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.

The term is complete and 2024 is just around the corner!!

We have had the best time this half term and as always, we have been super busy! Forest school started back after the half term break and the children have really enjoyed the sessions. They have found their feet in the forest and tackled the mudslide, rope bridges, rope swing, hammock and made shelters. They have experienced all weathers and have not been phased by anything and as always, the term was ended with a warming campfire so they could cook their own snack. Yum Yum!

At the beginning of November, we were lucky enough to have The Dental Studio and students from The University of Essex come into setting to talk to the children about the importance of good oral health, a great learning experience for the children and the students alike!

Our Diwali celebrations were enhanced this year by Bhavina, who came in to share her families’ traditions and tell us all about the festival of light. We made our very own Diva/Diya lamps, danced to traditional music, and got to try some delicious treats.

We remembered remembered the 5^th of November with sparkly firework pictures and the children also made their own poppies as we learnt a little about Remembrance Day and why we use the poppy to remember.

Our parent open week was well attended (thank you for coming). We love welcoming parents into the setting and the Little Owls love to show you what they do. It really is a great opportunity to get together and have those lovely shared learning experiences.

Then quick as a flash Christmas arrived! The children have loved decorating the trees, writing cards, wrapping presents, making decorations and Jack Frost even gave us a little dusting just to make us feel a bit more Christmassy. There have been nativity scenes and Christmas stories aplenty and this year we finished a fantastic term with a fantastic Hartbeeps Christmas party and delicious cakes thanks to Cakes By Rachel Lewis!

We hope all our Little Owls and their families have a wonderful Christmas and we will see you in 2024!

MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR

LOVE FROM THE LITTLE OWLS TEAM

Can you believe we are at the half term point already!

We started the term getting to know each other and building those all-important key person relationships. The Little Owls team adapted their practice for the needs of each individual child and all of them have made so much progress, it is amazing to see. We also used this time to see how much our returning Little Owls had grown and developed and wow they breezed back into preschool like they had never been away! Lots of vehicle play and painting has been a comfort to lots of the children, so these have been readily available and they have made good use of our paint supplies!

The conker drop of 2023 started and autumn has been a big part of our learning through the half term. It becomes a bit of a competition between the team, who can come up with the best conker activity (feel free to get creative and pass on your ideas).  We have had baking, weighing, painting, rolling, floating, and sinking all with conkers. We really are lucky to have such a great resource right in the garden.

Boxted Bakery was another big hit this half term and the children really enjoyed role playing in the garden bakery. We made dough, baked cakes (including conker cakes and mud cakes), bought cakes for our friends, took telephone orders, and just had a really fun time. During this play we often saw our older children leading and supporting our younger children in their play, they sustained their play and often revisited, such lovely play to watch.

We decided to have a week dedicated to The Gruffalo as many of the children seemed captivated by the story. The team quickly flipped their plans, we made Gruffalo crumble, lots of Gruffalo dressing up, an underground house (den making), story sequencing and some of our Little Owls told the story at story time. Amazing!

Our final week was fondly named pumpkin week and yes you guessed it, it involved a lot of pumpkins! Painting, drawing, hammering, scooping, glooping, mixing, pouring, sticking, gluing, rolling and bowling! A huge thank you to Tesco for donating all the pumpkins for the children to explore, it provided so many learning opportunities.

As a team we would like to say a huge thank you for all the lovely comments you left for us on #NurseryPractionerDay.  It really means so much to us to have so much support from our families. It is a privilege that you choose us to care for your little ones.

It has been a fantastic half term and we hope you all enjoy the half term break.

Lots of plans for when we return:  Diwali, fireworks and of course Christmas!

Well that’s it, another term has come to an end and another school year is over!

We started the term welcoming our tiny frogs and we found a new home for them at Boxted St Peters Primary school. Some of our Little Owls were lucky enough to go and release them and spend some time pond dipping, so we could see who they would be living with in their new habitat.

