Dear Parents / Guardians,

Welcome back, we hope you all had a relaxing Easter break and the Easter Bunny was generous.

This term we will be welcoming Alexis, Finn, Riley and George, we know they will enjoy themselves at pre-school and make new friends.

This term we have the photographer visiting on Wednesday 22 nd April, if your child doesn't normally attend that morning but wish them to be photographed then pop along at 9.15am and we will get them photographed first. The company is ‘Little Angels' and last year they really were superb.

This term we are linking our activities to spring and after a lovely trip to the Hanwell's farm last term we will be learning about new life, seeds, life cycles and more .If anybody knows where to get some Frogspawn I would love to have some in the class. Thanks.

Sadly our caterpillars didn't hatch until the holidays so I will get some more next term and we definitely will have the time to watch them hatch into butterflies.

This term we will continue with the ‘Letters and Sounds' these activities help each child gain listening skills and sounds recognition. If you would like any extra information regarding the letters and sounds or the Early Years Foundation Stage then please ask myself or Kylie.

A colour and shape will also feature each week, see below for more details.

The weekly activities will be displayed on our first board as you enter the hall along with the children's Learning Journeys. Please feel free to read these and also add anything to them so we can share the ‘wow' moments. I have some little sheets that are suitable to add comments on and they are on the signing in table, help yourself and I can stick them into their books.

Week 1 20th – 24th April Red and circles

This week we will be settling in our new children and encouraging them, to explore their surroundings. We also will be looking at new life and go on a Nature walk to look at our area and see the evidence of spring.

We will be reading ‘The very Hungry Caterpillar' and '10 Wriggly Wiggly Caterpillars'

Environmental sounds are the area of Letters and Sounds so we will incorporate this into our nature walk and also play different listening games.

Week 2 27th April – 1st May Green and squares

During this week we are going to look at seeds, having chosen what we want to grow in our vegetable patch we will be planting our seeds and using seeds to make pictures and printing with fruits.

We will be reading stories about growing seeds, and ‘The Enormous Turnip'.

Instrumental sounds are featured this week through playing instruments, identifying sounds and making instruments to play.

Week 3 5th – 8th May Blue and triangles

Hopefully I will have sourced some frogspawn by now and we will be looking at the life cycle of the frog and linking it to floating and sinking activities and bubble painting.

We will read ‘The Teeny Weeny Tadpole' and use music and movement to practice frog jump.

This week we will be using our bodies to create sounds and rhythms.

Week 4 11th – 15th May Orange and rectangles

Spring showers will inspire our activities this week but hopefully not make it a wash out.

We will make runny pictures, use instruments to make raindrop sounds and use water to make marks outside and watch them disappear.

Rhymes and rhythm will lead our Letters and sounds activities incorporating ‘silly soup' song and the BeeBot (a programmable bee) to locate rhyming objects. The younger children will be exploring rhythms by copying sequences.

Week 5 18th – 22nd May Yellow and star

This week we will be looking at lambs and wool, making lamb pictures, feeling wool and pretending to be sheep for a hide and seek game.

‘Little Lamb is a lovely story and we will also share songs including Little Bo Peep and Old Macdonald.

Alliteration is the aspect this week from Letters and Sounds so stories with repetitive sounds will feature. Silly soup song can be sung and feely boxes filled with items all starting will one particular sound.