Wow we have come to the end of another term! Where does the time go?

We started this term with some beautiful new storage in the garden, which means our Little Owls have access to everything they could need for their play.  We love to promote their independence and their critical thinking and we have really seen them embrace this side of their learning.

As we celebrated pancake day the children took all the ingredients they might need to the mud kitchen to make their own pancakes – pouring, mixing, squeezing and lots of working together and with the introduction of a microwave it really was a hive of activity.

We also celebrated World Book Day with the children and the Little Owls team, creating some lovely interpretations of their favourite book characters. The team also emphasised books more than usual within their invitations to play. As you all know, we love books at Little Owls and reading together is so beneficial to developing early reading skills. Hopefully you have all seen on our social media we have been sharing the story of the month for Essex Year of Reading – some lovely stories to share together.

The weather has certainly provided lots of learning opportunities for us over the past half term, we have seen sun, snow, wind and rain! We’ve made tracks in the snow, caught snowflakes on our tongues, collected water from the drainpipe and jumped in puddles.  The rain also gave us the opportunity to create a mudslide at forest school and encourage the children to give it a try.

A request by one Little Owl to bake heart shaped biscuits turned into an afternoon of baking together and preparing their own snack. An activity where everyone could get involved and take on different roles and responsibilities.

We planted sunflowers for some special people in our lives and created our very own labels. We hope everyone had a wonderful Mother’s day and your sunflowers are growing strong, we would love to see pictures.

Oral health is so important and we were lucky enough to have 6 oral health students come to visit us to teach our Little Owls about good oral health. It was a lovely interactive and informative session that everyone really got involved with, so much fun was had brushing the big teeth and dressing up as a dentist, we hope to welcome them back soon.

One of the most exciting weeks we have had is science week.  A week filled with awe and wonder, critical thinking, being inquisitive and excitement. Experiments, plasma balls, stomp rockets and the children’s favourite – erupting volcanos!

The children are still enjoying large construction and this half term they stepped it up and built their own Thomas train with large boxes, tape and paint. They then added crates from the garden for the carriages and we couldn’t resist adding a tape track to the floor for them. They then spent the afternoon playing together in a large group – great collaborative play.

We ended the term with our week of stay and play sessions. It’s great to have our families in the setting, sharing learning and play with their Little Owls. The children love to show off their preschool and the things they can do.

We have recently had the arrival of frogspawn into preschool.  We have started to observe the changes quickly (quicker than we expected) so we hopefully will capture pictures as they change through the Easter holidays. This starts off next term nicely as we can look at lifecycles, watch caterpillars turn into butterflies and our seeds start to flower.

Next half term we will see the King’s Coronation, an historical event, that we are excited to share with our Little Owls – watch this space for our celebration plans!

Our older Little Owls will be notified of their school places on 17^th April, scary and exciting times ahead.  Please can we ask you to let one of the Little Owls team know which school your child has been offered a place at so we can prepare for their transition into reception. As always, the team are on hand to help and support you with any questions or concerns you have, please just ask.

We hope you all have a lovely Eater break and will see you back on Monday 17^th April for a new term.