We couldn't be happier with our garden revamp.

Our new climbing equipment is a huge hit with the children and they have all contributed to some thoughtful new rules for using the equipment safely. 

We are also enjoying our tyres, musical pan wall, buddy bench, obstacle equipment and our garden planters. So much to keep our little ones busy!

After we unveiled the new equipment on Friday, the children didn't want to come inside, so we literally spent the whole day in the garden and took all of our lunchboxes outside for a picnic!

We’re now into the last couple of months of our preschool year at Kempshott Under Fives – the year has flown by.

Over the last few weeks, and up until the end of the school year, we are putting lots of work into school readiness for our older children. Each day we are having fun with activities to promote number recognition, personal and social skills, listening and understanding, and health and self care to name a few.

We are currently learning all about lifecycles – we’ve had a delivery of caterpillars and we are watching them grow every day, patiently waiting for them to change into butterflies. We are watching them wiggle and eat and are keeping a diary of the changes we see. It’s very exciting and the children are looking forward to releasing butterflies into the garden. We also had a new tough tray delivered which we used to look at frogspawn. We will soon be looking at tadpoles and learning about the life cycle of a frog.

We had deaf awareness week in May and talked about how signing can help people communicate when they can’t hear or talk. We use Makaton as part of our learning at preschool and our children are taught new signs each week. To tie in with lifecycles we have been learning how to sign butterfly.

We’ve continued to spend lots of time outdoors. We’ve made obstacle courses together and the children created their own seesaw with a step and a wooden plank. We have seen so much teamwork, ideas, critical thinking, predicting, gross motor skills, core strength building and turn taking in our garden activities, which is just amazing.

Work will soon be underway to revamp our garden at Kempshott Under Fives.
We are very excited to be adding new areas and equipment into the garden to enhance the children's outdoor play and learning experiences.

The new equipment includes a log walk for the children, a tyre area, fantastic new climbing equipment, a wildlife area and a construction area.

There will be so much to keep us occupied outside and the children have been working with us to create new rules for keeping us safe when using the new garden equipment.

It's hard to believe that we’re now into our final term at Kempshott Under Fives.

At the end of our spring term the children created some amazing arts and crafts during our Easter week – they made cards, Easter bonnets and they made Easter nest cakes and decorated them with little eggs. They also created amazing footprint carrot pictures, which the children found very tickly on their toes and we did an Easter egg and carrot hunt in the garden. We even had a special visit from the Easter bunny who arrived with lots of chocolate eggs.

One of our spring themes has been baby animals. This prompted lots of conversations about different pets, so we surprised the children with a visit from Coco the French bulldog. They loved having Coco to visit and took turns to walk her on the lead.

This term we will continue to look at baby animals, the environment and life cycles. We’ll be following the life cycles of frogs, caterpillars and chicks and we’ll hopefully spot some butterflies in the garden. We are also busy gardening and planting lots of seeds.

The most exciting news to start the new term has been finding out which schools our older children are going to in September. It’s been lovely to hear all about the “big” schools and who is going where. So this term is when our “school readiness’ begins. We will begin to introduce lots of activities to prepare our bigger children for school; for example, can the children change into their PE kit by themselves? Can they independently wash their hands and open the food in their lunchbox? We’ll also start focus much more on numbers, health and self-care and communication and language.

School readiness is described in the foundation stage as “Children reaching a good level of development in the prime areas and literacy and mathematics”.

Some of the expected characteristics that should be displayed by a child to show school readiness;

• Independent in toileting
• Able to dress themselves
• Understands expected levels of behaviour
• Confidence and self-esteem
• Can take turns and share
• Can sit still for a short period
• Can separate from parents/carers
• Communication and language skills needed to communicate needs and listen to others
• Can actively learn and creatively and critically think

Some of these characteristics may of course be difficult for all children to achieve and this shouldn’t leave parents or practitioners concerned that a child isn’t school ready.

March has been a great month at Kempshott Under Fives - we have welcomed all of our children back to preschool and it’s so lovely to see everyone back together again.

