Newsletters
10th January 2022
Happy New Year! The children have settled back into Pre-School and it is wonderful to see them all back and full of stories and adventures from their Christmas holidays. We thought you would like to know what we will be focusing on for the next half term:
“People who help us” is our next theme. Over the coming weeks we will be looking at different job roles and how people help in the community, through role-play, stories and activities. We want to open this topic up wider and talk about all “key workers” and roles they have in our community. Normally we would ask parents to visit and talk about their jobs. However due to covid infection rates we need to limit visitors at this time, do you have anything relating to your job you could send in instead? Do you have pictures to upload about what you do? Could you make a short video about your work, give the children a guided tour around your workplace? Keep it simple, the children would love to see you in your police uniform if that is what you do, cutting someone’s hair if you are a hairdresser, before and after pictures. Be as creative as you can.
As we have colder days to come, we will do some science activities to explore, snow and ice.
This is a great time to be outside and looking after the birds by making bird feeders and putting out seeds, we will be doing some of this at Pre-School during week 4 and hope to join in the “Big Garden bird count on the 28th January for the RSPB. You can sign up as a family and take part from the 28th – 30th January, if you go online at:
www.rspb.org.uk/RSPB/Birdwatch2022
You can download a pack online or have one sent in the post if you sign up soon.
Here is a few of the things we will be getting up to each week:
Week 1 4th – 7th JanuaryThe children had fun role-playing police officers, giving out speeding tickets, making number plates and making tally charts of what traffic was passing Pre-School. Together we listened to winter stories and completed lots of snowy crafts.
Week 2 10th - 14th JanuaryThe big investigation – the children will become detectives as we encourage using questioning language to solve several mysteries over the week. Using familiar stories to support as children extend their vocabulary.
Week 3 17th – 21st January
The children will have the chance to work together to look at recycling and sorting items that we can re-use or upcycle into artwork around our theme of ‘people who help us’.
Week 4 24th – 28th January
This week will have a ‘physical’ focus as we use tools and develop fine motor skills. The children will have the chance to make bird feeders and learn more about garden birds to look out for in the coming days.
RSPB – National big garden bird watch will be taking place
Week 5 31st - 4th FebruaryMONDAY – INSET DAY – No sessions
This week we will look at the Chinese New Year celebrations, try different food, listen to Chinese music as well as music from around the world. The children will be busy creating artwork together, and learning more about another culture.
Week 6 7th - 11th FebruaryOver the week we will be focusing on literacy as the children learn more about print in different forms.
They will have the chance to look at a variety of books, fiction and non-fiction, magazines and leaflets and talk about how to care for books, learn key words such as book title, author, illustrator, front cover, back cover, spine, pages. We encourage you to take a trip to your local library. If you are not already a member consider joining and share this experience on the learning journal system.
Week 6 14th - 18th FebruaryThis will be a very creative week as we look at different role-play opportunities, create big artwork together with recycled items.
We have given you a few ideas of what we might do over the next few weeks, but we would love your ideas and the children’s too. So, if you can think of an activity, song, story, anything that might work around our theme of “People who help us” or Chinese New Year please write them down below and hand in to a member of staff and we will hopefully include them in our plans.
Parents ideas:
Children’s Ideas:
We may be due some snow over the coming weeks, if we do have some heavy snow and the primary school John of Rolleston closes Pre-School will be closed as well. John of Rolleston will advertise this on Radio Derby and their school website and we will post on our website/email, so if there has been reasonable snowfall check these before traveling.
Do you have any unwanted / duplicate Christmas gifts? If so, the committee could use them at future events for raffle prizes, so please bring them into Pre-School.
As ever we are always looking for items for tactile projects. Due to the COVID situation we have to only use these types of materials once and then throw them away at the moment to minimise risk. However, they are activities that children love: Flour, Pasta, Spaghetti, Rice, Cornflour, Salt, Jelly, Sugar, Lentils – would be very welcome.
