Weekly Makaton Signs - Hello, Good, Thank you

Pumpkins, pumpkins everywhere – but what can we do with them? A lovely Grandma very kindly let us have some pumpkins. First we looked at them inside and out. “Bit squashy and wet.” “Look seeds” “Ugh gooey”. Just some of the comments from the children once they could see inside the pumpkins. This then led onto talking about Halloween and sweets and dressing up and some even had a go at Trick or Treat, and carving faces into pumpkins. Seeds were removed and dried, some flesh was cut into shapes and then with the aid of glue, pictures were created onto paper. Wow great art work and a great opportunity to work with different media and textures. A great understanding that more glue was required in order to make it stick.

Cafe morning – a fantastic opportunity to get together and get to know one another and eat cake. Wonderful and delicious cakes made and created by our mums. Also a valuable fund raising opportunity for our charity run preschool and a chance for mums to see their children in action.

Thursday Forest Club - “One, two, three where are you?”. This is our hide and seek game. The seekers call out “one, two, three where are you?” and those that are hiding call out “we are over here” - the seekers then have to work out where and what direction to go in to find them, and whether we are getting closer or further away. Hang on though, someone is missing! “one two, three where are you?” - “I'm over here” - we kept calling until we knew we were close but where? Look up – Fiona was stuck up in a tree. Some of our little ones then had a go at climbing too. We found more sticks for our den, but most of all Lynne created a fire to boil water for hot chocolate. We discussed our fire circle and how no-one but Lynne was allowed inside the circle. So we practised walking around the outside edge and talked about the dangers of fire. Best of all – we had hot chocolate.

Makaton signs – we are still learning Good, Hello and Thank you.
Lots of picnics this week and talk of travel. What we travel by such as boat, aeroplane, car, bus and walking. The places we have been, seaside, woods, hot places and places where we can swim. Discussion as to what we need to pack, food, clothes and teddy. Who might we go with, our friends, mummy, daddy, teddy and who we might like to go and visit and all this from a couple of suitcases and some play food. Sparking a riot of ideas and a world of imagination and perhaps some memories too!

Many, many paintings created this week to share. A sharing of ideas, sharing paint, paper even creating pictures together and so much discussion over what it is we are creating. The stories behind each stroke of the brush and how when we put colours together they make more colours.
Thursday Forest Club. We had some visitors while we have been away. A new den had been created with a flag, letting us know who had made it, some of our old preschool friends – they did take some items from our old den, but that just meant we had to go on a hunt for more things for our den to fix it. We went to look for the toad from last week. Good remembering of where he was, but he had moved home. We had a look around, but we could not find him. Perhaps he had gone on his holidays. Games, snacks, fun and laughter followed by lunch.

Makaton Signs – we are still learning Thank You, Hello and Good.

The children now have the hang of Fish, Chips and Peas, so we have decided to introduce a yoga story of the 3 Little Pigs. The children showed some good balancing skills and some brilliant wolf actions, ask them to show you.

“Whatever next” - the story of the Ted that goes to the moon inspired the children to create their own story. A group collaboration of creating a rocket from a box with jet packs, all joining in for large scale painting – but now we have to wait for all that paint to dry. This story is to be continued....


Paper, paper everywhere – but what shall do with it. Some children started laying it on the floor, which then turned into making a round-about. The pieces of paper were placed on the floor one by one and gradually a large scale circle was formed. Lots of teamwork and talk about what, where, how to place them down. Who uses a round-about? Directions – we need to go in one direction or you can get bumped. Great ideas from some budding architects and designers of the future perhaps!

Thursday Forest Club – Mud pictures, swinging in trees, den building, mud ladies on trees. Spider Man has been among us who see or find a spiders web, how many can you find. Looking for bugs, we found a toad hiding in a fallen down tree – well spotted. Some games of Log, Apple, Tree Bush, stories snacks and lunch. We even found a new big log that we thought we could use as a seat, but how can we move it? Its too heavy to lift. With some rolling, teamwork and attaching rope and lots more pulling we moved it. Great team work. We also found a baby monkey hiding in the tree, he had lost his mummy and daddy, so he is coming to live at preschool whilst we help him find them. He was scared of us at first but we realised that if we were quiet and sat down he popped his head up to see us. We are planning on making him a house next week.

We are still continuing to learn Thank You, Good and Hello in Makaton signs.


Wednesday – Plough Match. The sun was shining and everyone was smiling as we got on the mini bus and off we went. So many tractors, big ones, small ones, steam engines and even shire horses. We all trundled onto the tractor and trailer and had a bumpy ride all the way around the fields. Oh what fun, what giggles!!! We had lunch too. It was good to have some of the mums and even grandma's and grandpa's joined us. Thank you.


Thursday – Forest Club. We found somewhere else to explore. It was a bit scary, but also a bit exciting. There was a massive fallen tree that we could climb, sit on, jump off and generally have lots of fund with. We explored our den area, making sure it was still standing. We created a see saw with a log and a plank, but needed to work out how to make it work. The plank needed to be in the middle, and sometimes, we had to help one another. We played “1,2, 3 Where Are You”, had a story, snacks and lunch and created our own art work using water, mud and sticks. Wow, roll on next week.


We seem to have been out most of this week, but it's been fun and we have made the most of our Indian Summer.