Caterpillars Photo Gallery

Autumn Term 1 week 5 (w/c 30/09/2024)

Autumn Term 1 week 4 (w/c 23/09/2024)

The children, again this week, have enjoyed several activities based around our Autumn topic.

Despite the weather being rainy, at Woodland Explorers, the children all suited up in waterproofs and wellies, explored the woodland area.

They made binoculars from cardboard tubes then made bird feeders out of pine cones, fat and seeds. The children placed their bird feeders in the trees, ready for the birds to find and feed on them.

Back in the Pre school room, the children used magnifying glasses to look at the tuff tray full of autumnal items found whilst they were out exploring, conkers,  pinecones and leaves amongst other things. 

Conker painting. The children took turns to roll a conker around a tray of paint to create a pattern on the paper. They were also able to see the colours change as the conker mixed the paints.

In Cooking this week, the children made Apple and blackberry turnovers. They demonstrated their cutting skills when using knives to cut up the apples. The cut up apples and blackberries were spooned onto the pastry then the pastry folded to make a yummy turnover.

Once cooked and cooled, some of these were eaten the next day at snack time!

The children explored the conkers;

Carefully using the tools to open the prickly conker shell to discover the wonderful big, shiny conker inside.

The weekly P.E session has seen the children practising their throwing and physical skills with a ball.

Carefully throwing a bean bag so it lands into a hoop placed on the floor and also kicking, throwing and catching a ball.

Great fun with the whole group, playing with the parachute at the end of this week's P.E session.

Autumn Term 1 week 3 (w/c 16/09/2024). 

This week, the children have enjoyed activities based around our topic ' Autumn'.

They had great fun exploring the woodland area, collecting sticks, leaves, and other natural objects.

They crushed blackberries in a pestle and mortar to create a homemade blackberry paint, this was then used to paint pictures.

After reading the 'Owl Babies' storybook, we went on to make our own pinecone owl babies and also create a painted picture of the Owl babies, Sarah, Percy and Bill, awaiting their mothers return to the nest.

We explored the autumnal colours and created autumn tree pictures using shades of brown paint and cotton wool buds.

In this week's cooking session, all the children made their own hedgehog bread, demonstrating their fine motor skills when kneading the bread and using scissors to create the hedgehog’s prickles.

The focus this week has also been the children's mark making skills, plenty of painting, writing, and colouring

Autumn Term 1 week 2 (W/c 09/09/2024).

This week we saw the children start to settle into the daily routines and enjoy our morning 'Enhancement'

activities.

Monday – ‘Woodland Explorers'

Each Monday the children will put on waterproof overalls and wellies and head out in small groups, to explore the Woodland area.

This weekly session ensures that the children get the opportunity to experience and explore the wooded outdoor area, see wildlife, collect sticks and leaves, bug hunt and take in their surrounding whilst benefitting from playing in the fresh air.

Tuesday- Visit to Cherry Orchard House/ Charanga (Music session)

This session will involve a smaller group of children visiting Cherry Orchard House and spending time with some of the residents.

This will be beneficial to both the children and the residents as new friendships can be formed which will build the children’s self- esteem, learn about empathy and compassion, alongside developing the children’s social and communication skills.

This week saw us take the children to familiarise them with the visit. They all enjoyed traveling in the 'Bus', as well as singing songs  along the way. 

Charanga Music session

musical session that exposes and encourages the children, through instruments, dance and singing, to explore the art of music.

To encourage the children to develop a love of music which will increase their self-confidence, creativity, and sense of achievement.

Wednesday -' Storytime and Drama'.

This session will provide the children with the opportunity to explore and experience a more in depth focus into the Pre-school topic books and themes.

In smaller focus groups, the children with have the opportunity to listen to the stories being read, look and talk about the illustrations and storyline, then go on to play with the many activities that will be set up to promote and support a deeper understanding of the story they have listened to.

To encourage the children to develop a love of books and understand that print carries meaning and that information can be relayed in the form of print.

Thursday - Cooking

This session will introduce the children to new foods and textures, the opportunity to explore healthy eating, as well as enabling them to practise their physical skills, particularly their hand-eye coordination.

Friday - P.E in the main school hall.

This session will provide the children with the opportunity, in smaller groups, to play games, sports, dance and activities which will work on the larger muscles and enhance the children’s gross motor skills as well as promoted self-confidence and a sense of achievement.

Autumn Term 1 week 1 ( W/c 02/09/2024).

We have enjoyed welcoming the new children into Orchard Preschool.

The children have all enjoyed getting to know each other again and exploring both the inside and outside play areas. The morning session takes place in the Caterpillar room with free flow play.,

The children have enjoyed lots of fun activities. 

Our main topics in for this term is ‘All about me.’ Children will be exploring and talking about who we are and what special people and things we have in our lives.

The children have created self-portraits using paints and collage craft, they looked in a mirror to look and talk about the colour of their hair and eyes. They will also be exploring our emotions.

We will also enjoy Autumn crafts whilst learning about the leaves changing colour and falling from the trees.

Our topic books will be 'Dear Zoo', 'Oh Dear!' both written by the author Rod Campbell also 'The Colour Monster' written by the author Anna Llenas and 'Find your happy' written by Emily Coxhead.

Some of the morning fun activities in The Caterpillars room

Some of the afternoon fun activities in the Butterflies room.

Summer Term 2 Week 6 (w/c 08/07/2024)

This week we continued our healthy eating theme and also explored and talked about our emotions.

The children enjoyed cutting up the fruit with a knife and fork and preparing it ready for our healthy snack, fruit salad. The children's cutting skills have developed really well. It was amazing to hear the children talking to each other about the fruit they liked. 

