This week Little Acorns have been learning about Life cycles.
Monday we learnt about the life cycle of a frog and went on a frog hunt.
On Tuesday we learnt about the life cycle of a flower, we picked daisies from the school field and made flower pictures.

On Wednesday we learnt about the life cycle of a chicken, we labeled the body parts of a chicken.
On Thursday we learnt about the life cycle of a caterpillar, we danced to music with scarves and pretended to be butterflies.
On Friday we learnt about the life cycle of a person, we played guess the baby.

We have enjoyed lots of outdoor play this week, we enjoyed rolling down the hill and joining in with circle games.

During one of our physical activities the Badgers enjoyed a Yoga session. The squirrels have enjoyed picking daisies and using them in their mud kitchen. In maths both Squirrels and Badgers have been joining in with number songs..

Week beginning 18th March

This week Little Acorns have been celebrating Easter. We have joined in with lots of activities including egg hunts, pass the egg, egg rolling, Easter crafts, feeding the Easter bunny and lots more.

Badgers have been over to school this week and joined in with a curling session.

Badgers sound of the week has been p this week.

The squirrels have enjoyed playing outdoors and developing their physical skills.

Week beginning 11th March

This week has been science week. The children have really enjoyed exploring colour, forces and reactions.

In maths the children have been given a variety of opportunities through play to write numbers.
Our sound of the week is t.

Week beginning 4th March

This week we have celebrated world book day all week. The staff have chosen their favorite stories and we have used them in our learning.

We have been on a gruffalo hunt, made owl ice cream, been to bee school, made lists, acted out stories, used stories in our play, took part in a sound lotto, made story maps, talked about the different parts of a story and learnt what an author is.

In maths we have retold a familiar journey, we used different stories to support this learning eg the bear hunt.

In Phonics the children have continued with their learning on alliteration. this weeks sound of the week was "a"

This week we have had a shape week. We have taken part in lots of shape sorting activities. The children have been learning to draw shapes, we have explored 3D and 2D shapes and made a Little Acorns shape book.

The children have made pancakes and valentines cards too.

This week we have been learning about the Chinese New Year. The children have joined in with Chinese food tasting, making dragons, using chop sticks and learning about the Chinese New year story.

The Badgers have been playing alliteration games in phonics and exploring shapes in Maths.
In Forest school we all went and explored the schools Forest school area which was lots of fun.

The Squirrels have been learning about colours this week and have joined in with lots of different activities to promote colour recognition.

This week we have continued to learn about dinosaurs.
The children have taken parts in lots of fun activities including dinosaur sensory play, exploring fossils and dinosaur bones, following numbered dinosaur feet and making dinosaur nests for the dinosaurs eggs in Forest schools.

In maths Badgers have been playing board games which has encouraged and supported learning in counting, number recognition, subsisting, understanding that numbers represent quantity and turn taking. Squirrels have been exploring shapes as part of their maths this week.

On Friday we took part in a whole school number day. The Badgers joined Dolphins in years and played lots of maths games. It was really fun.
The Squirrels took part in lots of number activities.

What an exciting week learning about Dinosaurs. The children have joined in with lots of fun activities about dinosaurs including making a dinosaur world, picking up dinosaurs with tweezers, making dinosaur masks, washing dinosaurs, making bridges for dinosaurs and lots more.

In Forest schools we went on a dinosaur hunt. In the sensory room we played a light up dinosaur game. We have joined in with Dinosaur music and movement.

In topics talk we learnt about the end of the dinosaurs, we learnt dinosaur names, what sounds they made and explored some of the scariest dinosaurs there were.

This week we have continued to learn about winter.

We have explored ice and found different ways to melt it. We have talked about different activities we can play in the snow and ice.

In Forest schools we filled cups with leaves and water, we left them outdoors over night and came back look at them the next morning. the water had turned to ice.

The squirrels have been exploring musical instruments, mixing colours and playing with Artic animals in cornflour and water.

The Badgers have been joining in lots of winter activities that will help develop their fine motor skills, hand eye co ordination and gross motor skills. In phonics the Badgers have been playing fun alliteration games.

Kim from Kimbles came in on Wednesday to follow up on the adults fundamental movement course they went on in November. The adults and children learnt lots of new action songs and games. it was lots of fun.

We have started the term off with learning about winter. the children have learnt
about clothes we wear during winter, winter around the world and different winter
weathers. The children have also joined in with lots of winter activities.

Little Acorns have enjoyed exploring the Forest school's area, they have used team work to move the crates, tyres and planks around. We made fat balls for the birds to eat as birds find it harder to find food in the winter.

The children have joined in with lots of music and movement session this week and
took part in a yoga story.

