Westfield Pre-School CIC

Providing Outstanding Care and Education for Children aged 2-5 years in a Friendly, Welcoming Environment where your Children's Needs come First!

17th April - 21st April

This week we have been learning all about how things grow and what they need.
We have looked at what grows in our garden and what is safe to eat and were surprised that we can eat some flowers including dandelions! We also found out that some are poisonous and must not be eaten!
We explored the dandelions looking closely at the parts of the plant with magnifying glasses and using the magnifying app and planted them in pots.
We have started growing cress inside and we have replanted our newly grown herbs parsley, coriander and Bassil outside in our herb garden.
We have talked about recycling, looking at the materials thinking about what things are made off and sorting them into recycling piles, then thinking what else they may be made into.
And both inside and outside we had fun playing with mini beasts, lots of worms were to be found hiding under our logs and lots of scuttling wood lice kept the children fascinated as they watched them in their natural habitat, but inside it was the plastic spiders that caught their interest as they tried hard to see how many they could balance on the log without them falling off!
They also enjoyed playing hide and seek with the large spiders hiding them for their friends to find.
🥰

28th March- 31st March

It has been a short but very busy week this week, we continued talking about places in our community and enjoyed role playing shops taking on roles of customers and shop keepers!
We have talked about Easter and enjoyed lots of Easter themed activities including matching the sound game, To play we shook lots of sound eggs to try to find two that sounded the same, it was very tricky and a great way of developing our listening skills!
We made lovely mosaic Easter pictures, and made masks developing fine motor control We worked hard to consolidate our scissor skills by cutting along different lines on our egg shapes.
Our egg-ercise egg hunt got us all worn out, as we worked together to find the eggs and then do all the exercises!!
And when the children asked to make a stick house like the one on the mind map that we found at Stoney Clouds- well why not! The tree needed a trim anyway 🤣

20th March- 24th March 

This week we have been out and about in our community noticing things along the way and meeting people in our neighbourhood. We have made decisions together about our journeys, choosing when to stop and look at something and which shops to go in.
Walking around enables us to to look and explore as we move through our environment. Opportunities for spontaneous learning and awe cropped up whilst walking such as watching and listening to the men working in sandiacre town garage which then translates into role playing when we got back to preschool and getting sprayed with the water at sandiacre hand car wash which then translated into using the water sprays in the water area back at preschool as we spoke about our experiences.
We also enjoyed talking about our routes as we started filling in our mind map of sandiacre with photos, pictures and writing which we will continue with next week.
And of course this week was our sponsored bounce week!
The children did fantastic bouncing for 2 minutes on the trampoline to complete their challenge then choosing to bounce for fun on hoppers and the bouncy castle!
Thank you for going to the effort of collecting sponsorship and supporting us, we have already started buying resources to enhance our garden area. 

13th March - 17th March

This week we have continued to explore the world around us and to think about the concept of home and what that means.
We spoke about homes should be safe; they should house those that love and protect us, and spoke about who those people were making a great display with the pictures you sent in.
We talked about pets we have at home and read dear zoo and discussed why some animals are not suitable as pets.
We drew pictures and put them in envelopes with stamps, then went for a walk to the post box to post them to our houses! Please let us know when they arrive 🥰
And we practiced our construction skills building houses with large blocks, duplo, wooden blocks and tap tap pictures. 😀

6th March- 10th March 2023

This week we have been talking about how we get to preschool and what we see on the way. We all created our fantastic floor map together with roads, trees, shops, houses and the park on it!

We spoke about walking, coming in cars and travelling on buses and created our own car deciding together what to use… it looks fantastic, we even remembered seat belts! It wasn’t big enough for everyone so we used our reasoning skills to turn it into a bus so more could play!

We experienced lots of small world play with the jigsaw Road, car set, dolls houses, pushchairs and road mats and vehicles as we discussed our theme using lots of vocabulary and discussing our experiences.

Then it snowed....

We dug, scooped, moulded, threw, jumped, ran, stamped, made footprints and ran around excitedly in the snow, and we LOVED the muddy puddle it created! We built a little snowman and took him inside to watch him melt, then we painted snowman pictures.

What a busy week!!!

27th February- 3rd March

This week we have started to build up a sense of community with the children, to develop a sense of pride in who they are in their preschool and talk about what can see when out and about, and what better place to begin with on the week that we celebrate world book day Than our local library!
It gave us the opportunity to see what happens in a library and provided real and new experiences for us to use in our preschool to create a fantastic role play library where we had great fun playing in.
We enjoyed talking about our favourite books and sharing our favourite ones with our friends- even bringing in ones from home to share in the comfort of our pyjamas on world book day. And the reading centre has been well used this week as we enjoyed listening to familiar stories with our friends.

