Happy Easter.  We hope that you have all had a restful holiday and enjoyed some nice weather over the Easter break.

SPRING TERM 2022 REVIEW

We began last term focussing on Classic Fairy Stories, especially The Three Little Pigs; Goldilocks and the Three Bears; and, Jack and the Beanstalk.

We enjoyed making things for our display and to take home including making 3 different pig houses; a bear to take home; planting runner beans; climbing our huge climbing frame beanstalk; and making a numbered beanstalk for the display.  We role played the stories, played games like Pig Goes Pop and What’s the Time Mr Wolf.

During this period we also celebrated Burns Night, Big Garden Birdwatch, Chinese New Year and Valentine’s Day, including making kilts for our British Values Board, sending home a bird survey, tasting Chinese Food, and making a beautiful Valentines Card.

During the 2^nd half term, we focussed on Staying Healthy and Safe by looking at Healthy Eating, How I Keep Myself Healthy, and People in the Community Who Look After Us.  We differentiated between healthy and unhealthy foods, made smoothies, and baked healthy pizzas.  We talked about staying healthy, why we need to exercise, enjoyed playing the Crocodile Teeth and Operation games, as well as singing songs and playing Simon Says to identify our body parts. We met PC Matt Hawke who came in to the setting.  He talked about being a Police Officer, why their role is important, how they help people and then showed us his car.  We also learnt the recovery position, dressed up as Doctors and Nurses in our Preschool Hospital, enjoyed playing with the fire engines and pretended to be a teacher.

It was a busy half term for events including St David’s Day; Shrove Tuesday; World Book Day; British Science Week; St Patrick’s Day; Mother’s Day; and, Easter.  On St David’s Day and St Patrick’s Day we made Welsh flag bunting and Irish Shamrocks with Leprechauns to add to our British Values Board and we all danced along to Riverdance.  We enjoyed pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, dressed up as our favourite book characters on World Book Day, enjoyed a sink/float scientific experiment for Science Week, had an Easter Egg hunt and made lots of Mother’s Day and Easter goodies to bring home.

It has been very busy!  Not forgetting of course, our core, continuous and enhanced provision covering all areas of the EYFS to provide opportunities and help your children develop and learn through play, with lots of encouragement.  We continue to interact with your children, provide activities and specifically selected resources to enable them to reach their full potential in an enabling, happy and safe environment.

TODDLERS

If 3 days just isn’t enough for your child, if you have younger siblings or know of anyone who is looking for ‘stay and play’ toddler sessions, our Parent and Toddler group for 0-4 year olds is proving very popular and is open on Mondays from 9:15 to 11:15.  First session is free but please email to book your place. £2.50 and additional siblings are 50p (paid half-termly).  Drop in sessions are £3.  Email toddlers@highamptonpreschool.co.uk for more information and to book your place.

THANK YOU

We must say a huge THANK YOU to people from our community who have helped us including Mark Wonnacott (MNW Timber Solutions) for donating some wood and Sam Hellon for using it to fix our mud kitchen and make some beautiful shapes for our garden.  PC Hawke for finding time to come and speak to us about the importance of our Police force.  Also a big thank you to our amazing bank staff, Davina and Annette for stepping in to help when we had 2 members of staff off with Covid.

CaD BOOKS

The Communication and Development books continue to be updated with your child’s work and are available for you to take home and review with your children whenever you would like them.  Please feel free to write in these books and add events that happen at home.  You will also see that we complete an end of term summary of their progress and would welcome feedback at the bottom of this form.  If you have any queries about your child’s development, please do not hesitate to speak to a member of staff or your child’s key worker.

DRESSING FOR THE WEATHER

Please remember that we like to be outside in our garden whenever possible and would appreciate if coats could still be sent in to Preschool daily to enable us to do this in all weathers.  If we are lucky enough to be forecast sunny weather, we would appreciate sun cream to be applied before bringing your child to Preschool.  We have factor 50 sun protection cream at Preschool that can be reapplied throughout the day and sun hats that the children may use.  If you would prefer for your child to use their own cream and sun hat, please ensure that these are labelled, put in their bag and that your child knows they are there.

COMMUNICATION

As always, your Key Worker is available should you need to discuss any particular aspects of your child’s learning and next steps.  You can speak to a member of staff at drop off and pick up, call on 07837 357815 or 07801 581054 out of hours or email info@highamptonpreschool.co.uk.  Please check our closed Facebook page for Parents/Carers for weekly updates, events and news or refer to the Website for setting information and general queries.

STARTING RECEPTION IN SEPTEMBER?

If your child is due to start school in September, transition sessions are likely to start this term, probably after the spring bank half term.  It is likely that you will be contacted directly regarding these sessions but we are working with the schools and will pass on any information we receive.

FUNDRAISING

Your School Lottery is an exciting weekly lottery that helps raise money for Highampton Area Pre-School. Tickets for the lottery cost just £1 per week, with a top prize of £25,000!  Each ticket will consist of 6 numbers and each number will be between 0 and 9. There will be a draw every Saturday night when a 6 digit winning combination will be picked. Match all 6 and you win the JACKPOT of £25,000!  There is also a guaranteed winner for Highampton Area Pre-School very Saturday which is drawn on a raffle basis, so there are two chances to win a prize. More tickets sold the more the prize money will be each week.

AmazonSmile is a simple and automatic way for you to support us. Amazon will donate a portion of the purchase price of your Amazon shops to your nominated charity at no extra cost to you.  Simply log-in to your Amazon account at smile.amazon.co.uk and nominate “Highampton Area Pre-School Group” as your chosen charity, then every time you shop at Amazon a percentage of the purchase price of your orders will be donated to Highampton Area Pre-School.  AmazonSmile is available at smile.amazon.co.uk on your web browser and can be activated in the Amazon Shopping App for iOS and Android phones.

Please go to our Website to find out more about these fundraising opportunities and to buy tickets.

ABSENCES

Please ensure that you phone or text us each day that your child is absent from Preschool, unless you are able to predict a longer period of absence and we are aware of this.  07837 357815 or 07801 581054 out of hours

CHANGE OF CONTACT DETAILS

Please ensure that the contact details we have on file are correct and any specific requirements for your child are up to date.

PRESCHOOL DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

Term                                        26 Apr – 26 May

Half-term                                31 May – 2 June (inclusive)

Term                                        7 June – 21 July

Sports Day                              July (date tbc)

End of Term Trip                  21 July

Summer Break                       22 July – 7 September

Start of Autumn Term          13 September

We are back on Monday 25 April with Toddlers and Tuesday 26 April with Preschool.

Our Preschool theme this half-term is Space and as Trainee Astronauts, we will be learning and exploring rockets and planets.

See you all next week.