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.

This half terms topic is ‘In the Garden’. We have a lovely new role-play area of a garden centre, which the children have enjoyed exploring this week.

Our first week in the summer 1 term we have been looking at the book ‘The Very Hungry Caterpillar’. Some of this weeks activities the children have enjoyed are making their own butterfly using collage materials. They have also enjoyed the maths this week making repeating AB patterns with the pattern caterpillars. The children have also enjoyed some fruit tasting this week, they tried: blueberries, strawberries, grapes and raspberries, which they were keen to eat. The children have also been printing fruit, they printed pear, pomegranate and banana first looking at the insides of the pear and the pomegranate then looking at the colours they used for printing. On the tuff tray they have been retelling the story using the puppets.

Our last week of term we looked at the book ‘A Squash and a Squeeze’. the children enjoyed retelling the story with the character masks. They also made their Easter cards and did some Easter maths matching numerals to amounts. In the water tray this week they enjoyed practicing their pouring and filling skills, while in the sand they were testing out how many scoops of sand they could fit in to the tubes.

This week the children have been learning the text ‘5 Little Ducks’. Some of their favourite activities have been bathing the ducks. Making arrangements of 3 and 4 using the ducks in the egg boxes. They have also been making observational paintings of daffodils using the water colours.