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.

We are so excited to be back and hope you all had a fantastic summer, we can not wait to hear all about it!

All About Us
As we welcome our Little Owls, old and new, the first half term will be all about us and getting to know each other. Our Little Owls will have grown and changed so much since the last time we saw them.

Together will will discover things that make us happy, things that make us sad, things that might worry us and things that make us belly laugh!

Together will will explore paint, construction, climbing, mark making, singing, dancing, pretending and reading.

Together we will do all this through PLAY!

Your Support
We really do value your support at home and we have lots of home learning activity packs and many books in our very own library for you to share with your children. Please help yourself, they are always available at drop off and pick up times. Everything can become a learning opportunity – getting dressed, putting on their shoes or coat, matching up socks, setting the table, a trip to the supermarket (writing a list, looking at logos and price tickets, and eating a healthy balanced diet), or a trip to the park (climbing, taking risks). The learning opportunities are endless!

Please remember the Little Owls team are always available and if you would like to speak to any of the team, please just ask.

TLC
TLC is an Essex campaign that looks to help parents, carers and families of young children support their children’s communication development and learn how to help their children gain the best start in life through playful learning at home.
This site will regularly post a range of ideas, top tips and games to support children’s language, physical and emotional development. Its aim is to ensure children start school ready to explore, learn and make friends.
Talk, Listen and Cuddle are the three ingredients needed to ensure young children get the best start in life.

https://www.tlc-essex.info/

Welcome back! We hope you all had a lovely break and enjoyed lots of Jubilee celebrations!

Dinosaurs are coming to Little Owls! Dinosaurs are a huge interest to many of our Little Owls, so the team are excited to plan lots of dinosaur themed activities for our first week back! A dinosaur swamp, a dinosaur dig and some dinosaur dancing are just some of the things planned so far.

We are also excited to welcome some duckling eggs that we will care for and hope to see hatch before they go off to their new home with the Rix family.

Our Community and Us – The children lead their own learning, so we never know where this will take us and everyday can be very different, but this half term we plan to explore our community. Places, people and buildings give us so many learning opportunities. We definitely have a trip to the post box planned as we need to send our letter and pictures of our celebrations to the Queen. Making maps is always popular, we always end up hunting for treasure and we usually find some! Building our houses will get our Little Owls planning and thinking about the resources they can use and how they will use them.

The 13th June sees the start of healthy eating week, as always we will continue to promote healthy eating with our Little Owls and the importance of a healthy varied diet and how this supports good oral health and visiting the dentist.

There are lots of people that help us within our community – dentists, doctors, vets, teachers, postal workers and many more. Hopefully, we will have visits from some of our emergency services (as long as they are not too busy!) to talk about what they do and how they help us – flashing lights and sirens are always fun too!

For all of our Little Owls, the team will continue to support them in their independence and resilience, especially those Little Owls that are preparing for their transition to school in September. Over the next few weeks we will have some teachers visiting, some children may have transition sessions in their new schools and as always we are available for support and to answer questions, not only ones that the children might have but their families too.

We really do value your support at home, please continue to read with your children, it doesn’t have to be books linked to topic, it can be any book that you can enjoy together. Everyday tasks can be a learning opportunity too – getting themselves dressed, putting their own shoes or coat on, sorting the washing, matching socks, a trip to the supermarket – writing a list, looking at logos and price tickets and choosing a healthy balanced diet to eat – maybe try eating a rainbow (see picture below) or a trip to the park, which includes climbing and taking risks. The learning opportunities are endless!

If you would like any ideas, please speak to one of the team, we are always happy to offer some suggestions

Welcome back! We hope everyone had a lovely Easter beak.

See how we grow!

Over this half term we will immerse ourselves in a variety of lifecycles and looking after our bodies. We love this topic, as it gives us so much to see and discuss. We will continue to care for the plants and potatoes that we have already planted and we hope you will share the progress of your sweet peas with us. I’m sure there will be lots more planting taking place. We love to plant cress and watch its rapid growth. It’s also fascinating to watch Jack’s beanstalk grow in a glass jar so we can see the roots twist and turn. Hopefully, we will again have some frogspawn and later in the term we will be closely monitoring the hatching of some ducklings!

We will of course not forgot how we grow and the importance of a healthy body and mind. Healthy eating, oral hygiene and Yoga are all activities that will be on our planning. We are currently trying to create a large set of teeth to be cleaned, we are hoping they are ready!

We will be sharing so many of our favourite stories, Some Dogs Do, Smartest Giant in Town, Jack and the Beanstalk, The Colour Monster and of course The Very Hungry Caterpillar to name a few!

There will be lots of seasonal changes to observe during our forest school sessions and as we learn about managing risks, we hope to include more tools and possibly learn some whittling skills.

Some of our little owls and their families will be finding out about their primary school places this month. As we talk more about starting school everyone will be feeling a range of different emotions, we will give our little owls the opportunity to explore these emotions. We also want to let our families know we are always here for a chat, support or reassurance for you to, just ask.