A visit from Essex Police started some lovely learning about people who help us, the children learnt that they don’t just catch bad guys, they keep us safe too! 999 is the number to call if you need them and we saw the children putting this into practice in the police station role play. Not to be outdone, the Fire service came to visit too. They were very impressed our Little Owls knew who to call in an emergency. We got to see Nicola dress up as a firefighter, which caused the children some amusement. We saw the long ladders, large cutting equipment, flashing lights, loud sirens and we got to squirt the hose! In addition, we have turned our role play area into a hospital, a school, a hairdressers, and a post office, enabling the children to explore different occupations and the people that help us. Marie, the community champion from Tesco, even came to visit with a donation of fresh fruit! Thank you Tesco!

 The park, school or café are all in our community and the children love to visit them all, we have been able to learn about directions and maps and found our way to the post box to post some special mail.  At the end of the last half term we were joined by The Boxted Runners, they helped and supported us to have a fantastic sponsored fun run and we raised a phenomenal amount for our wonderful preschool, thank you all very much.

We have continued to support all our Little Owls with their resilience and independence and over the last half term some of them have been getting ready for their transition into ‘BIG SCHOOL’. They have been out to visit their new schools and teachers have come to visit us. It’s an exciting time but also a little scary. Supporting them to understand these feelings has been important to us and we have included activities on feelings, looked at books, shared stories and pictures sent from schools, but most importantly we had lots of cuddles!

We ended the term with a little leavers ceremony and our Little Owls were presented with their certificates. The main event though was the goodbye song, the children had worked so hard practicing and they smashed it, not a dry eye in the house, proud parents and Little Owls ladies! We will miss every one of them, but we know they are ready for the next part of their journey.

Honestly I could write about our adventures for hours, I haven’t even mentioned our continuing forest school sessions or mini boot camps, we have so much fun and we have even spent some time getting to know our new Little Owls that will be joining us in September.

Have an amazing summer everyone and we will see you in September!

The weeks are flying by and another half term is over!

This term we have been observing lots of changes around us.  We have seen forest school become greener, the trees start blossom and seedlings growing.  We have seen some lovely pictures about how well your sunflowers are growing and how well they are being looked after.  Back in April, we had tiny tadpoles and tiny caterpillars, now one month later we have froglets and beautiful butterflies.  Our Little Owls have been so engaged – checking on progress at every session and you can’t begin to believe the excitement when we noticed a wriggly chrysalis and a butterfly pushing its way out!  Our Little Owls could not take their eyes off it for a second.

As we got ready to celebrate the historic occasion of the King’s Coronation, we were asked by the local Boxted Wildlife Group to create a special banner for them to display at the Boxted Coronation event.  Hedgehogs were the theme and the children set to work using a variety of techniques – hand printing, sticking, fork painting and symmetrical printing – to create a wonderful banner. We hope you all saw it at the event.  Our preparations continued as we made our own crowns, flags and banners.  We learnt about the Union flag, the King’s Coronation crown and Buckingham Palace.  We also looked at new books, saw lots of pictures and shared experiences of special trips to London.  We ended our celebrations with a fantastic street style party for all our Little Owls, there was singing, dancing, party games and of course party food!  To mark such an historic occasion, we had medals engraved so every Little Owl had their very own Coronation medal, something for them to remember the event for many years to come!

Towards the end of the half term we were lucky enough to welcome Sarah from Buddies 4 Fitness.  She held a fantastic Mini Bootcamp session that really helped develop the children’s core strength.  The Little Owls had a great time and it led onto some learning about healthy eating, the benefits of physical exercise for our bodies and we also created some challenging obstacle courses!

To mark the end of the half term, we said goodbye to our butterflies, it was lovely to watch them fly off into the big wide world.  Our froglets will go on a little holiday with one of the Little Owls team and hopefully when we return, they will also be ready to go on their next adventure to the wildlife pond at Boxted School.

The final part of the term will be with us soon, when we will be getting some of our Little Owls ready for their next adventure!  We will be looking at our community, including new schools and people who help us.  These two topics link wonderfully together as we look at what makes a community and the people within it, maybe we will have some special visitors too.

As always as the weather gets warmer, we will spend lots of time outside, with lots of waterplay and sand play.  Please can we remind you all to apply suncream to your child in the morning before preschool.  We will apply it again at lunchtime for those children attending an all-day session.  Please can you also make sure that they have changes of clothes (including socks) and a sun hat.

We hope everyone has a lovely week and we will see you on Monday 5^th June!