13th February - 17th February

This week we have been talking about love and feelings. We enjoyed singing the rhyme the queen of hearts and really enjoyed making jam tarts, practicing so many skills, from rolling out the dough, spooning the jam and cutting the shapes!
We spoke about how the queen must have felt when her jam tarts got stolen and when they were returned and spoke about what makes us happy and sad.
We talked about Valentine’s Day and spoke about what and who we love and made lots of heart pictures, practicing skills of ripping, cutting, stamping and even using the laminator showing great fine motor and independence skills!
We also made fantastic heart sculptures threading little beads onto pipe cleaners then carefully bending into a heart shape! What a lovely busy week 😍💕

6th February - 10th February

This week we have continued to learn about birds, we have enjoyed making our own Peter and Paul bird puppets to engage physically with the rhyme 2 little dickie birds- a fantastic rhyme that helps to familiarise us with numbers 1 and 2, counting, subitising, adding and subtracting. Number skills were also promoted as we looked at the numerals on the birds nests and counted out how many eggs to place in them, matching numeral to quantity.
We have enjoyed making patterns in bird seed and writing our letters and developing fine motor skills as we used feathers to mark make in paint.
We had a go at making our own nests, weaving sticks through hessian and adding leaves, moss, grass and feathers and
we continued to learn more about the characteristics of some of our garden birds, we learnt that starlings are outstanding mimics copying the sounds of other birds, frogs and even mobile phones! So we practiced copying sounds too! We learnt that robins often feed other birds chicks so we tried feeding each other too! It was a bit messy 🤣

30th January - 3rd February 

This week the children have showed a keen interest in the birds they saw in our garden and flying outside.
We spoke about them looking for food in winter and used our grapefruit peel to make some bird feeders to put in our tree.
As the week went on we made more bird feeders threading cheerios on pipe cleaners and mixing seed and lard and filling up cups.
We used the binoculars to find our hidden birds and birds in the tree!
Our bird seed sweep gave us the opportunity to work on hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills sweeping seed with a paint brush onto the pre drawn shape and these skills were further supported by feeding bluebell the bird with seed and worms using tweezers.
We found feathers, twigs, leaves, grass and moss to bring in for our garden role play area and even made our own binoculars!
We learnt about the characteristics of a magpie, listening to his call and creating a sparkly shiny display with things we found on our shiny/ sparkly hunt 🥰

23rd January-27th January

This week our focus has been on the Chinese new year.
We have enjoyed mark making in rice, measuring, counting and comparing noodles and using chopsticks and tweezers, fantastic for promoting fine motor skills.
We have enjoyed learning about the chinese culture and role played some of them, including cleaning our home corner, making Chinese food, dressing in lucky colours and making lucky red envelopes to take home.
The Chinese new year also offered the opportunity to taste different foods and flavours. We enjoyed a Chinese buffet trying fried rice, noodles, bean sprouts, prawn toast, spring rolls, prawn crackers, dumplings and rice crackers, yum yum!
We read the story of the great race making animal noises and then role played the story in the water area using lots of counting and positional language.
Outside and inside we had great fun in our Chinese take-a-way taking on roles of chef, customers and even delivering drivers!
And we all worked together to create a fantastic dragon which we enjoyed dancing with to some traditional Chinese music 🥰 what a fantastic way to introduce the children to a new culture, language and tradition 🥰

16th January - 20th January

This week the children were able to make some new connections with their outdoor environment exploring natural materials such as ice and frost.
We collected icy leaves, twigs and stalks made brittle by the frost and collected big pieces of ice which had formed in the tyres.
we enjoyed looking through the ice and describing the blurry images and looking at the bubbles and leaves trapped in the ice.
We used sticks to make marks, pictures and write our names on the frost covered table and talked about all the changes we could see around us.
We dressed for outside play and the children tried hard with their independence skills putting on and taking off their own boots, coats, hats, gloves and scarves!
We spoke about warm clothes we need in cold weather and coloured, painted and traced pictures of warm clothes with some children even experimenting mixing their own colours!
And at gymdance we practiced holding a pose as we enjoyed the ‘freeze song’ balancing on different parts of our body when the music stopped 🥰

9th January - 13th January

This week the children have enjoyed exploring the rain! Watching it, walking in it and even jumping in the puddles!
They have discovered that rain provides much needed water for plants and animals and had a first look at the water cycle through stories books and rhymes about rain and rainy days.
We have listened to the rain and played with rainmakers at music time and made our own rain makers to take home.
We discussed the equipment and clothes you might need in the rain and wore them to splash!
We had fun using our cloud and sponges to make it rain on happy land and enjoyed making the people and vehicles splash through the puddles we created!
In the creative area we used bubble painting to create big raindrops to display and made emotion clouds, tracing to practice hand-eye coordination and pencil control.
What a busy first week back!
Have a great weekend!

