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!

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.

Our first half term of 2023 has come to an end and although it has been a short one it has been incredibly busy!

Our Little Owls have shown a keen interest in construction recently, so we decided to have a move around in the room to give them lots of floor space to build and create some wonderful tall towers and wide bridges using various resources. We also moved lots of loose parts play outside to reignite their interest and really develop their critical thinking skills. They have shown us how they can share resources and work together to reach their goal – great teamwork! We introduced a new deep tray into the room that we filled with sand or water, the children loved exploring capacity, tipping, pouring and scooping.

As Chinese New Year was celebrated, we learnt about some of their customs, traditions and the 12 animals of the Chinese zodiac. We developed our gross motor movements with Chinese dragon dancing and our fine motor skills using chopsticks and writing Chinese letters. This half term we also learnt a little about Scotland as they celebrated Burn’s night, reading some Robert Burns poetry, listening to bagpipes, dancing the highland fling and baking our own shortbread – YUM!

Reading together is so beneficial to our Little Owls and National story telling week is every week for us! We promoted this week with lots of activities linked to familiar stories, we made Gruffalo crumble, we painted underpants for an aliens love underpants display (a favourite story at the moment) and cuddled our owl babies until their mummy returned. We also gave the children the opportunities to tell their own stories, some chose to tell familiar stories and some became very imaginative and at forest school we were crossing rope bridges to escape from ferocious crocodiles!

We finished the half term filled with love! Our Little Owls created pictures and wrote cards for special people in their lives. They loved exploring pink gloopy potions and manipulating red sparkly playdough.

The Little Owls team have set up some lovely invitations to play for the children to enjoy, but the children still lead their own learning and we never know where our day will take us, race tracks to space and beyond!

When we return from our half term break its pancake day!! We love to cook and bake at Little Owls and pancakes for snack are always a hit. The 2^nd March is World Book Day, who doesn’t like dressing up? I wonder what the team will dress up as this year? British science week falls in March and is always filled with critical thinking and Awe and Wonder. As we head towards the end of March there may be a special day we have to prepare for but it will remain top secret!

The end of term has arrived and what a wonderfully busy half term we have had!

Our forest school sessions started back this half term for some of our Little Owls and despite having some cold and wet sessions the children have loved exploring the forest school area. They have learnt the rules that will keep us safe and enjoyed the freedom to explore with their friends. As the sessions have gone on, we have seen the children grow in confidence especially with the rope swing and hammock! The campfire is always a highlight at the end of term, toasting fruit bread for snack was exciting too.

We started the term with lots of sparkly firework activities, we moved like fireworks, made sounds like fireworks, and even made our own fireworks. The children made their own poppies and created a display for our window as we learnt about Remembrance Day, we watch a lovely video created by CBeebies. There was lots of exploration for world science day, encouraging our Little Owls to investigate, ask questions and make predictions.

This half term also saw us celebrate World Nursery Rhyme Week, one of our favourites! Nursery rhymes are so important to develop early reading skills and a big part of Phase One Phonics (information on phase one phonics was sent out with end of term reports). Creating an indoor bus was a hit and all the children turned into doctors and nurses to help make Miss Polly’s dolly better!

Supporting oral health is very important, so this half term we spent some time brushing some rather large dirty teeth! We shared stories about visiting the dentist and talked about how a healthy diet is good for our bodies and our teeth.

We have finished the term the way we started, lots of sparkly activities! Christmas arrived at Little Owls! We decorated the tree and built a workshop for Santa and his elves, we wrote cards and letters, we wrapped presents, balanced baubles, and used tweezers to decorate pinecones with pom poms, fantastic activities that promote all areas of development. During our festivities we also invited our Little Owls parents and carers into play, it was lovely for them to be involved in our learning and we hope they enjoyed it as much as we did, look out for the next one!

Today we finished the term with our Christmas party. We all enjoyed party games, dancing, and party food, but most importantly the children looked on in awe as we had a visit from Father Christmas himself and he had presents for everyone!

As we look to the New Year and a new term, I’m sure we will have lots to talk about when we return. The Little Owls team can’t wait to hear about all your Christmas and New Year adventures. Our term starts back on Monday, 9th January 2023 and with Chinese New Year and Burns night at the end of January it will give us the opportunity to look at some different types of celebrations. The beginning of February is National Story Telling Week – stories are so powerful, and we will encourage the children to develop their enjoyment of familiar stories and foster a love for creating their own. The end of the half term will be filled with more love and kindness than usual (if that’s possible!) as we get ready for Valentine’s Day.

A little reminder – if your Little Owl is due to start primary school in September 2023 you must apply online for a place by 15th January 2023. If you need any help and advice with this, please speak to one of the Little Owls team.

We would just like to take this opportunity the thank you all for your love and support this year and we would like to wish all our Little Owls, their families, and friends a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We can’t quite believe how quickly the last 7 weeks has flown by and all of our Little Owls, old and new, have settled so well.

At the beginning of the new term, we paid tribute to Queen Elizabeth ll after her sad passing. We laid flowers and decorated the Apple tree that we planted for her Jubilee celebrations and sensitively discussed the things that children may have heard or seen on the television. We also talked about our new king, King Charles lll.

We started the term with lots of sensory play, encouraging the children to use different processes whilst they play, create, investigate and explore, moon sand and gloop are always favourites and scented play dough too. Fun activities to develop those little hand muscles have been popular, manipulating the playdough is great for this and we’ve played peg games, made necklaces and tried really hard to pick things up with tweezers, which can be really tricky!

We have explored signs of autumn this half term too and we could not write this blog without telling you all about our conker activities!!! As most of you are aware we are lucky enough to have a very large horse chestnut tree in our garden and it has given us so many leaning opportunities. The children have watched in amazement as the conkers fell from the tree, they explored the fallen conkers and found that some of them were still in their husk and were very inventive on how to get them out, this gave us lots of opportunity for new language. We collected them, we counted them, we weighed them, we felt them, we rolled them, we poured them, we drew them and yes, we even painted with them! Watch out for our book ‘101 things to do with conkers’! Alongside these activities there were lots of others, we found a bear and a hedgehog sleeping in a cave, and vegetables planted in a tuff tray farm giving us the opportunity to learn about hibernation and harvest in a hands-on way.

Although we still have an abundance of conkers, we finished the term with lots of pumpkins! The children absolutely love hammering golf tees into them, managing risk and developing their fine motor skills. Scooping out the insides and finding the seeds and the soft, squelchy flesh is always a hit and they used some of it to make their own potions. Our Little Owls got inventive with pumpkin rolling and skittle games and they also worked together to try and smash the pumpkins open, trying a variety of tools.

Our term starts back on Monday, 31st October and I’m sure the children will love to tell us about any spooky activities they have been up to. Firework night will soon follow and we always like to talk about firework safety with the children and I’m sure there will be some glittery firework pictures!

Nursery Rhyme week is 14th-18th November and we always like to link into some traditional rhymes, they are so important for early literacy development.

The end of the next half term is the Little Owls teams favourite time of year – Christmas, we are already planning magical activities! We will end our term with our fun filled Christmas party on Friday 16th December.