Although it was an 8 week half term it has flown by as quick as a flash and we are already at October half term!

This half term we have had lots of building – building trust, building relationships, building independence and of course building castles, houses and dens!  Our Little Owls old and new have been amazing. All children settle in differently and our wonderful team have adapted their practice and routines to support each and every one of them.

As you may have seen, Kerry has achieved her early years teacher status, a fantastic achievement, but you may not yet know that Louise and Kerry are now maths champions for the setting, supporting the team to develop maths skills and provide continuous provision helping our Little Owls to become maths confident.

We have had some wonderful new equipment added to our garden area thanks to the fantastic fundraising of our families. The new climbing frame and slide has provided our Little Owls with physical challenge and the new water pump has been a huge hit, giving the children the opportunity to work together and develop their critical thinking skills. We can’t thank our families and trustees enough; all fundraising is so vitally important to enhance our provision.

Autumn has been a big focus for us over the last few weeks and all the Little Owls and the team have been so creative and imaginative with conker and pumpkin activities, it amazes me every year what they come up with. Exploring, mixing, painting, transporting, weighing, counting, rolling, hammering, scooping, drawing and so much more. You can find lots of pictures of these wonderful activities on our Facebook and Instagram pages. @LITTLE_OWLS_PRESCHOOL @Little Owls Preschool – Boxted

Lots of our local schools have been having open mornings for prospective families with children due to start reception in September 2025 and we know some of our Little Owls have been enjoying their visits. If your child is due to start reception, then you can apply for their place between 4^th November 2024 – 15^th January 2025. If you have missed any of the school open mornings don’t worry, just give them a ring to arrange a visit.

 We are never 100% sure where our learning will take us as we follow the children’s interests but next half term there might be some firework activities, we love nursery rhymes so I’m sure we will celebrate nursery rhyme week and of course the team’s favourite celebration CHRISTMAS!!!

We hope you all have a lovely half term break, don’t forget you can add your Little Owls adventures to Tapestry, it will be lovely to share them when we return on Monday 4th November.

And just like that another academic year is done!

 We have fitted in so much and it has been so much fun!

We returned after the half term holidays to discover that our tadpoles had legs and it wasn’t long before they lost their tails and we had some tiny frogs looking for a new home. Boxted St Peter’s primary school offered them a lovely new home in their pond, so we had a little trip out to release them, they hopped away happy! Our beanstalks have continued to grow, as have our marrow plants, so some of the Little Owls team are going to nurture them over the summer and hopefully we may have some vegetables to harvest.

Our Little Owls loved sharing preschool with their Mummy’s and Daddy’s at our parent open week. It is great to watch the children guide grown ups to their favourite activities and share them together. Thank you to everyone that came, not just into preschool but to our forest school sessions too, we really enjoy seeing you all.

Part of our topic over the last term has been People That Help Us, we looked at so many different occupations and had a variety of role play set ups – Vets and Hospital being the favourites, but by far the most exciting event was the visits from the Police and Fire service. The visits were so interactive, the children could try on uniform, use some of the equipment and they got to share their knowledge of who to call in an emergency. During this topic we also talked about the dentist and good oral health, something that is so very important. We practiced brushing teeth, shared our experiences of dentist visits and experimented the effect sugar has on our teeth.

Our forest school sessions continued this half term with a variety of activities and new skills learnt – hapa zome, clay creations, bark rubbing, bug hunting, digging, swinging, climbing, balancing and of course campfires. Some of our younger children enjoyed sessions this term too as our slightly older Owls were enjoying school transition days.

Yes, some of our Little Owls are about to fly the nest. During their time at Little Owls we have been preparing them for the next part of their adventure – reception class! These children leave us with a variety of skills, including being independent, curious, resilient learners! We have welcomed teachers, teaching assistants, we have visited schools and as a team we love telling them how far each individual child has come on their journey. It is a big change for them and there may be a few wobbles, but they are all ready. To celebrate our leavers, we had a lovely ceremony with their families, drinks, cakes, photo opportunities and of course the song that they have all been practising so hard (the team may also be singing it in their sleep!). We really do wish them all the best for their next adventures and we will miss every single one of them.

We have lots of new Little Owls coming to join us in September and we spent a morning getting to know them and their families, we look forward to them starting their journey with us.

We would like to say a big thank you to all our families for your support, appreciation, kind words, gifts and cards, it really does mean so much to us as a team. We hope everyone has a lovely summer whatever you have planned and we will see you in September!

The first half of the summer term is complete and we have packed lots into the last few weeks!

Life cycles were a big topic for us this half term as we welcomed 5 tiny caterpillars and a tank of tiny tadpoles.  The caterpillars have a slightly quicker metamorphosis and the children enjoyed checking on their changes daily, from caterpillar to cocoon and cocoon to beautiful butterfly!  Some of the Little Owls were sad to see them go, but we hope they have flown off and found some lovely flowers to land on!  Maybe in the moonlight they will lay an egg on a leaf Our tadpoles have definitely grown and their body shape has started to change, so hopefully after half term we might start to see their legs appear.

Outside in the garden, the Little Owls have enjoyed planting a variety of vegetables and we have even planted out our very own beanstalk, will it lead us to the giant’s castle?  And if it does will we be brave enough to go inside like Jack?

Many of our Little Owls love to get creative, so the team decided to introduce a creation station in the garden that mirrors our one indoors, everything is close to hand and they have really enjoyed it. It has also given those Little Owls that like to be outdoors more opportunity to get creative and learn new skills.

Monday, 20^th May was World Bee Day so Valarie and Sarah, 2 local bee keepers, came in to talk to the children about bee keeping and making honey.  They had lots of visuals and equipment for our Little Owls to see and feel and they told us a wonderful story.  The children asked lots of interesting questions and really enjoyed trying the honey, it was very sweet and sticky.