It's been a busy few weeks – the children made beautiful Mothers Day cards and have been very creative with their Easter decorations. We also celebrated Holi Hindu, an ancient Hindu festival to welcome the arrival of spring and celebrate the end of winter. It’s also known as the festival of colour so the children had a great time paint and powder splatting as part of our celebrations. Another of our painting projects has been watching daffodils wake up and bloom and painting them each day until they are in full flower. The children also asked to plant our own daffodils so that we can watch them grow, so we are now enjoying watching them shoot in the garden.

It’s been a good month for dressing up – we enjoyed a superheroes week where the children dressed up as lots of wonderful characters and then we celebrated more superheroes, in the form of doctors, nurses and other health care professionals. During first aid week the children were very attentive with checking temperatures, wrapping bandages, applying cold compresses and administering plasters. They also listened to each other’s heartbeat through a stethoscope, which was great fun. The role-play area was transformed into a surgery and the children made medicine, took phone calls, made appointments and filled out accident forms.

As part of our health care week, we took part in a very thoughtful community project of decorating love hearts for the NHS. One love heart is given to the patient and the other is given to their family - although they can’t visit in these times, the hearts which our children decorated are a constant reminder to the patients and families of how much they are loved and missed.

Our small group work this month has been focussed on maths and phonics. We have been identifying numerals, looking at simple adding and subtracting and learning to read number sentences. In our small group phonics work we have been listening to the initial sound in a word and matching it to a letter.

Our older children will be learning which primary school they are going to over the Easter holidays, so we are eagerly awaiting to hear the big news when we get back to preschool after the holidays. Next term we begin our preparations for the transition to big school. We will start by giving the children lots of mark making opportunities and activities that strengthen little hands for handwriting.

We’ve really enjoying seeing little signs of spring appearing this month – a reminder that brighter days are coming.

We’re continuing to spend lots more time outdoors and the children have been great detectives and really taken notice of the seasonal changes in the garden. They have pointed out new leaves on trees and we’re starting to see some flowers coming through too. We’re looking forward to doing our own bit of gardening later this term and planting some spring bulbs.

This month we have enjoyed Chinese New Year when our role play area transformed into a Chinese restaurant. The children tried Chinese food for snack and used chopsticks to eat it too! We printed cherry blossom tress, discovered our zodiac animal and made dragons and lanterns. "Gung hay fat choi!"  For Valentine's day the children made lovely cards and practised sewing hearts. We also had a special valentines snack time with love heart toast and red jam. We had more special snacks for Pancake Day, and some pancake flipping too!

February was children’s mental health and wellbeing week. At Kempshott Under Fives we promote mental health and wellbeing every day by role modeling positive language and communications, by showing emotions in positive ways and using calming techniques when we encounter big emotions. We did lots of dancing to release some feel good feelings, we practised yoga to keep us balanced and calm, we took lots of welly walks to splash in puddles, we played emoji faces to describe our feelings and we complimented our friends and listened to all the lovely things they had to say about us.

Numbers are part of our everyday play at preschool – this term we have been using lots of mathematical language in the garden when creating our obstacle courses - such as balancing, weight, counting and time We have used our counting skills when selling items in our role play shop, as well as using numbers in our small group activitiesand in singing games. Our favourite number songs are Currant Buns, Speckled Frogs and Little Men in a Flying Saucer, you might even hear your little ones singing these songs at home!

Well, we didn’t expect to start 2021 with another full national lockdown and although all schools around the country are now closed, Early Years settings are currently fully open – so at Kempshott Under Fives we are working hard to stay safe and to make preschool fun and positive for our children, despite these strange times.

Our main focus this term is on wellbeing for the children. As routines have changed at home for most families, we are focusing much more on the area of personal, social and emotional development. It’s very obvious that the children are all loving being at preschool, and we are spending much more time in the garden and on nature walks – rain or shine – which makes for very happy children when there are puddles to splash in!

Last term we spent time looking at winter and the seasons, so all of our outdoor activities this term will continue to enhance our children’s understanding of the world with more weather and seasons activities in the garden and on our walks. We are also continuing to encourage the children’s growing independence by practicing putting on scarves, hats, gloves and wellies before going outside.