What a fabulous last week we have had.
Monday we sang Christmas songs to our parents
Tuesday we had a Christmas party and Santa brought us all a present.

On Friday we had a Christmas chill out day, we came dressed in our pyjamas and brought our teddies and a blanket to snuggle up to if we wanted to watch a Christmas film. We played party games and find the candy canes.

This week has been all about Christmas! The children have made a Christmas toy shop which they enjoy playing in, wrapping presents and writing cards in. They have joined in with lots of Christmas crafts and activities.

Santa Claus gave our Elf some reindeers food and special magic to help his reindeer fly on Christmas Eve. The Elf gave it to us with a letter from Santa, Santa asked us to mix the food and magic together and make reindeer bags to take home, ready to sprinkle in our gardens on Christmas Eve. (The reindeer food will come home with your child on the last week of term.)

Santa Claus gave our Elf some reindeers food and special magic to help his reindeer fly on Christmas Eve. The Elf gave it to us with a letter from Santa, Santa asked us to mix the food and magic together and make reindeer bags to take home, ready to sprinkle in our gardens on Christmas Eve. (The reindeer food will come home with your child on the last week of term.)

Week beginning 27th November

We have been outside and explored the ice, we learnt about where the ice has come form and how it turns back into rain water.

During topic talks we have shared with each other what we would like for Christmas, wrote letters to Santa, found out where Santa lives and we voted for the best food item on our Christmas dinner.

This afternoon the children have helped to put the Christmas decoration up. We are now in full Christmas mode!!
Our elf has come to stay with us for the next few weeks. He will be hiding in different places around the Pre-school each day, lets hope he does not get up to too much mischief.

This week in Little Acorns the children have been learning about our feelings. We have used a different book each day to talk about the different feeling in the story and discussed when we may of felt this way.
We have made feeling books, drew pictures of our different faces we make for different emotions, we have used the colour monsters to support our feelings.

On Wednesday we read Mr Wolfs pancakes. Mr Wolf was sad because his neighbours would not help him, so we helped him. We made a shopping list, counted his money and the went to the shop to buy the ingredients. We then helped Mr wolf to make pancakes, they were yummy.

In maths we have been playing with numbers to help us with number recognition. We went on a number hunt, used playdough to make numbers and played hop scotch.

We had another fun Kimbles session, dancing, dancing, singing and playing with instruments.

In the role play area the children helped to make a hairdressers. they have had lots of fun designing new hair styles for each other.

Week beginning 13th November

This week we have been learning about the weather.
We went onto the field and looked for different clouds through our cloud spotters. We watched the wind blow bubbles away, we've learnt about storms, talked about different clothes we wear in different weathers, and lots of other fun weather activities.

We have also joined in with anti Bullying week. We wore odd socks on Tuesday and learnt about it is ok to be different.
On Friday we learnt about Children in Need and took part in lots of fun activities including baking Pudsey bear biscuits, we went on a Pudsey bear treasure hunt, decorated Pudseys bandanna and lots more.

On Wednesday we joined in with another fun Kimbles session.

We have taken part in an assault cause and played on the MUGA with the balls, hoops and bean bags.

At Little Acorns this week we have been celebrating Diwali and learning about Remembrance day.

The children have joined in with making Diva lamps, Rangoli patterns and Diwali cards.

On Wednesday afternoon we tasted some Indian food.

We have been dancing to Indian music with scarves and learnt all about the Diwali festival.

On Friday the children learnt about Remembrance day, we watched the Cbeebies remembrance day cartoon and made and painting poppies

We have been making mud pies in Forest schools and used the MUGA to develop some of our large motor skills.
Next week the children will be learning about different weather and we will be joining in

This week the children have had a fun Halloween day and have learnt about bonfire night.
The children and staff came dressed up in their Halloween costumes on Tuesday, they played party games, explored pumpkins and made magic spells

We have learnt about firework and fire safety. In Forest schools the children made sparklers out of sticks they found and colourful paper, they enjoyed dancing around with their sparklers. The children made chocolate apples to take home ready for their bonfire celebrations with their families.

The children have taking part in lots of activities using straws to suck and blow, which help to develop mouth muscles for children's language development.

In maths the children have been exploring shapes and their properties. We used 3D blocks to make Halloween characters a house, the children followed instructions to make duplo animals, we played guess the shape by the adult describing the shape she was holding.

We have had a great first week back. Lots of children brought back their Autumn walk home link goodies. We have enjoyed sharing these with our friends and talking about their Autumn walk experiences they went on over half term with their families.

