✨ Cinderella Week in Preschool ✨

This week our preschool has been sprinkled with fairy‑tale magic as the children explored the story of Cinderella through play, imagination, and hands‑on learning.

👑 Storytelling & Role Play

The children loved retelling the story in our themed tuff tray, using characters and props to bring each part of the tale to life. They dressed up as knights, princesses and dragons, acting out brave battles and magical moments as they worked together to “save the princess.”

🔢 Fairy‑Tale Maths

We’ve been practising number recognition by matching numerals to fairy‑tale themed amounts, helping children build confidence with counting and early number skills.

👑 Creative Crowns

Everyone designed and decorated their own royal crown, choosing colours, shapes and sparkles to make something truly unique. This activity supported fine motor skills and encouraged children to express their creativity.

💌 Invitations to the Ball

To finish our Cinderella theme, the children wrote their very own invitations to the prince’s ball. This gave them a chance to practise mark‑making, early writing and thinking about the purpose of written text.

⭐ Sports Day Magic ⭐

On Thursday we held our much‑anticipated Sports Day, and what a wonderful event it was. The children took part in a carousel of activities, proudly showing off their skills, teamwork and determination. They especially enjoyed having their parents there to cheer them on, making the day feel extra special.

We loved welcoming everyone — it was truly a magical day for all.

It’s been a week full of imagination, celebration and joyful learning. We’re so proud of how confidently the children engaged with every activity and can’t wait to see where our next story takes us.

🌼 This Week in Preschool!

We’ve had a busy and exciting week exploring The Ugly Duckling! The children loved creating shape ducks, using their knowledge of shapes to describe what they made while practising their scissor skills. ✂️🟡

To stay cool during the heatwave, we enjoyed lots of water play 💦. The children sang 5 Little Ducks and showed brilliant understanding of 1 more and 1 less through playful counting.

They also had great fun making fruity water “cocktails”, exploring pouring, filling, and experimenting with different containers—fantastic early maths and sensory learning.

In Forest School, the shade of the trees kept us comfortable as we searched for bugs, built dens, and explored the natural world around us. 🌳🐛

A wonderful week full of creativity, exploration, and outdoor adventures.

This week the children have been fully immersed in the story of Little Red Riding Hood, exploring the tale through a range of creative, hands‑on activities.

They have:

• Made Granny’s basket, practising their scissor skills and developing confidence in cutting and assembling materials.
• Created fruit pictures to go inside the basket, using their number knowledge to recognise and order numbers to 5.
• Used their subitizing and composition skills to build a Numicon path to Granny’s house in the sand tray, exploring number patterns and early addition in a playful way.
• Worked together on a large‑scale map of Red Riding Hood’s journey to Granny’s house, adding details and thinking carefully about what she might see along the way.
• Retold the story using props and prompts in the tuff tray, building their language, sequencing and storytelling skills.
• And of course, they have been very busy making their Father’s Day cards, putting lots of thought and care into their designs.

It’s been a lovely week of imagination, creativity and growing confidence. The children should feel very proud of everything they’ve achieved.

This week our preschool children have been fully immersed in the magical world of Hansel and Gretel. Through a range of creative, hands-on activities, they explored the story, its characters, and its enchanting gingerbread house in ways that sparked imagination, language, and early maths skills.

The children loved using playdough and small loose parts to design and build their very own gingerbread houses. They carefully selected beads, buttons, sticks, and gems to decorate their creations, showing fantastic fine motor control and creativity.

Working together, the class also produced a large-scale collaborative painting of the gingerbread house. This colourful artwork allowed them to experiment with paint, mix colours, and talk about the details they remembered from the story.

In our tuff tray, the children used prompts and props to retell the story of Hansel and Gretel, building confidence in sequencing and storytelling.

The children have also been practising their early maths skills. Using gummy bear picture cards, they explored subitizing and number composition, recognising small quantities and discovering how numbers can be made in different ways.

To extend their mark-making, the children drew their own gingerbread houses and enjoyed drawing the witch’s house on whiteboards, adding spooky details and sharing ideas about what might be inside.

Outdoors, the children worked together with great enthusiasm to build the witch’s house using large building blocks. They experimented with size, shape, balance, and teamwork as they constructed tall towers, doorways, and imaginative features inspired by the story.

Our fairy tale costumes were a huge hit too. The children loved dressing up and acting out their favourite fairy tales, bringing stories to life through role play, movement, and expressive language.

It has been a magical week of storytelling, creativity, and learning. We are so proud of everything the children have achieved.

Summer 2 – Fairy Tales Topic

This half term we have begun exploring our new topic: Fairy Tales. To start things off, the children have been diving into the classic story Goldilocks and the Three Bears, and they’ve had a wonderfully busy first week back.

What We’ve Been Learning

📚 Story Focus – Goldilocks and the Three Bears The children have enjoyed retelling the story, drawing the characters, and talking about what happens in the tale. They have also been writing their own shopping lists inspired by the story and our new role‑play area.

🍬 New Role Play Area – The Sweet Shop Our brand‑new sweet shop has been a huge hit. The children have loved taking on different roles, using their imagination, and practising early writing and number skills while “shopping”.

🔺 3D Shapes and Construction While building the bears’ house, the children have been exploring 3D shapes, talking about cubes, cylinders, cones and more. They’ve used both small construction materials indoors and the large wooden blocks outside to create their own versions of the bears’ home.

🐻 Comparing and Sorting Bears A big focus this week has been comparing sizes. The children have been sorting the bears by size and colour in the tuff tray, and again in the sandpit. This has helped them use mathematical language such as big, small, bigger, smaller, tall, and short.

✏️ Drawing and Mark Making The children have been drawing the characters from the story, thinking carefully about details and using their mark‑making skills to bring the bears and Goldilocks to life.

This weeks book was ‘The Gruffalo’. The children have enjoyed their P.E. session with Crossbar, using the climbing frame and learning different ways to travel over the equipment. The children have been retelling the story using the tuff tray and props, they have also been using the Nursery garden to go on a Gruffalo hunt meeting all the characters from the story. The children have also made their own ‘Owl Ice cream’. The children have also been practicing their maths by putting the Gruffalo’s prickles on his back and finding the frogs in the Gruffalo swamp.

This week we have also been looking at the artist Andy Warhol and have made paintings in his style.

The children and staff would like to thank all the grown ups who attended our Stay and Play.

All the children and staff had a wonderful time at our Stay and Play this week. The children really enjoyed showing all their grown ups some of the wonderful things they do in Preschool.

This week the children have been looking at the book ‘Too Many Carrots’. They have enjoyed using the dice and matching the amounts to cover the carrots. The children also enjoyed retelling the story in the tuff-tray. Making playdough flowers for the insects. Planting some carrots for ‘Rabbit’ from our story. They have also enjoyed singing 5 Speckled Frogs with the props in the water tray.

This week the children have been looking at the book ‘Jasper’s Beanstalk’. Some of the activities they have been enjoying this week were sorting and counting vegetables in their own little vegetable garden. Making flowers with the playdough. Counting the beans for Jasper’s Beanstalk. Creating their own flower gardens, retelling the story in the tuff tray. The children also revisited prior learning by retelling the story of The Very Quiet Cricket.

This week the children have been looking at the book ‘The Very Quiet Cricket’. They have enjoyed making insects out of play-dough. Making summer drinks in the water tray. Also, they have been drawing different insects, first using the magnifying glasses to look at the insects in detail. The children have also been retelling the story using the tuff-tray and making worms out of honey hoops, where they were practicing their count and fine motor skills. The children also enjoyed collaging their cricket pictures.