Preschool - Fairy messages and pirate parties

Ahoy there! What an exciting week in Preschool. Our week started with a letter being delivered by our garden fairies who found an old ancient treasure map in the school grounds. The fairies told us they needed our help to find the treasure and left us a list of instructions and a few items to help. This sparked a lot of excitement enabling us to explore phonics and numbers in a fun and child centered way. Our activities gave the children opportunities to independently mark make by creating their own maps with some children phonetically labeling their maps. Our little pirates fished for letters to make CVC words with adult support to assist blending. In order to count their treasure, the Preschool pirates practised one touch one count which lead us to making number lines and simple number sentences.

Our Starfish pirates also enjoyed the fun and used the pipettes to squeeze coloured water to make their own trails and treasure maps. The pipettes are fantastic at developing their fine motor skills in preparation for holding a pencil. We followed on with our pirate themed activities all week following the children's developing curiosity and engagement for learning. This interest was extended to create a pirate party for the children to enjoy and celebrate their achievement of finding the treasure. We were delighted to discover that even our littlest pirates knew that ‘X’ marks the spot. Well done to our new friend this week who was the first to spot the sign in Preschool.

The buzz of excitement continued to the end of the week as the children were animated when writing invitations, problem solving with additions and sharing the treasure equally between each other. Our party ended with the children completing physical challenges such as walk the plank, pirate ship and steal the treasure team games. A busy and spontaneous child led week indeed! Next week, we will continue to follow this interest as we continue our role play activities to create a pirate restaurant. This opportunity will enable us to introduce the topic of healthy eating. We will look at what pirates like to eat whilst exploring the idea of a healthy diet and what food choices we make when self serving their own snack and lunch.

At home, you might like to let your child help you prepare the vegetables to go with a meal and talk about the importance of a healthy diet. The children love using blunt knives to chop up soft fruits and vegetables for snacks in Preschool which is great for fine motor skills. If your child would like to bring in a favorite book to support our activities, then please send it in.

We hope the fairies will write back to us again soon!