Preschool children practise their attention and listening skills

Preschool have been practising their attention and listening skills this week. These are fundamental skills in learning to talk and starting to learn phonics. Once children have learnt to listen they can make sense of the sounds they hear. Transforming hearing to listening is a ‘must’ for good communication skills. Preschool have been practising being good listeners by listening, recalling and sequencing stories and by playing listening games. We used our listening and attention skills when we went for a walk into Great Missenden. We talked about road safety and listened out for the cars as they passed us. We made sure we all held hands to keep us safe and discussed why we must stay on the pavement away from the road. Before we crossed the road we explained how we should cross safely and walk carefully when we are near cars.

The children were delighted to see and hear a dumper truck and tractor go past us and even more excited when both drivers waved at us. The children amazed us by finding new road signs and numbers as we walked. Xavier identified the numbers on the road sign saying, ‘Look 4, 6, and 10.’ Our aim was to buy a pumpkin at the Co-op for our friendly halloween day however, sadly they didn’t have any. We are very grateful though to Xavier’s Mum who kindly brought us one in - thank you.

We began our halloween day by reading the story, ‘The Pumpkin Hunt’ the children enjoyed joining in with the repeated refrains and trying to guess what might happen next in the story. This led us to investigating our very own pumpkin. Preschool decided it was very heavy and orange and Xavier described how they grow, getting bigger and bigger. Once the top was cut off the children looked at the seeds and thought that they may like to plant them and see what happens! The children enjoyed hollowing out the pumpkin with some help from the teachers. We continued with fruit and vegetable paint printing which produced some very creative paintings. Our conker collection came in useful as we were able to use them in our halloween maths activity. The children used the scales to weigh them and fir cones seeing which was the lightest and heaviest. A fun halloween was had by all!

We would like to see photos of your pumpkins, halloween and exciting half term fun so please remember to put them on tapestry.

A plea for help…. because we now collect the children from the gate we are sometimes struggling to carry everything and help the children into Preschool. May we ask that at the beginning of each half term you send in a bag with three complete changes of clothes with a drawstring bag also. This bag would remain in Preschool and any wet clothes could be sent home in the drawstring bag and the bag then returned with dry clothes the next time they are in, the children would then only need to bring in their folders and a water bottle if they wish to. Thank you