We have been on our own Autumn walk on the school field and have learnt about the leaves changing colour and falling off the trees during Autumn. We had great fun collecting leaves and playing and rolling in them.

The children have enjoyed exploring forces by rolling conkers down drain pipes. Picking up conkers with tweezers and using magnify glasses to explore autumn items.

In maths we have been learning about weight, we have explored scales, made cakes and compared weights of Autumn items.

In phonics we have started to learn rhyming which we will continue all half term.

On Tuesday afternoon we had our first Kimbles session, which was really fun.

Week beginning 9th October

We have had lots of fun learning about harvest time on the farm.

We learnt about oats and made porridge, then acted out the story of the tree bears using our story bags.

We have made bread and learnt about how flour is made, we used the story bag of the Little Red Hen to support our learning.

We have harvested our own potatoes, talked about different ways we could cook them and then washed them, we asked Jo in the school Kitchen to roast them for us. We ate our roast potatoes for snack, they were yummy!

In Forest schools we collected lots of sticks then used them in our maths. We talked about the sizes of the sticks and then put them in size order.

We have had fun playing in the rain, we wore our puddle suits to keep us dry.

We have been exploring pipes, water and cars in our outdoor learning this week. We also set up a farm harvested field in the tuff tray outside which has been fun, this activity helps to develop our imaginative play.

This week at Little Acorns we have continued to learn about the farm and Harvest. The children have learnt about where milk and eggs come from. Then we used eggs to make cakes and used milk to make milkshakes, these were both very yummy.

We have been developing pencil control and grip this week, the children painted using carrots and have drawn around/over pigs

In Forest schools we made a tractor using the crates, tyres and planks, it was lots of fun and we all worked well as a team.

One of the activities set up outside this week was 5 Little Ducks, the children have enjoyed using the numbered ducks to act out the song. This has encouraged lots of number recognition, taking away one and realising the number has changed and sharing.

In maths we have been exploring different sized bottles, buckets and cups and have learnt about capacity.

This week we have been learning about the farm and Harvest, which we will continue to learn about until the end of term.

The children have joined in with lots of farm crafts to develop their cutting skills, they have been feeding the animals in the sensory play to help develop fine motor skills and hand eye co-ordinations. On funky fingers table the children have been making farm fences to help develop their fine motor skills.
We have joined in with farm exercises and farm zumba in our physical sessions. We have sorted farm animals into size

The children have been learning about different farms around the world. We learnt about sunflower farms on Wednesday and explored lots of sunflowers.

In maths the children have been learning that the last number reached when counting a small set of objects tells us how many there are in total.

We have made the most the dry weather and have been playing in Forest schools, our outdoor play areas and the school playground. We are very lucky to have so many different outdoor areas to use and explore.

On Tuesday we made glasses, learnt about looking after our eyes. what a guide dog is and then we guided each other around the room while our friend had heir eyes closed. We used magnify glasses to explore with, they made everything look bigger.

On Wednesday we learnt about our sense of smell. We smelt different foods and drinks and tried to guess what they were. We made different scented playdoughs, the chocolate playdough smelt yummy.

On Thursday We learnt about our sense of touch. We made feely boards and touched lots of different textures and learnt new vocabulary to describe these textures.

On Friday we learnt about the sense of taste. We have fun tasting different foods and guessing what they may be. We made our own jam sandwiches for snack.

Over the week we have used our senses to explore the wind, rain and sun.

We have had fun playing on the MUGA with the balls, hoops and beanbags.

Last week we learnt about keeping ourselves healthy. The children talked about their experiences of going to the dentist and doctors. We sorted out foods that are good and bad for our teeth. We made a healthy plate and an unhealthy plate of food.

We played shops with some of the vegetables we have grown.
On the funky finger table we made germs out of egg cartons.
The children learnt about germs and why it is important to wash our hand. In Forest schools the children had fun exploring mud and using it to paint with.

In the squirrel playground we found lots of little frogs, worms and slugs. The children enjoyed looking at creatures and some of the children were very brave and held them.

In phonics we have been exploring the musical instruments.

During the morning sessions before it has got too hot we have been making the most of the outdoors. We have loved playing in the sand, water and on the bikes.

In Forest schools we have made faces out of clay and dug up the potatoes we have been growing

Week beginning 8th May

The rain has not stopped our outdoor learning this week, we put on our wellies, puddle suits and went out onto the field on a mini beast walk, we found lots of different mini beasts including a big spider, lots of wiggly worms and 2 bees.

We have enjoyed playing in Forest schools and developing our physical skills.

On Tuesday we learnt about Spiders, Wednesday we found out lots about worm, Thursday we found out facts about ladybirds and on Friday we learnt about ants.
The children have chosen which bugs they want to learn about over the next two weeks.

