Stick men, dragon tails and mud pies

As the autumn term ends, I am reminded of how fortunate I am to work with young children at this special time of year. There has been a wonderful air of excitement in the rooms as the children joined in with Christmas-themed crafts and activities. The role play areas were transformed into grottos and Christmas workshops, providing hours of imaginative play, and the children loved making reindeer food, stirring in a special Christmas wish, ready to sprinkle on their lawns on Christmas Eve. Some rather festive decorations have been made to add to your trees at home and the melted snowman cards were lots of fun to make. Many children enjoyed helping to decorate (the bottom half!) of our Christmas tree which arrived in the corridor to cheers from the children. Our Nativity in the woods went ahead and, although we were unable to invite you to school to watch it live, I hope you enjoyed the very special film we created for you to watch from the comfort of your home. The children were delighted when we showed them a sneak preview and loved looking for themselves and their friends. As always, the donkeys had a starring role and every year we are reminded of how lucky we are to have real animals in our Nativity, helping to create magical memories for our youngest Copthill children. This year the sheep had a starring role too! The seasonal changes throughout the Autumn Term have been explored during Forest School sessions which are now attended by all of the Nursery and Pre-School children. Our Nursery children have loved their regular Forest School sessions and we are delighted that these will continue in the new year. All of the children have learnt their boundaries and fire square safety routines. They have discovered sleeping dragon tails, collected blackberries, pressed apples for juice and toasted marshmallows. Recently our Pre-School children have been using the bow saw to make wooden Christmas decorations while our Nursery children have collected pine cones to decorate. Stick Man has been a popular story topic and some lovely models have been made with collected sticks. Plenty of time has also been spent outside in our new garden area. The children have planted onions, potatoes, leeks and even some spring bulbs to help our school bees. They have also made cereal bird feeders and bug hotels. In late October, seasonal squash were ready to harvest and made wonderful additions to our autumn-themed play trays and farm shop role play areas. A dedicated digging area in the garden has also proved to be very popular, as have the brightly coloured watering cans! In the new year, bird boxes and more feeders will be added to encourage more wildlife into the garden area. Topics this term have included ‘All About Me’ and ‘Come and Join the Celebration’. Both topics have provided all of our children with lots of lovely learning opportunities. At the start of the term, the children talked about themselves, their families and their homes. More recently, both classes have been thinking about different types of celebrations. We celebrated Diwali and Bonfire Night by creating some super salad spinner firework pictures and there was much excitement when Teddy celebrated his fourth birthday, allowing us to have a party-themed week with lots of turn-taking games, candle counting and mud pie cake making. The children created some beautiful poppy crafts to mark Remembrance Day and money was raised for Children in Need with a ramble through the school grounds, including a trip across the bridge of doom! Next term, we will introduce the Pre-School children to the Read Write Inc. programme which has proved to be very effective in promoting reading and writing in the Reception classes. We will also be looking at the importance of recycling and reusing and encouraging all of the children to become aware of the importance of protecting the environment around them. We will continue to strive to provide a happy, safe and stimulating learning environment for all of our Nursery and Pre-School children, helping them all to achieve and succeed. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our Nursery and Pre-School staff, parents and children a restful and peaceful Christmas and a very happy and healthy new year. Many children wished for snow as they made their reindeer food, I do hope their wishes will be fulfilled this Christmas.