Cake has had us making circles with our wrists (very tricky!), hips (the funniest!) and in green paint (like the Hulk!).  Our younger group have been learning about the number 1 and the number 2 and seeing how they can look so different in objects, numicon and now egg box style!  Our older children have been learning different ways we can make six and you have extended your learning by making your own doubles.  Dough Disco has had us balling and twisting our wrists to "What does the Fox say?" and poking and passing to "Getting Jiggy with it".  For most of us, rhyming has been our favourite Phonics circle time as we have been making Silly Soup and playing Rhyming Bingo.  Your listening skills have come on such a long way since September which has made learning about rhyming so much easier for you.  Keep it up as we move on to alliteration, blending and segmenting in the summer term, this will really test your listening skills.

Fingers crossed the sun shines all weekend!

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Mrs Lewis and Mrs Flynn.

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Hi All,

I hope you have all had a wonderful, if not a little wet, half term break.

We look forward to seeing you all back next week for another half term of fun.

Parent Consultations are being held next Wednesday 4th and Thursday 5th March and it is a chance for us to catch up on progress for our older children and discuss how the younger children have settled into Nursery life.

I still have a lot of outstanding slips to be returned so please can these be returned by tomorrow with your preference on an appointment time and day, thank you.

See most of you in the morning. :-)

Mrs Mander

The sun has made a very welcome addition to Forest School this week which has meant we have had the chance to spend the majority of our time outdoors, even our circle times.  We have certainly noticed the difference in the children during Quiet Time as they have been a lot more settled.

Outdoors Mrs Allen has been showing us how to saw safely to make our very own wooden cookies - we hope you enjoyed these with a hot drink this week.  We have also all had the chance to whittle with potato peelers to create our own mark making tools.  A big focus on ball skills in the afternoon has had us passing over and under and throwing to each other.  On the trim trail we have been exploring the den area behind the tree and continued with our balancing on the wobbly bridge.  

In the cabin we have all been scooting, sailing and skating around with a new Write Dance song “Round we Go”.  Next week, we repeat the song but with a mark making element, prepare for some colourful hands.  We have been squeezing the dough with a classic Mary Poppins tune of “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”.  Our new Forest friends have been practising the listening skill of “Sitting Still” on both the floor and on a chair and for their Maths circle time, have been singing and counting about 5 monkeys jumping, 5 ducks swimming and 5 frogs jumping.  The rest of us have been outside matching rhyming pairs in our Phonics sessions and adding “1 more” in the Forest.  Mrs Webb came to visit us on Thursday and was very impressed with how far your Maths skills have come on so far.

Our independence focus this week has been those coats – for some it is finding and putting your arm in and for the rest of us, it is those zips!  We calculated we put on our coats five times a day  - please help support us by allowing the children time to show you over the weekend.  Next week, hand washing!!

Parent Consultation letters came out today and I look forward to chatting with you all again, after half term, about how your little one has settled or how far they have come!

Have a lovely weekend

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Mrs Lewis and Mrs Flynn

It has been a hot week this week in Forest School and we do not mean the weather!  Mrs Allen and Mrs Cain (Reception class TA) have made a fire with you every day.  We started the week with a WOW fire where we enjoyed watching Mrs Cain get the fire going.  We then moved on to how to build a fire and use the end product (charcoal) to create our own marks.  The best part is always getting to taste/drink something new and so we have had two days of making and baking damper bread.  Good luck to Freddie's parents who (according to Freddie) are going to be baking it all weekend.  As well as all this fire fun, Mrs Allen has been showing you different ways we can move a ball - kicking, rolling, passing through a hoop.  We even had a go at playing a hockey game with a stick (from forest) and ball - it was a giggle to try and get the ball to move in a chosen direction. 

In the cabin, we have begun our Phonics work on Rhythm and Rhyme and have been sharing lots of rhyming stories.  When you read to your little one this weekend, see if they can hear that words sometimes sound the same.  We have been singing and acting out our weekly rhyme of "Ten in the Bed" - it was funny watching you roll off the blanket in the Boot Room.  To get our arms, hands and wrists strong and ready for handwriting we have been mark making in water to "The Bear went over the Mountain" and patting the dough FAST to "Mr Blue Sky".  Our number work has been all about recognising numbers to five, showing how numbers to five can be arranged in different ways and always the trickiest part, creating actions of numbers to five.

Now all of our friends have joined, we have introduced the Trim Trail as an activity for after lunch.  This has been a huge hit.  This week, we have begun by wearing our wellies as we know they can all put these on independently.  However we will be moving on soon to putting our own shoes on to play on the trail.  Please can you ensure shoes that the children travel to school in are "child friendly" and where you can, allow them time at home to put on their own shoes and coats as this helps support us when we can have up to 24 children to get ready in any one time.  

Our topic changes next week to Lifecycles.  Thank you to those parents who have emailed (or passed on) their baby photograph.  We are planning on having a lot of fun with them!

Have a lovely weekend,

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Mrs Lewis and Mrs Flynn

Our new topic of Lifecycles begins next week.

If you haven't done so already, please could you email me a photograph of your little one when they were a baby or bring one in for us to share with friends.