February will be a busy month for us - we have Valentine’s Day, Chinese New Year and Pancake Day to look forward to. As well as pancake races, we’ll be having pancakes on the snack table and there will be lots happening on the craft tables during Valentine’s Week. 2021 is the year of the Ox so we’ll be celebrating Chinese New Year with some food tasting and we’ll be trying to use chopsticks too!

Our new Tuesday afternoon sessions have had a great uptake this year - Tuesdays are now all about less toys with a specific focus on messy play, outdoor phonics and preschool yoga.

And of course we are incredibly lucky to have our staff member Alison, who is a speech and language specialist, working hard with the children each week to fill the gaps which have been made by the speech and language services delaying or cancelling appointments due to covid. 

Like most preschools and nurseries, we do have some children opting to stay at home during lockdown – so we’re sending some preschool fun home each week through the children’s Tapestry accounts so they can still get involved with all of the things we are doing at preschool – including our scavenger hunts, French lessons, yoga, phonics and messy play.

You can see weekly updates and lots of photos from Kempshott Under Fives on our Facebook page “Kempshott Under Fives”. 

This time of year is always magical at preschool and Christmas always comes early to Kempshott Under Fives. Christmas songs snuck on to our playlist in mid November, and preschool has been been filled with glitter, Christmas sparkle and children making wonderful festive creations for the last few weeks. 

We have finished off a very different 2020 with a lovely Christmassy month. The children decorated our tree, practiced their numbers with a daily countdown on our advent calendar and our resident Elf on the shelf arrived too. He has got up to lots of mischief in preschool, much to the delight of the children! 

And we couldn’t have Christmas without a party, so on our last day of term we threw a lovely Christmas party for all of the children – complete with a socially distanced Christmas singsong to families over a zoom call. So although families couldn't be with us in person this year, they still joined in over the computer airwaves!

We have exciting new plans for 2021, so December has also been a chance for us to trial our new Tuesday sessions. In January we are introducing structured Tuesday sessions with some of the most popular activities we do throughout the week. Tuesdays will now have less toys and a specific focus on messy play, outdoor phonics and preschool yoga.

• We have been doing preschool yoga sessions for some time so we already know the children love it! Yoga has many proven benefits for preschool age children, it helps children manage anxiety, it improves children’s emotional regulation, boosts their self esteem, increases body awareness and mindfulness, enhances children’s concentration and memory and helps develop strength and flexibility
• Messy play is another firm favourite, not only is it great fun, it provides children with exciting tactile and sensory experiences which improves their curiosity, imagination and exploration skills and encourages communication and language development. It also supports children to play independently. 
• Phonics is so adaptable that it can be taught in a number of different ways and taking it outside can increase the children’s attention span and their willingness to learn. Learning in the fresh air, with natural light, smells and sounds has proven to be more enjoyable, as well as rewarding for children. In the UK it is recommended that phonics should be the first way to introduce reading skills to children.

We are also very excited to announce this month that our part time staff member Alison Cuss will now be with us for four days a week. Alison is a Speech and Language Specialist and does an amazing job with individual and group work in our preschool. Speech, language and communication are vital life skills for children and allow them to express themselves and engage in conversations, understand instructions and get the most out of their education and life experiences. During covid, many services for speech and language have ceased and face-to-face appointments have been delayed, which obviously impacts the children's development. Alison is vitally important for us at this time to fill the gap from those services so we’re delighted that she is now with us for 4 days a week. If you would like advice or support on speech and language in your child’s preschool journey, please let us know and Alison will be happy to chat to you.

HOPE YOU ALL HAVE A VERY RELAXING CHRISTMAS AND HERE'S HOPING FOR A BRIGHTER 2021!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Over the last month we’ve been exploring the season of autumn and have spent lots of time outdoors looking at autumn colours, listening to autumn sounds and collecting lovely natural resources to use in preschool. 

There were so many activities that we got involved with this month – starting with fireworks and Diwali. The children listened to the story of Diwali and made clay Diwali tea light holders. Our fireworks theme was all about colour and the children made some amazing pictures. Remembrance Day was another highlight this month – the children created some beautiful poppy prints and they learnt all about the meaning of Remembrance Day. They even joined in with a two-minute silence and did an incredible job! 

