Preschool - Exploring new words

Preschool has had a busy start this week! The children all loved going on a bear hunt so much that we continued with this interest this week. We set up the outdoor environment to reflect the story and added different learning opportunities for the children to play with and enjoy. The children engaged in a variety of activities including using rulers, cardboard tubes and scissors to create binoculars; ice and tongs to help with counting and addition as well as using mud to create marks and letters on the floor. The children have had great fun exploring the different activities outside.

This activity linked in wonderfully with the Early Years Communication Week, starting us off with the word ‘jumbled’. We supported the children to learn each new word using fun spontaneous activities to help them to really understand the word. For example, mixing our socks and shoes up to create a great big jumbled mess. The Mobilo construction set, pretend telephones and the walkie talkies have been a great addition to support the children with understanding the word ‘conversation’. For our wonderful Wednesday, the word ‘blustery’ took us on a windy journey, where we thought of other types of weather and how and why the seasons change throughout the year. Benji was a great help with this activity as he was able to give us an in-depth explanation on how the sun also moves around the earth as we learnt that it takes the earth a whole year to go around the sun.

On Thursday, we were blown away by the children’s efforts in dressing for World Book day! When we saw the birthday boy dressed up as a magnificent astronaut we knew straight away that the story ‘Whatever Next’ by Jill Murphy would be the perfect adventure to help us understand the word ‘ponder’! The children got lost in the story as we explored each scene and thought about how the bear used his great imagination to develop his adventure. Preschool was silent, in the dark, on the moon with the bear, pondering what he might do next! The staff were amazed at how well the children listened. Definitely an activity that we will be repeating next week, using the Preschool children’s ideas instead. We continued celebrating World Book day for our Fun Friday as we had our own dressed up Handa in Preschool, eager to share her tangerines with all her friends. This interest supported the children to enjoy learning about the author and where the story was set. We also enjoyed using the book in our phonic session and tasting a variety of fruits to decide if we liked or disliked them using words such as delicious, scrumptious, sharp and sour. A busy fun week enjoyed by all.

The children also had the opportunity to learn about St David’s Day this week, following on with a lovely walk to look out for signs of spring. We found some daffodils on our walk and took pictures to use for a painting activity back in preschool. Next week, we will retrace our walk to see if the trees and the flowers have blossomed more than this week. The children have now become experts at spotting signs in the environment which is another activity we will be exploring further next week. We will also start to think about what we want to grow in our Preschool garden and start preparing this throughout the phonics session next week. At home you might want to talk to your child about what they would like to grow in Preschool in preparation for next week.