The Little Owls Fun Run 2024 took place this half term.  Thankfully the weather held out for us and we had a wonderful morning with the Boxted Runners. The children were amazing runners and seem to complete it with ease – Boxted Runners of the future! We will let everyone know how much money we raised after the half term and the team have already picked out a few things to enhance our provision.

We finished the half term with a trip out to watch the Ride London bike race pass through Boxted. We were lucky enough to have a safe area to watch from with a gazebo and blankets, thanks to Julia for the use of her garden!  The children had made flags and a banner with a little help from the team and were so excited to watch.  Not only did we see the bikes zoom through, we saw police motorbikes and police cars with their lights and sirens on.  We also saw the support cars with lots of bikes on their roofs, and the Little Owls thought this was very funny!  It was a great event that we all enjoyed.

As we come to the last half of our summer term, we start to get ready for some of our Little Owls to transition into primary school.  The Little Owls team are here to support the children and their families and if you have any questions please just ask.  We have already started to meet some of the local reception teachers and will be welcoming them into the setting.  Our dressing up box will start to have a few uniform pieces in and we will give the children lots of support and encouragement to talk about their feelings and learn about being part of a community.

With visits from the Police and Fire Service planned in the coming weeks we will also be thinking about the people that help us.. We love inviting people into the setting and if you feel that you would like to come in and talk to our Little Owls about your job or hobby please do get in touch.

We hope everyone has a lovely half term and we will see everyone on Monday 3^rd June.

Well that really was a short half term, but in true Little Owls style we have fitted so much in!

We had a fantastic week learning all about our senses, we had lots of different smells to identify and we discovered that deciding what food you are eating is really tricky when you can’t see it.  We also really enjoyed “What the ladybird heard”, listening to directions in the dark!

Of course we celebrated World Book Day, although we share stories with our Little Owls all the time, it seems so much more special when you are dressed up as one of the characters! The children and the team had an amazing day!

We also celebrated the special ladies in our Little Owls lives, the children were all so keen to plant their gifts for someone special and they made beautiful flower cards.  We are looking forward to seeing pictures of the sweet peas as they grow.

Then British Science week was upon us and we all became budding scientists!  We erupted volcanos, made potions, blew bubbles, printed foam pictures and sent rockets into space. This really sparked the imagination of the children, so the Little Owls team sprung into action and before we knew it, we had a space station/rocket built in the room and our Little Owls had become astronauts!  We learnt so much about planets, gravity and rocket launching, we really loved to countdown to blast off!

We have welcomed lots of visitors this term. Arwa came to speak to us about how her and her family observe Ramadan and the children made some great links about kindness and sharing.  We opened our doors for parent open week.  It was lovely to see so many of you in the setting and at Forest school.  The children were so pleased to show you around and to share their favourite toys and games with you.  The team really love having you in as well, it’s a great chance to catch up, so look out for the next one.  We have also shared our lovely preschool with lots of new Little Owls and their families that will joining us in September and we can’t wait.

We ended our term with some very eggciting (sorry couldn’t help myself!) Easter activities, developing our fine motor skills with a miniature Easter egg hunt, practising scissor skills with bunny ear hats, getting creative printing cards and baking Easter biscuits.  I’m pretty sure the Easter Bunny knew how busy we have been because this afternoon he came to visit and left us some special treats!  Another term full of awe and wonder!

Next term we will look closely at lots of lifecycles, hopefully being able to observe some closely.  This is a great opportunity to learn about the natural world and develop a deeper understanding of the world around us.

We hope you all have a lovely Easter break and good luck to all those that are finding out their primary school places over the holiday.

We will see you all when we return on Monday 15^th April.

Can you believe we are at half term already! The half term has been super busy but super fun!

This year we signed up to the RSPB’s Big Garden Birdwatch. The Little Owls enjoyed getting the garden and forest school Birdwatch ready, making a variety of bird feeders for the birds to try, we even created our own little twitchers hut so we had somewhere quiet to watch them. The children made their own binoculars and kept track of the birds on a tally chart. Unfortunately, there were not many birds to see whilst we were playing in the garden, except a very bold pigeon and a friendly Robin, I can’t imagine why?!😂

The Little Owls fully embraced Chinese New Year Celebrations, tasting new foods, making lanterns, trying to write Chinese letters and symbols, practicing using chopsticks, finding out that 2024 is the year of the dragon and of course participating in some wonderful dragon dancing – working together to really make the dragon wiggle!

We have had lots of child initiated activities too, one of the absolute favourites was making play dough, very messy but so much fun. Some children were keen to set up a music shop, it had a telephone ordering service and home delivery! We explored shadows and the children created their own puppets to tell their own shadow puppet stories.

Technology and the internet is changing all the time, but it is here to stay and will continue to be a big part of our lives. We all must remember the importance of staying safe online. This half term we have spent some time talking to our Little Owls about online safety and watched a great video from the Safer Internet Day Campaign 2024.

This last week of the half term has been one of my favourites  – full of love and pancakes! We created cards and pictures full of hearts and flowers and play dough love bugs, all made with love. We have mixed pancakes, tossed play dough pancakes, tasted pancakes and cooked pancakes on the forest school fire! Yum Yum! The Little Owls were very excited to tell us about their choice of toppings for their pancakes at home and they all sounded delicious.

Lots of things to come in our next half term – British Science Week, parent open week, World Book Day (get your costumes ready!) and before you know it Easter will be here!

We hope everyone has a wonderful break and we will see you when we return on Tuesday 27^th February.