Term 4; 24th Feb-6th March

Top for Talking: Encourage your child to listen to and talk about the sounds around them;
Spending time tuning into the sounds around us and talking about what you can hear helps children to develop good listening skills. A walk in the woods - “Can you hear the bird singing?” Watching building work -“Listen to the digger chugging over there!” “What can you hear outside today?”

Makaton sign
Glasses; start at the inside corner of your eyes and move outwards circling around your eyes

Pirate interest
Over the past two weeks the children have shown huge interest in being pirates. This interest has come solely from the children and over the two weeks we have extended this interest by completing different activities. We started off by making a pirate ship outside, using the open ended resources to carefully sculpt our ship. The children were interested in looking at a picture of a pirate ship to see which key features they had to add and they made sure they added a wooden plank "Walk the plank, Walk the plank". 
Once the ship had been made, the children made eye patches, swords and pirate hats, demonstrating their fine motor skills by cutting a range of materials to do so; cardboard, materials and string. Once their costumes were made, they all enjoyed taking on the role of a pirate "Argghhh my ship mates" and engaged in pirate role play for long periods of time.
The children also enjoyed colouring in pictures of pirates, choosing specific colours for a purpose and giving their pirates costumes which they designed themselves and creating their very own treasure maps, following each others instructions and directions to reach X marks the spot.

To continue supporting the children's interest, we wondered if anyone has the game of Pop Up Pirates at home, which they wouldn't mind brining to pre-school for us to play together.

Washing Hands
We are sure you are currently aware of the Coronavirus and following this we have been supporting the children with their hand washing, highlighting the times when we need to wash our hands, talking about germs and what sequence to follow when washing our hands. We have been encouraging the children to first of all; 1) Pull back their sleeves, 2) Then wet their hands with water, 3)Put on soap and we have been demonstrating how to wash our hands and 4) wash off the soap following by drying them. To make hand washing a fun time for the children we have been learning/singing a song which the children have enjoyed and below are the words if you would like to sing along with your children when hand washing;

Wash, wash, wash your hands, 
Wash them nice and clean, 
Fronts and backs and in-betweens, 
Get them nice and clean

Please find two links below which contain information we have received from BANES in regards to the best practise to protect ourselves against Coronavirus and step by step pictures demonstrating how to best wash our hands.

coronavirus_print_friendly_a4_poster.pdf

hand-washing_technique_to_share03.03.20.pdf

Ways to support handwashing at home; 
*Model hand washing and talk to children about the importance of washing our hands. 
*Follow the 4 steps created at pre-school when handwashing.
*Sing washing hands song together 

Listening
We are continuously working on developing our listening skills while at pre-school and have been talking to the children about what listening is and what we need to use to demonstrate good listening skills. The children are aware that we need to use our listening ears to listen to each other and if we are talking when someone else is talking it can be difficult to hear what others are saying, so we have been practising placing our fingers on our lips when someone else is talking to help children understand the appropriate times to speak. We also make the children aware that we have acknowledged they would like to say something when we are talking by saying "I can see you would really like to tell us something, can you hold it in until we have finished talking then you can tell us after". 

Ways to support at home; 
*Playing Simon Says
*Memory trays- place a few items on a tray and name each one with your child so they are aware of the contents on the tray. You can then cover the tray with a tea towel and take one item away. Reveal the tray to your child and see if they can remember which item has disappeared.