What a busy month it’s been, even though in Preschool terms, it’s a short one! We started December by teaching the children about the Jewish festival of Chanukah with the help of our Book of the Week, ‘Sammy Spider’s First Chanukah’. The children loved the lit candles and the doughnuts! Then, as our focus turned to Christmas, we provided plenty of Christmas and winter-themed books and introduced the winter-set Stickman, by Julia Donaldson, as our Book of the Week. We also started them working on their Christmas craft creations—they were intended as gifts, so we can’t say what they were in case Santa hasn’t been to your house yet! They decorated their Christmas stockings and the Preschool Christmas tree too. The Christmas gift wrapping station encouraged their communication and language skills as well as their fine motor skills, and we’ve really noticed how their vocabulary has grown over the last few weeks. We’ve also noticed how the children’s confidence has grown, showing they’re comfortable and settled in their surroundings,
Even our maths area was given a festive touch, with a numeral and quantity matching exercise using advent calendar drawers and Unifix blocks. Not everything has been Christmas-themed, though: the home corner was set up with a train track with lots of accessories, followed by our large wooden doll’s house and figurines. Imaginative play is important not just for language development, but for social and emotional development and knowledge of the world, too. We always try to base these activities around the children’s recent interests or conversations.
Looking forward to the new year, we have plenty of new starters to welcome in January and a visit from an oral health educator on the 13th of January, helping to support a new EYFS recommendation to include oral hygiene in our health promotion. We will also be focusing on Chinese New Year and Children’s Mental Health Week. It is so important to give children the space and tools to express how they are feeling, and we have a range of activities and literacy resources we’ll be using to help us explain this to the children.
Finally, some thank yous and requests!
Thank you for…
Your engagement with your children’s learning via their online Tapestry journals. It’s lovely to see pictures and write-ups of the learning they’ve done at home, whether it’s a new physical skill they’ve mastered (e.g. forming letters, putting on their socks) or an emotional development milestone like showing care and consideration for a friend or pet. These observations can make a valuable contribution to their learning development record.
Your kind recommendation of Preschool to friends and family, both in-person and on social media! Personal recommendations are really valued by parents when they choose a preschool, and word-of-mouth reviews are especially important to small, charity-run preschools like ours.
if you’ve been inspired by the season of giving and have even just an hour to spare here and there, we would love you to give them to Preschool! We now urgently require new committee members. There’s no need to take on a key role or responsibilities (unless you want to, of course!)—whatever time you could spare would be gratefully received. To find out more, contact Debby buckdenpreschooltreasury@gmail.com.
We look forward to welcoming you all back on Tuesday 4th January, and wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!