We also joined in with Children in Need with some fun Pudsey inspired activities and we enjoyed dressing up and wearing our pyjamas into preschool. And we supported anti bullying week by wearing odd socks to preschool.

World Nursery Rhyme Week took place this month too and we joined up as a nursery rhyme ambassador. Nursery rhymes are a really important part of our day at Kempshott Under Fives, they help to boost early literacy skills, language development, early numeracy and social, physical and emotional skills. By signing up to become a nursery rhyme ambassador we are able to access so many wonderful resources to share with our families so they can enjoy the benefits at home too.

We are of course continuing with our small group work every week with Write Dance, a super fun session and a fantastic way to build motor skills and introduce writing skills; Science experiments and our cooking sessions when we make or bake treats each week. Next on the baking table will be some yummy Christmas goodies!

We’ve had hugely successful first half term at Kempshott Under Fives – our little ones have adjusted well to our new routines and are thoroughly enjoying all of our topics and activities.

Our most recent topic has been “Autumn”. We’ve been making the most of our outdoor time and discovering all the autumn colours, patterns and the changes that we see in the environment as the seasons change. While we’ve been outdoors, we’ve been looking out for conkers, pine cones and leaves, which are all great natural resources to use in preschool at this time of year. After half term we will be spending more time outdoors and encouraging the children to get their listening ears on and listen out for the wonderful sounds of autumn such as crunching leaves, wind in the trees, splashy puddles and lots more.

We are also looking at animals that hibernate as part of our autumn topic. Lots of children have spoken about hedgehogs, so we have been collecting lots of lovely natural resources to build hedgehog houses. Hedgehog has also been one of our words to learn in our weekly Makaton signing lessons.

We continually promote British values at preschool, one of which is “Democracy”. Every two weeks the children vote for a new book to read at circle time, they love casting their votes and at the same time they learn all about different choices. We learn a new song, a new Makaton sign and a French word every other week too. We also do "write dance" where we lay on our tummies and move our arms with a crayon in each hand in time with the music. This helps to strengthen children's core muscles and to build on arm movements and co ordination which assist with pre-writing skills.

The children have really enjoyed creating our new display boards – we have a birthday display with all of our handprints, and we have a tree that we add to each week by creating something from our books and topics and adding it to the tree. It’s a lovely way to remember what we’ve been learning.

Coming up in November we will be getting creative with clay when we celebrate Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, and with bonfire night coming up we’ll be using lots of colour to create our own fireworks and we’ll be exploring lots of sounds for firework night too. It’s pumpkin season too so we’ll be making some yummy pumpkin soup with the children.

It’s been so lovely welcoming our children back to Kempshott Under Fives. We haven’t seen some of our older children since March so it’s been very exciting seeing how they’ve grown and we've loved meeting our new children, they have all settled in fantastically. Children and staff are all very happy to be back to the preschool routine. We’re really impressed at how well the children have adapted to the new hygiene measures too, they are all amazing at washing their hands. 

At the start of any new academic year change is ahead for our little ones and the first few weeks of settling into a new environment is a time of crucial importance to a child's later happiness within a setting. Our first few weeks are always about helping our children settle in, helping them to explore the new environment, make new friends and get to know staff.

Our first topic of the new academic year is always “All About Me” - this is a great chance for the children to learn all about themselves, their new friends and their families. We've been using stories, arts, crafts and songs to help our children discover what is unique and special about themselves and each other. 

We’ve had some gorgeous weather too for the start of our new term so the children have been making the most of the garden. We had a surprise snow storm in the dinosaur enclosure, and then had lots of fun making footprints in the snow! We also have a new outdoor water channel wall, which the children love, it’s been especially popular in the warm weather. Over the summer holidays the Community Payback Scheme removed posts from the maze at Beggarwood Park, these were kindly donated by the council to one of our staff members who has transformed them into amazing planters for preschool. The children will be busy this year growing lots of vegetables in the new planters through the different seasons.

We’ll soon be starting our topic of autumn where we’ll be enjoying lots more time outdoors collecting sticks and leaves to build bug hotels and hedgehog houses.