Week beginning 4th November 2024
Fireworks and Children’s book week
We started the week with much excitement as children talked about fireworks they had seen and hoped to see in the coming days. We spent time creating some firework art using lots of different materials, a favourite was the paint soaked cotton wool that the children could bang with a hammers.
In our cooking sessions we made catherine wheel pinwheels filled with cheese and tomato and chocolate sparklers adorned with colourful sprinkles and decorations - through our weekly cookery sessions the children learn many skills like: listening and following instruction, communication, fine motor skills, weighing and measuring and it also supports them to build positive relationships with food and confidence to try new flavours.
This week was also children’s book week so we explored some familiar stories that our children enjoy, firstly the Tiger who came to tea, this is a firm favourite and also supports many of our children’s interests as this group spend lots of time in the home corner and also exploring tea and potion trays. We created tigers using a ripping paper technique and also playdough. We created some amazing striped tiger pictures using a ball and paint, rolling the ball backward and forwards through drops of paint. And of course there were lots of tea party provocations.
We then looked at ‘The Gruffalo’, again another firm favourite, we spent time making masks and painting Gruffalo pictures, thinking about, planning and building a house for a Gruffalo and also exploring the tuff tray story set up.
Our final story we explored was room on the broom, where we made some brooms and recalled the story ordering pictures of the characters who rode on the broom. We then made some different patterns on the floor and encouraged the children to fly their brooms along the lines and let me tell you it took lots of balance and concentration to fly along those lines!!!!
I wonder what you’re favourite stories are? We hope you enjoyed hearing about ours
Waterbeach Community playgroup remembers
Remembering all those lost through war and conflict over the years
Week beginning 11th November 2024
Nursery Rhyme Week
This week we spent time exploring our favourite nursery rhymes as part of nursery rhyme week. When children learn nursery rhymes it helps with their language and communication skills, it also helps build confidence as they learn about sounds and rhyming. This is turn helps them to prepare for reading and writing when they are older.
Children at community playgroup have lots of opportunities to learn songs and rhymes throughout sessions and also at the end of the morning and afternoon to help build a large repertoire which can make a real difference to their language and literacy.
This week we looked at Twinkle twinkle little star, Old Macdonald had a farm, Wheels on the bus and Humpty Dumpty using lots of different media and materials. For our STEM activity this week we became engineers helping Humpty Dumpty to make a wall that was stable to help him not fall, we used a variety of construction materials testing which was best.
Week beginning 18th November 2024
Keeping Ourselves Safe - Road safety and PANTS
This week we have been focussing on how to keep ourselves safe and we chose to look at road safety and the NSPCC’s PANTS campaign.
Road safety is a very important skill to teach young children and as most of our children arrive on foot, bike or scooter we think its so important to give them the skills and knowledge they need to keep themselves safe. We were very lucky to have a visit from our lovely lollipop lady Angela who came in and talked to the children about the rules of the road she also took us outside to practice crossing the road at her usual crossing. We looked at road signs and tried to work out what we thought they might mean and also made some of our very own lollipop sticks so we could role play and embed the things we’d learnt with Angela. We also had lots of road and car small world set ups which helped us with colour and number recognition and of course had lots of traffic light fun playing games around stop and go.
Our second theme was the NSPCC’s pants campaign. We spent time looking at how our children can keep themselves safe by learning the PANTS rules, which the NSPCC have developed to be like the green cross code for staying safe from sexual abuse. The activities introduce a range of ideas in a way that is fully age appropriate and empowers children to be confident and keep themselves safe. The pants rule is simple and children pick these messages up really quickly. Here are the basic rules
Privates are private.
Always remember your body belongs to you.
No means no.
Talk about secrets that upset up.
Speak up, someone can help.
The children absolutely loved The Pantosaurus song https://www.google.com/gasearch?q=pantosaurus%20song&source=sh/x/gs/m2/5 which helped them learn the rules and we also used several stories including the aliens love underpants series, Charlie’s superhero underpants and simpler stories like On my potty to spark conversation and understanding.
We would urge all parents to take a look at the NSPCC website https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/support-for-parents/pants-underwear-rule/
It was certainly a busy week at WCP……… why not come back next week as we will be starting to get festive as we prepare our tree for the Landbeach Christmas Tree festival that will be held at All Saints Church Landbeach on Saturday 30th November -Sunday 1st December
Week beginning 25th November 2024
🎄🎄It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas🎄🎄
This week has been a very busy week at the playhouse as we begin to get ready for the start of December.
The children have helped to create a handprint advent calendar and are eagerly anticipating finding out who’s hidden behind each colourful bauble every day. We are also really looking forward to the start of our story advent, a different Christmas story each day with some special pre recorded weekend editions too!
We’ve also been busily preparing our entry to the Christmas tree festival being held in Landbeach, this year our tree is called a Child”s Christmas and includes things our children associate with Christmas.
This week there was lots of Christmas tree themed activities to help with our fine motor skills, like carefully threading beads onto pipe cleaner trees and we also practiced our scissor skills giving Father Christmas a trim as his beard was all a bit straggly.
On Thursday we had a football fun factory taster session, there were lots of fun games and activities and all of the children eagerly joined in despite the very chilly frosty weather.
As I write this we are all looking forward to the PTA winter fair, our lovely playgroup committee will be running a Teddy tombola and lots of other fun games on our behalf so why not pop along and say hello.
Next week we will be exploring the nativity story and having lots of Christmas themed activities, we will also have our Christmas craft morning where children get to invite their family into the playhouse for a morning of craft, togetherness and of course some festive snacks
Why not check back in next week to see what we get up to