Thank you to you all of those who have emailed one so far. :-)

Mrs Mander

Another week in the Forest has flown by and even more children have joined us and are settling well! :-)

Outdoors Mrs Allen has been showing us how we can use clay in our Outdoor Creative Area.  You have put your dough disco skills to the test to make clay bears and created your own individual clay patterned plates by using sticks and stones.  Lets just hope we can get these dry enough to send home now!  We have had fun playing Follow my Leader and this was put to good use this morning when we had a fire drill and had to follow the leader out of the cabin and into the playground.  We have shown our new friends how we can stack and transport the red and blue crates and you made an excellent bear cave for some bear friends.  A favourite outdoor activity this week was making jam sandwiches for a Teddy Picnic - yum yum!

In the cabin, we have been practising our new Listening Rule of "Staying Quiet" with the game of Chinese Whispers.  How funny it is to hear what you hear when one word is passed around the circle.  This is usually the hardest listening rule for children of 3 and 4 but it is so important in your journey to be "school ready" and allow your friends to talk and share their ideas.  In Maths you have blown us away with the "Show Me" game  of numbers from 1-5.  You are able to see, spot and show me these numbers in lots of different ways e.g. egg box style, dice pattern, tally and numicon.  During C&L we have been sharing our "Brown Bear" story and have enjoyed matching the toy animals to the animals in the story.  Have you sung the song with your family yet?  "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, what do you see.....".  Our Dough Disco has had us passing our hot dough from hand to hand with the song Hot Chocolate - can you remember the sign for Hot Chocolate?

It is our last week of the Bears topic next week and we then move on to lifecycles.  With two of our parents expecting babies in the next few months, we are taking the opportunity to talk about the human lifecycle.  Please could I request that a baby photograph of your little one is emailed to me for us to play some fun games with!

Early Years After School French class will be beginning after half term on a Wednesday.  Please see the attached flyer on the school website and if you want to join in, give the school office a call.

Have a lovely weekend.

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Mrs Lewis, Mrs Barrett and Mrs Flynn

How lovely it has been to have most of our Forest Friends join us over the past two weeks (still a few more to go!).  You have began to settle into how our Nursery day works with the help of the visual timetable and a big thank you to our current friends who have supported you in this.  You can see and feel how far you have come in one term!

In the cabin we are in full swing with our Bear topic as we have been dancing and mark making to our Goldilocks song and sharing a lot of Bear stories during transition times.  Thank you to those of you who have brought in your Bear stories from home - it is always lovely to share a familiar story with your friends.  We have had fun dancing in, out and around the hoop and you are starting to understand the direction of clockwise and anti-clockwise - very tricky concepts for 3/4 year olds.  This week we have been learning about the number 5 and our favourite activity was completing a "tally 5" by counting cars that come past the school.  It is lucky we are in a quiet village where the vehicles are few and far between!  Our C&L bear sessions have had us singing the Nursery Rhyme "Round and Round the Garden" and like Goldilocks when she meets the bears, we have been talking about what makes us feel scared.  We always finish our day with a favourite circle time of Dough Disco - the past two weeks we have been discoing to Annie (thank you Sophie and Charlotte!!!!) and a Frozen song courtesy of Belle.

Outdoors, Mrs Allen has been reintroducing the areas of Forest School to remind us all of where we can/can't go.  The use of the Red hand ensures we know when to "stop" and turn around to keep us all safe.  We took our bears on a tour and showed them where they can and can't go and we have been searching for paw prints in the Forest where those bears have been stomping.  The fairies have been a huge hit with you all as Mrs Allen has opened up our story area shed around the corner and you have been drawing some wonderful pictures of your families on the chalkboard in the same area.  This week, the focus has been on colour as you have been outdoor mark making rainbows, painting with mud (always a favourite!) and yesterday, you even had the chance to grate chalks.  Although the weather hasn't been cold, it has been a little wet which has created a very wet mud kitchen - it is great to see those muddy fingernails have made a return.

Now we have some new sleepier Forest Friends, our Quiet Time runs from 12.30-2.00pm and so if you are doing a 1.40pm pick, could we ask the buzzer isn't pressed (it is loud in the cabin) and instead, we will get them ready and bring them down to the gate for you.

Have a lovely weekend all!

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Mrs Lewis, Mrs Barrett and Mrs Flynn

What a super Christmas show you performed this afternoon! Those children that arrived 15 weeks ago are virtually unrecognisable. You sang, you danced and you smiled - what more could we ask for! A HUGE thank you to all of your grownups that came along to support too.

It has been a long long term and the most difficult one for transition to a new setting with new expectations, but you did it, we all did it! Now it is time for a well-deserved break from it all with your loved ones, it definitely seems like lots of you need it.

So on behalf of all of the team – thank you for these cards and gifts. It is really generous of you. We all hope you have a wonderful Christmas and we will see you in the New Year ready for some more Forest School fun with some new friends!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Mrs Mander, Mrs Allen, Mrs Franklin, Mrs Lewis, Mrs Barrett and Mrs Flynn xx

Just a reminder that the Nursery Christmas show is tomorrow at 2.30pm in the school hall.  If your child does not attend on a Friday, please bring them along to the cabin between 2/2.15pm and head back down to the hall.

If they could come in wearing something Christmassy and if they want, bring a small teddy to join them in the show.

After the show, we will take all the children back to the cabin and you can come and collect them via the usual route.

With only just over half of our children being part of the show this year (more children to join us in January), we hope to see lots of extra grownups/siblings at the show to cheer them on!

We also still have some Christmas produce that the children made with Mrs Allen available to buy for £2.50 that didn't get sold at the Christmas Fayre.  We will put these out in the hall, please do collect if you want to buy.

See you all there!

Mrs Mander