Due to the County Council Elections on the Thursday 4th May 2017 we will need to relocate preschool for one morning.  We have managed to book Highbrook’s Village Hall for the morning.  Preschool hours will be the usual 8.45-12.30,  with no Cygnets class (for rising 5’s).  Highbrook’s is a small hamlet around 2 miles South of W. Hoathly. 

Please ensure you turn off by the church and park just past the houses where there is a small car park.  You will then need to walk the short distance from car park along the small country lane (no pavement).  Please don’t park on the main road.  

We apologise for any inconvenience caused but the hall will be used for voting. 

Highbrook Village Hall

Hammingden Lane
Highbrook

RH17 6SS

Every month we will be sharing a tip for helping your child with communication. 

Listen and play with sounds together.  Draw your child’s attention to everyday sounds that are familiar such as a car, door bell, or animal.  Imitate the noise that it makes together. Have fun!

Today we made some Easter biscuits.  All the children participated by helping to weigh out ingredients and taking turns at mixing.  This was also great sensory activity using touch and smell to explore the different ingredients. 

If you would like to make some more at home here is the recipe –

200g butter, 150g caster sugar, 2 egg yolks, 400g plain flour, 1 tsp mixed spice, 1 tsp ground cinnamon and 2-4 tbsp milk and items for decorating the biscuits.

Heat the oven to 180 degrees and grease trays.

Beat sugar and butter together until fluffy. 

Sieve in the flour and spices, then add enough milk to make a soft dough.  

Roll out until around 5mm in thickness.

Cut using Easter cutters.

Bake for around 15mins, or until pale golden brown.

Cool on a wire rack. 

H

Today Issy made our new sunflower height chart.  All the children will have a chance to put their height up, and at the end of Summer term we will see how much they have grown.  At circle time we arranged ourselves in height order.  When arranging ourselves we were using the words ‘smaller’ and ‘taller’ to describe height.  

We have also been dressing Issy’s toy giraffe.  The children have been dressing him up in different outfits practising using zips and shoelaces.  

The children have been really enjoying some of our board games at the moment, one of their favourite games in dinosaur dominoes.  

Today we used the Beebot.  The Beebot is an exciting robot the children can program using directional buttons on the top.  It’s great for encouraging use of directional language, sequencing and learning about estimation. Some of children used it to estimate the width of the hall.  They correctly estimated the amount of movements across the hall, and were very excited about their accomplishment. 

Some of the children were in the literacy area using chalks to form letters.  There are always Biff and Chip books to look through in this area.  Some of the children made up their own narratives looking at the pictures for reference. 

Thank you to all the Mum’s who came along on Thursday for some tea and cake.  It was lovely to see everyone who could make it.  We hope you all had a fabulous Mother’s Day.

All parents should have received our new Wow moment notes.  We know that children do some amazing things at home too, and we want to hear all about them.  Whether it’s building an amazing lego tower, swimming a length of the pool, writing their own name or recognising numbers up to 10 we would like to know all about it.  It’s really important for us to work in partnership with our parents to aid your child’s learning journey.  These slips will be added to your child’s Learning Journal and will help us to individually plan our next steps. 

  As well as all our other exciting and engaging activities, we were also enjoying looking at people who help us in our community.  Our role play area was utilised as a police and fire station.  The children used the telephone to receive calls from people who had lost things. They made notes on their clipboards and created a small jail which sadly Issy and Jane had to spend time in.  

We also had some special visitors, three of our local Police Community Support Officers. We got the chance to ask lots of questions and they told us about their part in our community. We also talked about when we might need to call 999, and the importance of knowing our name and where we live.

  Today we were back for another morning full of interesting activities to encourage learning.  In the role play area we had our doctors surgery along with waiting room.  The children took turns to dress up. We had our receptionists taking appointments and making notes.  Tara had lots of bandages applied to her head and arms by the doctors and nurses.  The children really enjoyed getting involved, exploring the theme, sharing the equipment and discussing what they were doing with their peers. 

In the garden we have the new addition of a mud kitchen.  The mud kitchen is a fantastic new resource for the children to experiment, explore, discover, create, describe, pour, use tools, role play, learn the importance of hand washing and have lots of fun! 

We also had a visit from five day old chicks, one of our parents kindly bought in the chicks for the children to handle.  The children held them and were all very gentle with them.   They also sat back and watched and listened to the sound they made and how they moved.

Today we opened our new box of small world construction equipment.  We used rice and placed the magnetic letters into the Tuff tray.  Some of the children buried the letters in the rice, transported them using the crane and a few were mixed in the cement mixer.  This activity is great for getting the children to work together, use their imagination, experiment with texture, weight and letters.

In our home corner we were setting the table for lunch, taking orders for food and also washing up. 

We used cornflour and water to create a lovely texture for mark making and experimenting.  Some of the children used the sandpaper letters and traced the letter  into the flour mix using fingers, pens and lollipop sticks. 

Also the Bee-Bot robot was being used on the island mat.  The children can program the direction and movement of the robot. 

This week we have been looking at feelings and emotions.  We have a new member of preschool, Dotty (a puppet).  The children have been talking to her, taking her around preschool to meet everyone and listening as Jane explained how Dotty arrived at our preschool.  The children have created paper faces today using the paints, carefully creating either their own faces or someone they know. At circle time Issy has been using our new emotion cards with pictures showing different emotions.  The children have been discussing how they think the child in the picture is feeling.  

We have had a delivery of new resources to preschool which included a large world map mat and individual letter mats.  The small letter mats were perfect for some letter recognition games at circle time today.  The children took it in turns to hold up the mats they were sitting on, we all talked about the letter and things we could think of which started with that letter.  

This week we have also created a tube tunnel to shoot cars down.  The children could see which number their car had reached, and Tara was keeping note of the scores.  The children also took part in a jumping game yesterday.  Jane chalked numbers onto the floor and some of the children took turns to see how far they could jump.