Similar to previous weeks, we used our senses to explore the fruit before preparing it.

Great fun was had by all the children as they painted their butterfly wings, each of them choosing the tools they wanted to use for applying the paint to the paper.

As we are getting close to the end of this year, the children chose the outdoor free play activities that they wanted to have set up. The bikes, scooters and Scuttlebugs always the firm favourite but the other activities were also enjoyed too.

Summer Term 2 week 5 (w/c 01/07/2024)

This week, the children had great fun exploring all of the activities aimed at furthering their Personal, Social, and emotional development.

Fun on the balance bikes, having a tea party with friends and playing with the baby dolls, feeding, comforting, and changing their nappies.

The doll's house and fire station, vehicles and fire people offered quality small world play alongside friends and encourage role play conversation and imaginative play.

The theme this week was 'fun at the seaside'. The children enjoyed the seaside activity set up in the tuff tray. They also enjoyed the messy play 'make an ice cream' activity, scooping shaving foam into cones and choosing a favourite topping.

Summer Term 2 week 4 (w/c 24/06/2024).

The weather this week has been quite hot and the sun has been shining strongly. The children enjoyed learning about sun safety and what we need to do to keep ourselves safe in the sunshine. The children, when asked, were able to say that we wear a sunhat to protect our head, we drink lots of water to keep us healthy and apply sun cream to protect our skin.

As well as sun safety we have explored the importance of physical activity. The children enjoying lots of play on the outdoor equipment, running races, egg and spoon races (practising for our sports day), walking or jumping along the stepping stones plus much more.

The children commented that the sunflowers needed water because their leaves were wilting. They used the watering cans each day to water the flowers and keep them healthy so that they would grow.

The sunflowers will soon be as tall as the children.

When it was too warm to play outside, the children enjoyed  the variety of indoor activities available to them. Each child choosing what they wanted to play with., reading books, creating with playdough, shape and colour sorting with the posting box plus much more.

There were plenty of water play activities this week, keeping the children cool as they played.

Summer Term 2 week 3 (w/c 17/06/2024)

This week, the children were learning about different occupations. We talked about being a builder, hairdresser, dentist, and a chef etc and what each of those professionals did in their working day, The children went on to explore and play in the role play areas, pretending they were taking on those roles in a workplace.

As well as talking about being a dentist, we talked about what we need to do to keep ourselves healthy. including our teeth. The children embraced the dental hygiene activity, cleaning the teeth with a toothbrush and toothpaste teeth.

The children went on to make fruit kebabs, firstly exploring and talking about the touch, feel and smell of the various fruit, then cutting it up with a knife and fork, small enough to slide onto a skewer. The children couldn't wait for snack time and the skewered fruit was eaten straight away along with any extra fruit they had left on their plates.

The strawberries were the favourite fruit, although the apricot was the one they liked touching the most because "it was fluffy".

We finished the week with some free painting and drawing. Once again wonderful masterpieces were created.

Some children proud to tell us what they had painted. One child used a plastic turtle as her model and drew an image of what she saw, telling us " I'm drawing my turtle".

Summer Term 2 week 2 (w/c10/06/2024)

The main theme this week was caring for each other and learning what we need to help us be happy, strong and healthy.

The children thoroughly enjoyed the role play activities with dolls. They undressed, bathed and put the clothes back on the dolls, carefully doing up the buttons or poppers. The dolls were then pushed around in the buggies in the fresh air and helped to play on the toys. 

A couple of children had fun with shaped sensory bricks, building towers and balancing bricks one on top of the other. They found it funny when things changed colour when they peeped through the bricks.

The children's mark making skills have really developed and some amazing masterpieces were created with pencil crayons and felt tips pens.

The children are always so proud of their pieces of art and the praise we give them too.

Summer Term 2 week 1 (w/c 03/06/2024)

It was great to welcome the children back after the half term break.

They quickly settled back into the daily routines and had fun playing alongside their friends.

Our learning focus this week was mathematics. The children enjoyed a variety of games linked to developing their mathematic skills.

The coloured rice and turning wheels were fun and were enjoyed throughout the week. The children very quickly learnt what they needed to do to make the wheels turn.

One child identified the basketball because it was orange and black.

He soon created his own game of basketball. He asked for the hanging plant pot holder to go up on the gate to catch his ball.

The next day we borrowed the basket ball hoop from the Reception class and had great fun taking turns to try and get the ball through the hoop.

Summer Term 1 week 7 (w/c 20/05/2024)

Over this last half term, we have been focussing on sharing, turn taking and respecting each other.

This week, the children were seen enjoying each other's company, playing alongside each other and sharing their play experiences with each other.

The children have also been working hard creating animal masks to be used on the Orchard Primary and Pre school's carnival float in this year's procession.

The children have also all been busy enjoying the free play activities.

Summer Term 1 week 6 (w/c 13/05/2024).

Upon arrival each morning, the children enjoy recognising their own name card and placing it on the self registration board.  

Two children shared a role play experience in the home corner.   

The children enjoyed a variety of activities, which were aimed at developing their colour recognition skills further. 

Summer Term 1 week 5 ( w/c 06/05/24)

This week, the children have enjoyed a variety of sensory activities. These activities have enabled the children to explore different textures.

Again, the outdoor play area was set up to mirror the indoor with a nice shady area for cooling down and looking at a few books.

 The sunshine has really helped the sunflowers grow another couple of centimetres in height this week. The children will be repotting the seedlings into larger pots next week and will then be able to take their own plant home at half term. We will plant the surplus seedlings in our garden area.... I wonder whose Sunflower will grow the tallest !