Headteacher: Anna Moss

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

What a fun packed Christmas week we have had.

Indoors, Holly and Jolly have been up to their usual mischief by hiding things around the cabin - what fun we have had trying to find them first thing in the morning.  We have enjoyed practising our Christmas songs and dances for a very special show (see below).  We have been recreating the Christmas story with our Small World props - I wonder if you can remember the names of any of the characters in the story so far?  Mrs Lewis and Mrs Allen have been making Christmas hats for most of you ready to wear today for our Christmas lunch.  It was delicious - thank you very much Mrs Barker and Mr Hopkins!

Outdoors, Mrs Allen has gone Christmas tree crazy and has shown you lots of ways to create them using outdoor equipment.  You started off by sorting different lengths of sticks and tied them together with rope to create the tree shape and added the Forest decorations afterwards.  On Wednesday you all enjoyed hammering nails into a wooden frame and used wool to wrap around to create another tree shape.  You have even had a go at making trees out of pine cones, glue and glitter - please do not add glitter to your tree at home in the same way!

Next week the whole school will be performing their Christmas shows down at Blackwell Church and we will be performing ours.  Our Christmas show will be in the school hall on Friday 20th December at 2.30pm.  Please bring all your family and friends and come and enjoy watching the children show off their learning so far with a Christmas twist!  If you child does not attend on a Friday, please drop them at the cabin between 2-2.15pm and head on down to the hall to find your seat.  Could we request they come in dressed in Christmassy clothes and bring in a Christmas cuddly toy/teddy to join the show.

We hope to see you all their next Friday to help us enjoy and celebrate our last afternoon of what has been a long term for both the children and the adults.

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

Christmas is coming and we have had two new friends to help build up the excitement.  Holly and Jolly, our resident Nursery Elves, have not only been up to mischief in the nursery but are doing a super job of keeping an eye on how friendly we are with one another to report back to Father Christmas himself in two weeks time.

Indoors, we have been recapping on some of our favourite listening games, creating body sounds as part of our Phonics topic and learning all about the number 4 and the different ways it can be seen e.g. in a row, as a curved line, dice 4.  We have had fun with Mrs Allen to our Dough Disco tune "Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer".  I have a real Christmassy treat for dough disco next week which Erica in particular is going to love!

Outdoors, you have been very creative with the pine cones and created your own Rudolph's as well as making some excellent carpenters with your sawing skills.  You enjoyed Mrs Allen helping you to make some wood cookies for our mud kitchen and were very sensible about this sharp tool.  These skills are going to be key to help you next week to create your own outdoor Christmas tree.

It was lovely to welcome our new nursery friends on Tuesday morning to their "Stay and Play" session, we are looking forward to having all of you with us in the New Year. 

Next week we will start practising and choosing some of our favourite songs, dances and action songs to share with you, our "audience", at our very own Nursery Christmas show.  This will be on the last day of term, Friday 20th December, at 2.30pm in the school hall.  If your child does not attend on this day and you want them to take part, please drop them at the cabin at 2.00pm and head on to the hall.  Everyone is welcome to come and have a hot drink and mince pie - the more the merrier!

Have a lovely weekend

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