19th December - 22nd December 

Our last week leading up to Christmas, a short week, but very busy! We have continued with and completed our advent tree- and are so proud of everyone’s efforts the baubles look fantastic!
The children enjoyed the story of the Grinch who stole Christmas and stamped heart pictures talking about sizes.
We played a Christmas version of the keeper of the keys (the grinch) using our listening skills to try to work out when the grinch had been!
And the finale this week was our fantastic traditional party with lots of dancing, games, food and a visit from Santa himself !!!
Have a fabulous Christmas everyone 🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄🎄

12th December- 16th December 

This week the children’s excitement is growing as we get closer to Christmas, discussions of where Santa comes from and the North Pole led to us having a fun snowy village, where the children enjoyed playing in snow AKA flour and making trails and watching it snow as they sprinkled it over the buildings.
We have explored mark making on cds using acrylic pens to make shiny decorations for our outside tree and made marks on the light boards watching as the colours change.
We have continued to make baubles for our advent tree which is filling up nicely.
We have enjoying playing santas toy shop, and on Friday we made stockings to take home and hang up in anticipation for santas visit 🥰 

5th December - 9th December 

This week we have continued to talk about Christmas.
The children have all taken home their Christmas cards they made, hope you like them.
We have looked at Christmas trees and learned that they are normally an evergreen coniferous tree that is cut in the wild and brought into the home.
We looked at pine cones that could become trees, but painted them to look like trees as they take a long time to grow!
We spoke about wildlife at wintertime and looked at owls who like to live in evergreen trees, and made some fantastic owl models.
We have continued to make baubles daily for our advent tree, which is looking fantastic!
Some children were very interested in seeing the frost which prompted discussion and mark making in pretend frost inside.
And we couldn’t complete the week without making England flags to cheer our England team on in tomorrow’s quarter final. 😀

28th November - 2nd December 

This week we have all been very busy! We have been learning the shape star and making shiny stars and practicing following stars at gymdance as we balance along.
We have continued to play in Mrs Claus’ kitchen and painted reindeers which now live in our stable and get fed carrots daily!
We have enjoyed decorating the tree in our home corner lots and lots, and worked very hard making our own decorations using controlled fine motor skills and lots of concentration to peel and stick on tiny stickers. We have also started our advent tree and our first two baubles are looking amazing!
And well done to all the children who had their photos taken! What fantastic smiles!!!

21st November - 25th November 

This week we have started to think about Christmas and what changes happen as we wait for Christmas, we have made a fantastic advent tree to help us count down the days to Christmas and we spoke about decorating our houses with Christmas trees and lights. we have had fun making some of our own decorations and there was lots of talk about Santa! So we decided to change our home corner into mrs Claus’ kitchen, where we have had fun making mince pies!! We have also made salt dough mince pies and carrots to enhance our role play area next week! They look good enough to eat! It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas! 🎄

14th November - 18th November 

This week we have been playing with spots and dots!
We have looked at spots on animals from ladybirds to leopards and even Spot the dog and Pudsey bear’s bandage!
We added spots to our ladybird cards, we were counting, subitising and using lots of mathematical language such as more, less, same and number names.
We used our spot counters to match colours and create some fantastic pictures.
We have been experimenting with pens and dobbers to see how we can create dots and spots and enjoyed joining up dot to dot pudsey pictures as well as colouring in.
And we had great fun playing twister, following instructions to put our hands and feet onto the chosen coloured spots!
What a fun spotty dotty week!😀

7th November - 11th November 

This week we have been learning about poppies and Remembrance Day.
We have enjoyed making poppies and being a poppy seller as we sold them to our friends and family.
We looked closely at the colours of poppies and painted our own Poppy pictures.
We used cutters to cut out poppy shapes and familiarise ourselves with the word circle.
We practiced spreading skills using a knife to make delicious poppy biscuits and ended the week observing 2 minutes silence after singing songs and rhymes related to poppies and Remembrance Day.
We have also enjoyed our physical room, ensuring lots of physical activity 😃
Have a great weekend- wear your poppy with pride!
Thank you for all your support 🌺

1st November - 4th November 

We began this week talking about Halloween 🎃
We had lots of fun practicing our fine motor skills, using tweezers to choose our favourite treats and fill up our own ‘pick n mix’ cup to take home.
We also practiced spreading and made yummy biscuits to take home decorated like pumpkins.
We talked about dressing up and costumes, then dressed as ghosts giving our friends clues to guess who was hiding.
As the week progressed we spoke about bonfire night 🔥
Learning about safety through songs and rhyme, making fantastic firework pictures and mark making firework patterns in glitter.
We enjoyed watching chocolate melt and made edible chocolate sparklers which we LOVED eating!
And we have had some firework shows to listen to all the loud bangs, whistles and whooshes of fireworks!
We have also started to talk about places in our community and children enjoyed playing this week in our role play barbers 🥰