Thanks as always for all of your support
Lolene Poxon
Pre-school Manager
Happy New Year! The children have settled back into Pre-School and it is wonderful to see them all back and full of stories and adventures from their Christmas holidays. We thought you would like to know what we will be focusing on for the next half term:
“People who help us” is our next theme. Over the coming weeks we will be looking at different job roles and how people help in the community, through role-play, stories and activities. We want to open this topic up wider and talk about all “key workers” and roles they have in our community. Normally we would ask parents to visit and talk about their jobs. However due to covid infection rates we need to limit visitors at this time, do you have anything relating to your job you could send in instead? Do you have pictures to upload about what you do? Could you make a short video about your work, give the children a guided tour around your workplace? Keep it simple, the children would love to see you in your police uniform if that is what you do, cutting someone’s hair if you are a hairdresser, before and after pictures. Be as creative as you can.
As we have colder days to come, we will do some science activities to explore, snow and ice.
This is a great time to be outside and looking after the birds by making bird feeders and putting out seeds, we will be doing some of this at Pre-School during week 4 and hope to join in the “Big Garden bird count on the 28th January for the RSPB. You can sign up as a family and take part from the 28th – 30th January, if you go online at:
www.rspb.org.uk/RSPB/Birdwatch2022
You can download a pack online or have one sent in the post if you sign up soon.
Here is a few of the things we will be getting up to each week:
Week 1 4th – 7th JanuaryThe children had fun role-playing police officers, giving out speeding tickets, making number plates and making tally charts of what traffic was passing Pre-School. Together we listened to winter stories and completed lots of snowy crafts.
Week 2 10th - 14th JanuaryThe big investigation – the children will become detectives as we encourage using questioning language to solve several mysteries over the week. Using familiar stories to support as children extend their vocabulary.
Week 3 17th – 21st January
The children will have the chance to work together to look at recycling and sorting items that we can re-use or upcycle into artwork around our theme of ‘people who help us’.
Week 4 24th – 28th January
This week will have a ‘physical’ focus as we use tools and develop fine motor skills. The children will have the chance to make bird feeders and learn more about garden birds to look out for in the coming days.
RSPB – National big garden bird watch will be taking place
Week 5 31st - 4th FebruaryMONDAY – INSET DAY – No sessions
This week we will look at the Chinese New Year celebrations, try different food, listen to Chinese music as well as music from around the world. The children will be busy creating artwork together, and learning more about another culture.
Week 6 7th - 11th FebruaryOver the week we will be focusing on literacy as the children learn more about print in different forms.
They will have the chance to look at a variety of books, fiction and non-fiction, magazines and leaflets and talk about how to care for books, learn key words such as book title, author, illustrator, front cover, back cover, spine, pages. We encourage you to take a trip to your local library. If you are not already a member consider joining and share this experience on the learning journal system.
Week 6 14th - 18th FebruaryThis will be a very creative week as we look at different role-play opportunities, create big artwork together with recycled items.
We have given you a few ideas of what we might do over the next few weeks, but we would love your ideas and the children’s too. So, if you can think of an activity, song, story, anything that might work around our theme of “People who help us” or Chinese New Year please write them down below and hand in to a member of staff and we will hopefully include them in our plans.
Parents ideas:
Children’s Ideas:
We may be due some snow over the coming weeks, if we do have some heavy snow and the primary school John of Rolleston closes Pre-School will be closed as well. John of Rolleston will advertise this on Radio Derby and their school website and we will post on our website/email, so if there has been reasonable snowfall check these before traveling.
Do you have any unwanted / duplicate Christmas gifts? If so, the committee could use them at future events for raffle prizes, so please bring them into Pre-School.
As ever we are always looking for items for tactile projects. Due to the COVID situation we have to only use these types of materials once and then throw them away at the moment to minimise risk. However, they are activities that children love: Flour, Pasta, Spaghetti, Rice, Cornflour, Salt, Jelly, Sugar, Lentils – would be very welcome.
Thanks as always for all of your support
Lolene Poxon
Pre-school Manager