One of our friends enjoyed learning about worm so much that he made a wormery at home with his family.

We have made various mini beast in our creatives, used mini beast in our maths and rolled worms out of playdough.

We have spent lots of time exploring the sensory room and taking part in turn taking games

What a busy week!

This week we have been learning all about King Charles coronation.
We started the week making castles form duplo, cutting up pictures of famous landmarks in London, finding hidden treasure in rice and making life size pictures of the new King and queen.

In Forest schools we made streamers to wave on Saturday during King Charles coronation.

During topic talks we have been learning about the Royal family and we watched a clip from the Queen Elizabeth 2nd coronation.

We had a celebration picnic on Thursday lunch time and today we are having a craft session with our parents followed by refreshments on the school playground.

Its been a beautiful week and we have enjoyed playing outside and in the water and in the sand pit.

Next week we are going to be learning about Mini Beasts.
Have a lovely bank Holiday weekend, enjoy King Charles Coronation.

This week in Little Acorns we have been learning about growing. Both Badgers and Squirrels have planted potatoes, carrots and made cress heads.

We have been learning about what plants need to grow, how vegetables and fruit grow and then how they get to the shops. We have made charts of the vegetables we like. Had fun vegetable printing.

In Maths the Badgers have been using numbers, ordering and sorting numbers when singing number songs.

The squirrels loved making flower soup in the mud kitchen.

In Forest schools Badgers put on their gardening gloves and weeded the area. squirrels did some great digging in the digging area.

Badgers made an apple crumble for snack, it was yummy.

Its lovely to have all the children back after Easter.

This week we have been learning about life cycles.
Monday we learnt about the life cycle of a frog.
Tuesday we learnt about the life cycle of a butterfly.
Wednesday we learnt about the life cycle of a flower.
Thursday we learnt about the life cycle of a fruit tree
Friday we learnt about the life cycle of an animal.

What an exciting Easter fun week we have had this week!!
The Badger children have made houses using duplo for the Easter chicks, explored rolling eggs down pipes, we made plastic eggs magnetic by putting metal items inside them, we explored how to make a plastic egg sink by putting things inside them, taken part in lots of Easter party games and been on a couple of eggs hunts.

On Monday Badgers went across to school and watched the Bee musical performed by year 2,3,and 4. It was amazing! The Badger children really enjoyed going over to school.

The squirrels have explored spring flowers, made Easter hats, matched patterned eggs together, made chocolate nests, taken part in Easter eggs hunts and Easter games.

On Thursday the police officer came to show us her police car. We sat in the car, looked around the car and then listened to and saw the blue flashing lights.

Little Acorns have sprung into Spring!

We have all taken part in lots of play based Spring activities that have helped support learning of colours, numbers and counting. We have been shearing sheep, been on a spring hunt, playing a spring lotto game, learnt about the changes Spring brings and had a Spring party where we played lots of games with balloons.

On Monday we invited our Mums/Nannys into Little Acorns to celebrate Mother's Day. The adults got the chance to meet the chickens, paint play and decorate cupcakes. It was a lovely afternoon.

We have spent lots of time handling and learning about our chickens that hatched last week. Mummy hen said we have done a good job of looking after her chicks. The chicks have gone back to the farm today.

Next week we will be having an Easter week with lots of fun and games!!

What an exciting week we have had. On Monday we had living eggs delivered to us. The children watched over the eggs patiently , the eggs started to crack on Wednesday and some hatched on Thursday. Today we have 5 fluffy chickens and are hoping the others hatch over the weekend.
we are very excited for next week when we can begin to handle the chicken.

We have learnt about the life cycle of a hen, joined in with chicken crafts, made nests for plastic eggs in the sensory play and practiced balancing eggs on spoons.

On Wednesday Sarah brought baby Joshua in to visit us all. badger children even had a little cuddle with him (supported by his Mummy) It was lovely to meet baby Joshua.

We compared human babies to baby chicken. We have learnt that baby chickens come from eggs and that they can walk after a few hours of being born and human babies grow in their mummy's tummy and cannot walk until they are bigger and stronger.
In Forest schools we made a den and have been weaving branches into it to make the den stronger.

The Little Acorns have completed their Super Hero training this week and have all officially become Super Heroes!!

They started the week off by signing a Super Hero pledge. Throughout the week the children have taken part in lots of super hero training, challenges and a dress up day. We have invented our own super hero and found strengths we did not know we had.

Next week Little Acorns are having a special delivery of living eggs, within a few days the eggs will hatch.

On Friday to raise money for comic Relief we are having a dress down day- suggested donation is £1.00